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July 10, 2008
Some clever people at the University of Sydney reckon they've invented something that could speed up the internet by 6000 percent. That would come in really handy when you want to watch stuff like this.
It's an hour-long video of the first panel at the Microsoft Politics and Technology Forum a couple of weeks ago discussing Blogging, Social Networks, Political Movements and the Media. Annabel Crabb, Matt Bai from New York Times magazine, Peter Black and Mark Textor form the panel.
If it's worth watching at all, it's to get some idea of how badly misunderstood the independent blogosphere can be, and perhaps how poorly the blogosphere has articulated what it actually does, or can do given the opportunity.
Mark Textor seems to have a good handle on where independent blogs fit into election campaigns, which is odd considering he must have been associated with Howard's disastrous adventures on YouTube. He argues that blogs, media and various websites are among the many sources people use when they're deciding an issue. But being Textor, he seems to see the blogosphere as one big unexplored opportunity for would-be exploiters.
Black had a go at representing the so-called political blogosphere, but didn't seem to have anticipated having to defend it. Asked why an amateur blogger's opinion should be considered as worthy as a media insider's opinion, he could reasonably have asked why, in a democracy, is a single journalist's opinion more worthy than anyone else's? Or he could have pointed out that, unlike columnists, opining is only one of many things bloggers do.
Crabb makes the usual them vs us arguments about bloggers not being real journalists, despite thinking of them as competition at the same time. Bloggers being mainstream media leeches but they're untrustworthy because you don't know where they get their info from, without noticing the contradiction there. In one snort-worthy comment she says
"Isn't transparency about the last thing you get in the blogosphere?...You don't know who half the people are"
I guess that would be as opposed to the totally objective reporting we get from mainstream media who are pristine and blameless when it comes to partisanship or influence from advertiser's interests.
Despite these unimaginative and hackneyed arguments though, Crabb seems a tad conflicted between preserving her authorial authority and finding independent blogs useful in her own life for the things they do that mainstream media doesn't. She describes a blog she likes where commenters contribute different points of view and bring new bits of information to an issue, transforming a set piece into a dynamic.
Someone from the floor, didn't catch the name, said she was working for government on how to engage people and get them participating in a proposed government blog following the public submissions to the Australian Government Consultation Blog Discussion Paper. They didn't receive as many submissions as they'd hoped, but followed blog discussions on the issue and incorporated ideas from those into their data anyway. The proposed consultation blog is supposed to be in the interests of transparency, which is what detonated Crabb's minor explosion about not knowing who bloggers are.
After watching The Hollowmen last night it's probably best not to get too hopeful about such things, but in the meantime it's gratifying to think that it's at least possible that this government is possibly, maybe, perhaps, hopefully, vaguely aware of the differences between real blogs, and the simplistic and misleading ways they're described by so many in traditional media.
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Lyn
I gave up watching conference stuff like that some time ago. I just love the appeal to authority when most journos have BA's whilst many of the professional bloggers have PhD's and have written books.
It is the professionals in the media who under the spotlight these days re credibility, not the political bloggers. The insiders are being watched by the bloggers.
The professional journos don't seem to understand the distinction between policy and politics--something the Hollow Men made very clear---nor the idea of deliberative democracy or Web 2.0.