The Emerging Viewertariat - out now in Press/Politics

 

The International Journal of Press/Politics have published Nick Anstead and Ben O'Loughlin's article, 'The Emerging Viewertariat and BBC Question Time: Television Debate and Real-Time Commenting Online'. To download it click here, or email Ben.OLoughlin@rhul.ac.uk for a copy. 

This paper advances the study of microblogging and political events by investigating how one high-profile broadcast acted as a stimulus to real-time commentary from viewers using Twitter. Our case study is a controversial, high-ratings episode of BBC Question Time, the weekly British political debate show, in October 2009, in which Nick Griffin, leader of the far-right British National Party, appeared as a panelist. The “viewertariat” emerging around such a political event affords the opportunity to explore interaction across media formats. We examine both the structural elements of engagement online and the expressions of collective identity expressed in tweets. Although many concerns noted in previous studies of online political engagement remain (inequality in the propensity to comment, coarseness of tone), we find certain notable characteristics in the sample, especially a direct link between the quantity of tweets and events on the screen, an ability to preempt the arguments offered by panelists, and ways in which viewertariat members add new content to the discussion. Furthermore, Twitter users commenting online express a range of overlapping identities. These complexities challenge broadcasting and political institutions seeking to integrate new, more organic models of engagement.

New article by Andrew Chadwick: "The Changing News Media Environment"

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James Stanyer and I have just had a new article published. It's in the latest volume of the bestselling book about British politics, Developments in British Politics 9, edited by Richard Heffernan, Philip Cowley, and Colin Hay, and published by Palgrave Macmillan.

The chapter covers new media usage patterns, the changing face of news consumption, the growing pressure on newspapers, Gordon Brown's relationship with the press, the changing nature of media management inside Number 10, and the experience of Britain's first live televised prime ministerial debates during the election of 2010.

To give you a flavour of what's in it, here's an excerpt, from the conclusion.

As this chapter has shown, the political communication environment in Britain is in transition. While broadcasting still remains at the heart of national political life, the nature of mediated politics is evolving rapidly and in directions that are sometimes contradictory, sometimes complementary. The election leaders’ debates reinforced television’s predominance, though as we saw above, even those events were accompanied by a panoply of online activism, some of it facilitated by the broadcasters themselves.

The way citizens consume political information is changing in the new digital environment. As use of the internet and mobile technologies has grown, so they have become an important port of call for those seeking political news. Audiences have never had access to so much political information through such a variety of news outlets. At the same time, these technologies provide new opportunities for audiences to engage in political activities, express their opinions and contribute content in historically unprecedented ways. The evidence suggests that growth in the numbers taking advantage of these interactive opportunities is likely to continue.

There are, however, cautionary themes. Concerns about the stratified nature of the digitised public sphere remain. Those that take advantage of new technologies to participate in politics remain a minority and still tend to be wealthy, well educated and younger. Second, this new communicative digital space has also impacted upon politicians and media organisations, creating opportunities, but at the same time new uncertainties. Established news outlets remain a visible presence but face financial pressures. While news organisations have responded innovatively, competition, shrinking audiences, and lower revenues – especially from advertising – have negatively affected their resource bases. There have often been no alternatives to cost cutting. The public service provider, the BBC, has fared well up to now, but it too is likely to face future financial constraints, and this may well have implications for the quality of news citizens receive.

Politicians and their strategists have been forced to adapt to a rapidly pluralising digital sphere. Party leaders have promoted themselves using a range of interactive features to try and connect with citizens, albeit with varying degrees of success. While the internet has opened up new ways for politicians to interact with the public, it has also posed a series of challenges. Some aspects of the online information environment have proved difficult to control. The fast-moving news cycles require constant monitoring and are significantly more difficult to direct. The public spread of gossip and rumour is perhaps more common place. While political elites have been keen to be seen embracing new media, they are understandably less keen to be seen reverting to necessary but dubious methods of control. The leaked emails that led to “Smeargate” reveal, not only that some old command and control techniques of the broadcast era are still hugely important, but also that the new media environment is inherently porous. Understanding the complex new political communication environment in the twenty-first century remains a challenge, but one to which students of politics must rise if they are to fully comprehend the nature of British democracy.


