The Foreign Office's Digital Diplomacy Initiative

Last week, the UK Foreign Office held a Digital Diplomacy event. Chaired by the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones and promoted by Weber Shandwick, the event was designed as a showcase for the recent intensification of social media initiatives at the FCO. These come under the heading of “Bringing Foreign Policy Home.”

Cellan-Jones has a typically funny post about the event.

While it’s easy to be sceptical, it’s interesting to note that the FCO has not dumped its earlier internet enthusiasm overboard, as many predicted would happen when David Miliband and members of his team started blogging a couple of years ago.

The FCO bloggers are one of the several examples I discuss in my latest paper:Chadwick, A. (2009) “Web 2.0: New Challenges for the Study of E-Democracy in an Era of Informational Exuberance”I/S: Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society5 (1), pp. 9-41. Download pdf.

[First published at andrewchadwick.com]

Call for papers: Reframing the Nation, international conference, 18-19 May

The NPCU is co-organising an international conference in Central London on 18-19 May 2009, entitled Reframing the Nation: Media Publics and Strategic Narratives. This is the latest in a series of events examining how states use media to project their identity and interests in order to achieve strategic goals in the global arena, and the ways in which citizens respond to - and contribute to - these narratives. The conference brings together scholars from international relations, diplomacy studies, media and communications, and sociology, as well as media and policy practitioners.

Keynote speakers include:

Sir Lawrence Freedman (King's College, London)

Nick Cull (Annenberg School, University of Southern California)

Laura Roselle (Elon University)

Philip Seib (Annenberg School, University of Southern California)

For details, including information for prospective participants, click here.

Sensationalism costs lives

IRA SHOOTS COP DEAD, Officer lured into ambush in new terror outrage, ran today’s Mirror front page headline. The headline in yesterday’s Sun was EXECUTED BY IRA COWARDS, and the byline: TERROR RETURNS TO ULSTER. It is not just journalists that have dramatised the two murder attacks in recent days. On the front page of today’s Times, SDLP member Dolores Kelly says, “We are staring into the abyss”.

The way in which journalists report a conflict affects the conflict being covered. Unlike journalists in the Middle East, those in Northern Ireland have long followed the motto, ‘sensationalism costs lives’. Over the past two decades they have not reported every incident as a major setback, as a failure of the political process, or as the personal fault of duplicitous politicians (studies by Gadi Wolfsfeld demonstrate this). Sensationalist coverage may bring a short term boost to a newspaper’s readership, but it brings long term harm to a community, creating the very ‘climate of fear’ that the terrorists often seek. When journalists live in that community and have to face readers in the street, they are more easily held accountable for irresponsible reporting. Hence it is perhaps no surprise that it is the mainland press that appears more sensationalist than, say, the Belfast Telegraph, which broke the story as, Soldiers shot dead in Northern Ireland terror attack.

The director general of MI5, Jonathan Evans, said in January that intelligence suggested there were ‘splinter groups who are determined to kill a member of the security services or a police officer in Northern Ireland’. Killing a single person is symbolic. Now we have seen two attacks, three state security personnel dead, and fears of copycat killings. In such a tipping point moment, is it not the responsibility of journalists to ensure any climate of fear is reduced, even if it means censoring their own reporting? It is the classic dilemma of giving terrorists the ‘oxygen of publicity’, as Thatcher put it. There are recent precedents. Lately, journalists have had to grapple with whether to report on jihadist kidnap videos: report them, and the kidnappers get a public platform; ignore them, and the kidnapper might as well kill the victim since they have no publicity value. However, it may be that audiences find such videos to be distasteful and hard to watch. It is easier for editors to ignore them. But the ‘return of the troubles’ seems a historically important story and impossible to ignore. Finding a balance that doesn’t contribute to bringing that return about will be tricky.

Dr Ben O'Loughlin named Co-Director of New Political Communication Unit

It is with great pleasure that we announce that Dr Ben O'Loughlin, previously Associate Director of the New Political Communication Unit, will become its Co-Director from March 9, 2009. He will work alongside Professor Andrew Chadwick, Founding Director of the Unit, who will now become Co-Director.

About Dr Ben O'Loughlin

Ben O'Loughlin is Lecturer in International Relations. Ben specialises in international political communication. He is co-investigator of the ESRC-funded project, Legitimising the Discourses of Radicalisation: Political Violence in the New Media Ecology. He was recently a researcher on the ESRC project Shifting Securities: News Cultures Before and Beyond the Iraq War, part of the New Security Programme. Ben is a founding Editor of the new journal, Media, War and Conflict (Sage, from April 2008). His various projects are together at www.newmediaecology.net. This work on media and security is part of a broader interest in understanding the role and influence of political ideas, the translation and adaptation of ideas across different groups of actors and institutions, and the ways in which social and political life is becoming not so much mediated as mediatized.

Ben is co-convenor of the International Studies Association (ISA) workshop, ‘Great Powers after the Bush Presidency: Interests, Strategies and Narratives’. The workshop will take place on 14 February 2009 in New York City prior to the ISA Annual Convention, to be followed up at New Orleans at ISA 2010.

