The Election 2010 blog is asking ‘what election was that‘? “The opening book in the ‘Nuffield’ election series – The British General Election of 1945 – lists a series of ‘named’ elections: 1874, when the Liberals went down in a flood of gin and beer; the Midlothian election of 1880; the Khaki election of 1900; [...]
Posts under ‘Media and communications’
Elections bring the best out in bloggers
I’ve tried to boil down the killer argument in the whole ‘blogger v journalist’ debate, and it runs something like this: Take the best article you’ve read in a newspaper recently. The one that was well-written and argued and the one that met a particular need that you have personally. You can be almost certain [...]
Democracy mirroring social media activity, party whips and ‘ishoos’
Firstly, Catherine has an interesting post up here. No conclusions yet, but definitely worth following. Secondly, Tom Watson – in one of the final votes of the last Parliamentary session – rebelled against the government for the first time in his career over the Digital Economy Bill. I’d say I’m in a minority in admiring [...]
Civil servants guidelines update
I’m a bit slow with this one, but just to close a loop that was opened a few weeks ago here, those Civil Service Social Media Guidelines are now public. Over at Puffbox, Simon seems slightly pleasantly surprised: “But whilst there’s a requirement to limit ‘civil servants’ participation in a professional capacity in social networks’, I don’t necessarily read [...]
Straight answers and the Prisoner’s Dilemma
… or ‘we get the politicians we deserve, pt1′: Via Mick, this is worth a look over at the Daily Mail for people who recycle The Independent. “Academics …. found that “not giving straight answers to questions” scored an average of 8.45 when people were asked how much of a problem it was on a scale [...]
‘The ratio of substance to horse-race reporting remains low…’
Here’s Peter Levine on the way that the healthcare debate has been reported by the press in the US: “…the news media spent a year feeding American citizens a steady diet of stories about Congressional procedure, the possible impact of health-care reform on elections, and quotes that falsely described the bill or denounced its critics. [...]
Positive Political Blogging: Distributed Intelligence vs. interest groups and think tanks
Anyone who follows the BBC News site, or who reads a newspaper, will be familiar with a good few interest groups and think tanks. Where their news releases aren’t the entire basis for the story, they are invited to comment at length, in the name of political “balance”, or on the basis of an often-undeserved [...]
JFDI: tactics, transparency and interactivity
Dave Briggs has a good post up about how organisations introduce technology. He contrasts the ‘JFDI’ approach (which stands for Just Do It) and a more boring sustainable approach. I’ve met Dave and he has very sensible views on Football. Our mutual friend Brian Clough could have contributed to this whole discussion. As he put [...]
Centralisation: A turning point?
For those of us who would like local politics to be more highly valued, two slightly conflicting observations were made by prominent political bloggers last weekend. The first was by the ever-perceptive Potlatch writing about James Purnell, and digging into the question of ‘professionalisation’ of politics: “Purnell – like Ruth Kelly and Ed Balls – [...]
Buzzing the broadsheets
This blog, titled as it is as Local Democracy but spending a fair portion of it’s commentary on social media technology, rests on the premise that local democracy will be profoundly affected by tech-driven changes in the way that the media works, and the way that people can associate with each other. It will change [...]