The book as a whole is excellent and as usual it's a must-read for anyone interested in British politics. You can buy a copy now from Amazon here.

It will publish in the U.S. in August and will be available here.

The full reference for our piece is: Chadwick, A. and Stanyer, J. (2011) "The Changing News Media Environment" in Heffernan, R., Cowley, P. and Hay, C. (eds) Developments in British Politics 9 (Palgrave-Macmillan), pp. 215-237.

Can social media monitoring predict events? Mediating Diplomacy workshop on Thursday

Ben O'Loughlin will address the relationship between social media monitoring techniques and the emergence and prediction of events at the following conference this Thursday. From the Arab Spring to the News International scandal it is clear that international events can catch policymakers off guard. Can analysis of our tweets and user comments help spot an event before it breaks? And if this is possible, what are the ethical consequences?

Mediating Diplomacy:

Strategies, Challenges, Methodologies

An International Workshop

The Open University, Camden Town

28 July 2011

1-5pm

PROGRAMME

1400-1415 Welcome and Introduction

Marie Gillespie and Hugh Mackay Public Diplomacy or Intercultural Dialogue?

1415-1515

Nick Cull The Future Landscape of Public Diplomacy

Annabelle Sreberny The Hubris of Public Diplomacy

1515-1615

Ali Fisher Networked Audiences: New Rules of Engagement

Ben O’Loughlin Can Social Media Monitoring Predict Events?

1645 -1700 DISCUSSION

1700-1900 RECEPTION           

NPCU at ECPR 2011, Reykjavik

Andrew Chadwick and Ben O'Loughlin will each present papers at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conference, Reykjavik, Iceland, 25-27 August. Their papers are in the eight-panel section, Internet and Politics: Bridging Current Research and Outlining Future Directions, chaired by Andrea Calderaro (European University Institute) and Anastasia Kavada (University of Westminster). Andrew Chadwick will also be discussant on a further panel in the Internet and Politics section. Here are details of the two papers.

The Hybrid Media System

Andrew Chadwick

This paper combines theory and empirical analysis to explore recent systemic change in the nature of political communication. Drawing on evidence from Britain and the United States on the changing relationships among politicians, media, and publics, I argue for the concept of the hybrid media system. This system is built upon interactions among old and new media and their associated technologies, genres, norms, behaviors, and organizations. Actors in the hybrid media system are articulated by complex and evolving power relations based upon adaptation and interdependence. We now require a holistic approach to the role of information and communication in politics—one that does not exclusively focus on new or old media, but instead empirically maps where the distinctions between new and old matter, and where they do not. The focus of my attention in this article is news. First, I outline an ontology of hybridity. Next, I discuss assemblages of hybridized news making. Then I examine the phenomenon of WikiLeaks as an example of power and interdependence in the construction of news.

Download this paper here.

Semantic Polling and the 2010 UK General Election

Nick Anstead and Ben O’Loughlin

While journalists speculated about whether the 2010 UK General Election was the country’s “first Internet election”, one important way in which the Internet was incorporated into the election process was under-examined: semantic polling. Semantic polling refers to the use of algorithms and natural language processing to “read” vast datasets of public commentary harvested from the Internet, which could be disaggregated, analysed in close-to-real-time, and presented to various audiences. We present findings from interviews with social media monitoring firms, the parties that used those firms’ services, and journalists who used such firms’ results in their electoral coverage, as well as content analysis of media electoral coverage. We examine assumptions about: (i) the utility of such data, (ii) the correspondence of semantic polling to normative models of democracy, (iii) the demand for insights into why citizens would vote as they did not just who/what/where (i.e. the demand for “intelligence”), and (iv) how semantic polling could be integrated with traditional methods. Such techniques were at a very early stage, with problems of data gathering, analysis and the presentation of results to parties and publics. Nor were methodological shortcomings necessarily explained when polling was presented. Nevertheless, we consider how such approaches will continue to develop in coming years in different countries.

Please contact Andrew.Chadwick@rhul.ac.uk or Ben.OLoughlin@rhul.ac.uk for copies of their papers. And we hope to see some of you there.

Hoskins/O'Loughlin podcast: Does the BBC cause radicalisation?