Ben is an Associate Member of the Centre for Research for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) at The Open University and the Centre for Memory Studies at the University of Warwick. He also works with the Widening Participation Unit at Royal Holloway.

Ben has presented research to the No. 10 Policy Unit, Home Office, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, OFCOM, the European Commission and European Broadcasting Union (EBU). He has contributed to the New York Times, Sky News and Newsweek.

Labour 2.0: campaigning for the net generation

We'd like to draw your attention to this conference, at which Andrew Chadwick and Nick Anstead are speaking.

February 28, 2009, 11-5.30 at East Wintergarden, 43 Bank Street, Canary Wharf, London, E14 5AB

in association with

While the real analysis of the reasons for Obama’s victory has yet to be completed, it is obvious that e-campaigning played a major role and that its importance will continue to increase. As the main political parties gear up for the next general election, the focus on internet campaigning will intensify.

To what extent has the Labour party understood the potential of this new campaigning medium?
How can the centre-left use it to mobilise ordinary voters to campaign for progressive causes? 
And what steps need to be taken to pull the party into the ‘net generation’?

We hope to find answers to these questions and more at this special one day conference, which will bring together over 100 members of the left blogosphere, net-savvy Labour parliamentarians, councillors, organisers and others from the Labour movement who have an interest in e-campaigning and using the net to build a better democracy.

Book your place online now

AGENDA

11:00
Opening address
Rt Hon Douglas Alexander MP
Secretary of State for International Development

11:20
Keynote speech 
Speaker TBC

12:00
What will the future of internet campaigning look like?
Professor Andrew Chadwick, Director, New Political Communication Unit, Royal Holloway, University of London
Greg Jackson, Tangent
Tom Steinberg, MySociety

12:45
Lunch

13:30
Mobilising the centre-left blogging community
Adam Bienkow, Tory Troll
Tom Barry, Boris Watch
Theo Blackwell, blogger and councillor
Alex Smith, writer and political activist (chair)

14:15
Fundraising and voter ID online
Gavin Shuker, Political Insight
Jag Singh, MessageSpace

15:00
Learning from the private sector
Simon Redfern
Oliver Rickman, Google

15:45 
Afternoon break

16:00
Transforming Labour’s campaigns and communications through new media
Nick Anstead, University of East Anglia 
Matthew McGregor, UK MD, Blue State Digital
Sue Macmillan, New Media Campaigns Taskforce Leader, The Labour Party
Paul Simpson

16:45
Close of conference debate:

Can the centre-left dominate the internet despite being in office?
James Crabtree, Senior Editor, Prospect
Derek Draper, LabourList
Rt Hon David Lammy MP
Tim Montgomerie, ConservativeHome

17:30
Close

Book your place online now

Venue

East Wintergarden, 43 Bank Street, Canary Wharf, London, E14 5AB

Contact

Mark Harrison
Tel: 020 3008 8180
Fax: 020 3008 8181
e-mail: mark@progressives.org.uk

Call For Papers: International Workshop: Citizen Politics: Are the New Media Reshaping Political Engagement? Barcelona, May 28-30

We'd like to draw your attention to a forthcoming meeting at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. The closing date for proposals is February 9. As below, please direct inquiries to Laia Jorba at UAB... 

Call For Papers

International Workshop

“Citizen Politics: Are the New Media Reshaping Political Engagement?"

Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain

Organiser Name Laia Jorba
Telephone +34 93 581 24 74
Email laia.jorba@uab.cat

Venue Convent de Sant Agustí, Carrer Comerç 36, Barcelona

Dates May 29th-30th, 2009 (Opening conference, May 28th)

Proposals (abstract) February 9th, 2009

Resolution February 20th, 2009

Final papers May 1st, 2009

Keynote speakers

Bruce Bimber, Andrew Chadwick, Rachel Gibson, Brian Kreuger, and Caroline Tolbert

Workshop Information

According to many scholars patterns of political engagement have been changing in the last decades: the erosion of traditional forms of involvement, such as voting and membership in political parties, is accompanied by an expansion of participation repertoires, the rise of protest politics and more individualized forms of action. This research seminar will examine whether and how the growing use of new media is related to changing attitudes and participation patterns. Internet use by citizens, parties and organisations may facilitate large scale spread of political information, reduce communication and mobilization costs, modify citizens’ political attitudes and involvement, and introduce new modes of online political participation. Although these benefits of new media are being advanced by many scholars, we still need further work to integrate the online dimension in the conceptualisation of political participation, its explanatory models, and its related normative concerns: What is the role of online resources for traditional political participation? What is the causal process by which Internet use may modify political attitudes? What is (and what is not) online participation? How do we explain it? How important are its implications for democratic politics? We welcome theoretical and empirical papers (particularly if comparative and/or combining different methodologies) addressing the following questions:

a) Conceptualisation of political participation including new repertories and particularly online modes

b) Analysis of the impact of new media on political values, attitudes and offline modes of participation

c) Analysis of the cyber activists’ profiles and characteristics and the new online modes of participation

d) Adaptation of organisations and other political and social actors to new technologies

e) Methodological challenges and opportunities concerning the study of new media and political engagement

More information

See: www.polnetuab.net

Subject to achieving additional funding, small travel grants will be awarded to PhD students

Flat Earth News: robots.txt

After becoming thoroughly absorbed by the fascinating insights in 'Flat Earth News' by Nick Davies, I can affirm that the book has greatly served to improve my critical understanding of news production.

