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November 27, 2009
Twitter is definitely the space to be in if you want to follow the flow of the unfolding events in the fracturing Liberal Party's meltdown this week. The journalists were reporting from Parliament and now from interviews in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra --the Senate is still debating the ETS. This technology allows political junkies to follow, and comment on, both what is being said by whom about the unfolding events, and the political assemblages being put together to link the different factions across the ETS schism.
The media, like us bloggers, then update a few hours latter online by pulling some of the different flows together with commentary. Twitter has changed journalism. As Julie Posetti points out at her J-Scribe:
There is currently real journalistic value in Twitter. And that value is not best extracted by dropping into others’ sites as a non-user, but in creating a journalistic identity for yourself on the platform; by making new connections outside your professional and personal silos; by genuinely engaging with followers – not just using the medium as another broadcast device....Twitter is entrenching the new news order: where the top-down model of information delivery presided over by an elite few is being swapped for peer-to-peer delivery on online social networking sites …the story-tellers are among us and they’re setting their own news agenda
Who to follow on Twitter? Peter Black makes some suggestions. In his article at Unleashed Alex Bruns acknowledges the significance of Twitter for journalists:
The instant updates, the direct access to sources, the ad hoc exchanges which Twitter and similar services enable can be a powerful addition to the journalistic toolkit, and a significant means for informing and mobilising the masses - for alerting them of a need to flee devastating bushfires or for organising them in street protests against the stolen Iranian elections, to name just two recent examples.
This points to the potential for the deepening the links between journalism and liberal democracy. However, Bruns argues that the journalist's practice in Australia during the meltdown of Liberal Party was different to the bushfires and the Iranian street protests.
His reservations are with the technology itself on the context of the journalism practised by the Canberra Press Gallery. He says:
By enabling an instantaneous, downright hyperactive mode of communication as it does, there's a danger that Twitter will further emphasise process over substance. In the right hands, it is an important tool for tracking the Zeitgeist, checking information, and accessing a wide range of sources quickly and easily; in the hands of a journalist who is already struggling with time pressures and the need to produce copy, however, there is a real fear that the independent, fearless analysis and interpretation of events which should be at the heart of journalistic work will fall further by the wayside.
This is probably right. But, as Bruns implies there are journalists and journalists within the Canberra Press Gallery. Some report on events (news) and some write op-eds (commentary) whilst some can tweet regularly and do an analysis of events by providing an overview of the state of play or interpret the politics behind the surface events.
Bruns unpacks what he means by process over substance:
...much of the journalism Australians were able to witness this week was just that - a breathless coverage of process, a counting and recounting of who said what and which side appeared to have the votes, rather than a serious engagement with the substance of the CPRS bill, the amendments being added, and the wider context of Australia's response to the threat of climate change. Lateline and all the other shows reporting on the political events of the day did little more than repeat - retweet - the pithy comments which journalists and others had already made to each other as they day unfolded.
True, once again. But then the ETS was a political response to global warming by theALP, and one designed to place maximium pressure on Malcolm Turnbull's leadership deepen the fractures within a divided Liberal party and ensure a big Rudd victory in 2010. It was not designed to reduced greenhouse emissions as it was captive to the fossil fuel industry from its early days.
The constant pressure from the Rudd Government in the form of taunts, ridicule and mocking denigration worked ---the Liberal Party imploded over the McFarlane ETS deal and Turnbull's determination to modernize the Liberal Party by bringing it into the 21st century. The politics of the implosion caused by the revolt of the conservatives is the story.
Now Bruns digs deeper as he links the chattering surface journalism to a flaw with the Canberra Press Gallery itself. He says:
Such failings are excusable in the face of the extraordinary political theatre which is playing out at the moment, perhaps, but unfortunately they are not confined to a handful of such special days - even at the best of times, much of the Canberra commentariat generally appears to be more interested in reporting the latest leadership machinations within opposition ranks than in providing an insightful critique of government policy. And there's also a danger that the tweetback loop between politicians, pundits, and journalists becomes even more self-contained, even more disconnected from everyday life.
True, once again with respect to the way that the journalism of the Canberra Press gallery is more leadership politics rather than insightful critique of government policy. However, the Liberal Party implosion does conjoin policy and leadership in that the Minchin conservatives are opposed to climate change, an ETS and Malcolm Turnbull.
The vacuum around 'insightful critique' in the public sphere has given rise to political blogging and the emergence of online journalism that goes behind the headlines. Journalism has stepped beyond the old confines of the Canberra Press Gallery and the feedback loop has been ruptured by different outside voices joining the conversation.
And it is a conversation that is happening, not just broadcasts from those on high.
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I can't agree with Axel's fear that "fearless analysis and interpretation of events which should be at the heart of journalistic work will fall further by the wayside."
Tweets end up incorporated into analysis as smaller parts of the broader picture. People use Twitter to trade examples of analysis. Chris Uhlmann said yesterday that you don't take a given tweet as gospel - rather they lead to further checking.
Yes, there is a bubble of tweeting mps, journos and others, but it's not an isolated bubble.
You're not going to find much in the way of insightful critique on Twitter. But insightful critique does get linked on Twitter, and Twitter contributes to insightful critique.
As always, the political theatre is grabbing attention at the moment, but it hasn't even started to ebb yet and we're already seeing some hefty consideration of how this fits into our broader political system and whether the destruction of the Liberals was the entire point of the CPRS, considering it's clearly not about reducing pollution.