On 15 July 2011 Bournemouth University hosted a conference, Responding to extremisms: media roles and responsibilities. Andrew Hoskins and Ben O'Loughlin gave a 20 minute talk about how jihadist statements by bin Ladin, Al-Zawahiri and others come to reach mass audiences through mainstream news. The consistent process through which this occurs shows a renewal of 'gatekeeping', a journalistic practice that, with the internet's proliferation of channels, platforms etc, we might have expected to disappear.

To listen to the talk, click here. To read the paper the talk was based on, click here.

Thanks to Barry Richards and the organisers for a very interesting day's discussion.

New Ampofo article published: The social life of real-time social media monitoring

NPCU doctoral candidate Lawrence Ampofo's new article has been published in Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. The article is entitled, 'The social life of real-time social media monitoring'. Click here to read it.

Abstract:

Real-time social media, social media that publish information as soon as it is available, has become a mainstay in contemporary society with the widespread adoption of status updates, tweets and blogging. In response to this growth of data, specific methodologies and software tools have been developed that aggregate and analyse the saliency of such content. However, despite the wealth of resources available, researchers face significant challenges in accurately and ethically conducting such an endeavour. This essay takes as its starting point the conception that real-time social media are artefacts of social and cultural interactions online. The analysis of such real-time information is therefore problematic as ethical and methodological issues suitable for such research are currently not well developed. Two case studies from BBC Mundo’s Your Say discussion boards contextualise the complexity inherent in the above issues within the framework of the BBC World Service’s mission to foster a global conversation. The analysis of discussions hosted by BBC Mundo highlights the intricate nature of correctly analysing such content and underscores the need for new methodological processes, in addition to heightened analytical sensitivity, in interpreting the results of real-time social media analyses.

Narrative Horror and the Downfall of Leaders #1: Rupert Murdoch

You have devoted your life to creating a great empire, one that stretches around the world and wields influence over politics and culture in a number of countries. Decades of criticism and conspiracy about the pernicious effects of your empire only testify to your importance. You have groomed your successors and shaped the climate they will work within. Biographers will not be able to knock the magnitude of your achievements. Your story is written. You are legendary, a mythical figure in your lifetime, hated, loved, known. So imagine the agony of losing this reputation in a single act and finding that all you built can be swept swiftly away. Instead of being remembered as a great empire builder you’ll be remembered for a single, tawdry episode. The horror!

International relations is full of leaders and legends who achieved much but will be remembered for a totally different and humiliating reason. The Spanish novelist Javier Marias calls this narrative horror:

Its what we call “vergüenza torera”, literally, “a bullfighter’s sense of shame” … Because bullfighters, of course, have loads of witnesses, a whole arena full, plus sometimes a TV audience of millions, so it’s perfectly understandable that they should think: “I’d rather leave here with a ruptured femoral artery or dead than be thought a coward in the presence of all these people who will go on to talk about it endlessly and for ever.” Bullfighters fear narrative horror like the plague, that final defining wrong move, they really care about how their lives end.

And ‘it’s the same with … almost any other public figure’ – the retired pop star whose paedophilia is suddenly and definitively public, the movie star whose career is eclipsed by a racist outburst or car chase, the president whose eight years in office will be remembered for a misplaced cigar, the international office holder for whom a graphic accusation of rape is never exorcised from the public mind.

It is these single tawdry episodes that Marias writes of, but I wonder if narrative horror is looming for Rupert Murdoch. There are many hoping that we are at the beginning of a chain reaction episode that will bring the downfall of his News International business and potentially his wider News Corps empire in the US, Australia and Asia. It seems the editors and journalists of his UK newspapers operated an institutionalized practice of bribing police and hacking into the voicemails of anyone newsworthy, including murdered schoolchildren and dead soldiers, not to say the sitting Prime Minister’s bank account and the medical records of his ill children. The ingenious practices that have made his UK newspapers so successful became – inside a week – the disgusting practices that force him to start shutting those newspapers down. His bid to take over the pay-TV operator BSkyB is now opposed by all parties. Such a twist in the larger tale of his empire-building can only be a blow to Murdoch’s pride.