The book, in his own words, 'names and exposes the national news stories which turn out to be pseudo events manufactured by the PR industry and the global news stories which prove to be fiction generated by a new machinery of international propaganda.' The main thrust of the book details how growing commercial pressures on media producers have radically changed the role of journalists, limiting their role to that of 'churnalists' who simply no longer have the time to do their jobs properly.

Critical reviews of the book itself have focussed on some errant instances of the author's interpretation of the data he collected with the help of researchers from Cardiff University, and more strongly, out-and-out refutations from journalists working for the newspapers mentioned.

My reading is that while indeed Mr Davies goes after his targets with a ruthless polemic, the sheer volume of evidence collected from a myriad of sources involved in the industry suggests that he has correctly identified the main narrative which describes a true crisis in our mass-media.

I guess you'll have to read it to believe it.. and then?

Robots.txt

And then you read a BBC News Online story linking the new Obama administration's dedication to 'openness' with a change in the robots.txt file (which tells search engines how to index content on websites) on the whitehouse.gov server. Auntie goes with the angle 'By contrast, after eight years of government the Bush administration was stopping huge swathes of data from being searchable.'

Alas, this is a piece of Flat Earth News. This particular news-nugget appeared earlier on the BoingBoing blog, where commentators correctly explained that the old robots.txt file merely prevented the indexing of duplicate text-only versions (along with some other technical fixes).

It seems that while the most cursory fact-checking would have revealed this, it just goes too well with the prevailing narrative of the new administration. Davies talks in particular about how BBC News Online journalists are given 15 minutes or so to get an article up from it appearing on wire services, and how in many cases only one source is used.

While this particular instance may seem insignificant, Davies explains how the commercial pressures placed on journalists working today have enabled errors, some with much more important ramifications than this, to become commonplace in our mass media.

Jihadists on Facebook

The Guardian have published an article based on research we're doing at the NPCU. Many thanks for all who helped.

Can journalism make Gaza real to us?

One of the most startling and, if true, depressing anecdotes I have heard about life in Gaza is that living under constant threat of death destroys the human imagination. It has been documented that Palestinian children suffer trauma-related sleep disorders, but the anecdote suggests something more horrific. If all you have ever known is being in a condition of constantly trying to reach a safe place, of being unable to go to school or work with any degree of safety, of having to find food and water each day, then the brain becomes exclusively focused on the present. It must, for survival. At this point, neurologically, a person stops having dreams, and stops being able to hope, because hope implies a future, which is literally unthinkable.

Elaine Scarry has written about the annihilation of the mind during torture, which also breaks down a person’s connection to time. ‘It is commonplace that at the moment when a dentist’s drill hits and holds an exposed nerve,’ she writes, ‘a person sees stars. What is meant be “seeing stars” is that the contents of consciousness are, during those moments, obliterated, that the name of one’s child, the memory of a friend’s face, are all absent.’ After a certain amount or intensity of torture, the brain just goes.

The Guardian published an essay by Karma Nabulsi last week claiming to ‘reveal the reality of life under daily attack’. She writes: READ ON

The Future of the Internet: 2020 and beyond

Just before Christmas the latest Pew survey of experts’ views on the future of the Internet was published. Offering a series of predictions on how the Internet will look in 2020, the comments of those involved in the creation and development of the Internet, as well as business, government and academic thinkers, make for fascinating reading. Will technical or security considerations mean we need a whole new Internet, a ‘clean slate’? Will changing technology change how we relate to one another, for instance making us more ‘forgiving’ or ‘tolerant’? The survey covers issues such as privacy, security, the work/life balance, the use of virtual worlds for medical and military training, and whether the proliferation of mobile devices in the third world can bring development. Also implicit is the question of how we can predict the future at all. But just for a flavour, here are some quotes:

‘While air-typing and haptic gestures are widespread and ubiquitous [in 2020], the arrival of embedded optical displays, thought-transcription, eye-movement tracking, and predictive-behavior modelling will fundamentally alter the human-computer interaction model. What we think is performed almost in real time…’

‘This one sounds too much like the Kitchen of the Future at some 1930s World Fair; I think we’ll have better, more adaptable devices, but I doubt we’ll be air-typing’

‘…there will be ‘subvocal’ inputs that detect ‘almost speech’ that you will, but not actually voice. Small sensors on teeth will also let you tap commands. Your eyeballs will track desires, sensed by your eyeglasses. And so on.’

Sensors on our teeth! Thought-transcription! Its worth a look.