If this has happened in other countries, a new mythology will quickly form, especially as these practices have long been suspected. The troubling links in the UK between News International and the current Prime Minister’s choice of press officers raises questions about a new iron triangle of press, police and political leaders that exerts control of public information that could be replicated anywhere institutional arrangements allow. Murdoch failed to contain the crisis in the UK, now he must fear contagion. The sense of narrative horror must be setting in.

Under this pressure, will Murdoch say or do something that will obliterate his life story so far? We might think this unlikely – he’s too smooth an operator, too experienced, and his reporters know where everyone’s bodies are buried. But Marias’ point is that you cannot know your own face tomorrow – what you are capable of, and how you will look to others. We have a parallel, private or theoretical self who could break through any moment and ruin all our hard work and public reputation. How far will this go and how will he react? Parliament has called for him to give evidence next week.  

One of the most enjoyable aspects of politics is that the decisions leaders make aren’t fully explained by their rational reading of structural forces or immediate conditions. Life intervenes: character and psychology, personal glory and horror, boldness and panic. So I’ll call this Narrative Horror #1 and invite contributions about other leaders who lost it all – or who found a way out. 

Special issue out: Remembering the 2005 London bombings: Media, memory, commemoration

The Miriam Hyman Memorial Trust website - a living memorialA special issue of Memory Studies has been published, Remembering the 2005 London bombings: Media, memory, commemoration. It presents research from a three-year (2008–2010) project, ‘Conflicts of Memory: Mediating and Commemorating the 2005 London Bombings’, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).There are articles by established scholars – Anna Reading and Andrew Hoskins from media studies, linguist Nuria Lorenzo-Dus, psychologist Steve Brown – as well as rising stars Annie Bryan and Matt Allen, and short commentary pieces from Stefanie Petschick and myself.

Click here for access.

Stereotypes and suspicion: Nicer words won’t change anything

A new report was released yesterday, ‘Suspect Communities’, comparing how UK media and government have framed Irish and Muslim communities since the 1970s. The authors find that the ideas underpinning counter-terrorism measures and the way politicians, policymakers and the media discuss who might be responsible for bombings have not changed over four decades. The key finding is that ambiguity surrounding who is an ‘extremist’ or a ‘terrorist’ has led to hostile responses in everyday life - at work, in shops, on the street  - from members of the public who think they are under threat from Irish-sounding or Muslim-looking people whom they associate with that threat. Hence, the report implies that government and media language is impacting on the everyday lives of communities judged suspect and everyone else who must live with them. In a debate in Parliament yesterday, the solution put forward by many was greater sensitivity of language by elites and more dialogue between the stigmatized, the elites, and the majority society.

While useful, the debate needs to go further. The crux with such reports is their method. This research team first analysed thousands of media texts and government documents, and found these to consistently frame these communities as suspect (and as communities, not individuals). They then did focus groups with members of those suspect communities to hear about living under suspicion. What the team did not do is try to explain why journalists or policymakers would consistently produce stigmatizing material. The consistency of the stigmatization suggests its nothing to do with any individuals, but a function of the institutional practices and professional imperatives of the fields of journalism and security policy. Most journalists don’t want to be racist. They think that by allowing a ‘moderate’ and ‘militant’ Muslim to debate they are providing balance – journalists don’t usually understand that they are reducing threatening and non-threatening minorities to equivalents in the eye of the non-Muslim audience. And policymakers know full well that homogenizing a community to tell it to ‘stop harbouring terrorists’ is not going to please everyone, but they really don’t want another bomb going off and will try any means to stop it. These are the pressures they face, and criticizing their language choices isn’t going to remove those pressures. So, if we are to move towards societies in which entire groups are not routinely lumped together as dangerous and disloyal, we need to begin to unravel these institutional and professional logics. A truly critical project would address these power relations and daily trade-offs instead of simply decrying the consequences.

This is an important topic. The Suspect Communities report supports a longstanding research finding (UK here, US here) that those who feel stigmatized tend either to retreat from public spaces (‘keep your head down’, ‘keep your mouth shut’) or become angry and try to resist slurs by turning them on their heads (reclaiming ‘queer’ in the 1970s, jihadi chic in the 2000s). Either way, the result is fear and alienation, which reduces trust on all ‘sides’ and makes reconciling interests and grievances through democratic institutions much more difficult.