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 the [...]
Posts under ‘The media’
Buzzing the broadsheets
How bloggers can help people understand public service
One of the advances that the long tail of the blogosphere has brought us is that some social work gets reported properly. Not the way that newspapers often report them, in their need for sensationalism. And, of course, they do it all for nothing.
Take Random Acts of Reality, for instance. The latest post is worth [...]
Liveblogging council meetings
That’s what the Manchester Evening News are proposing to do. They’re using CoverItLive. Here’s their coverage of Trafford Council meeting on the 2nd December.
Now I’ve used CoverItLive a few times and its settings (if I recall correctly) can and usually do pick up anyone’s tweets. How long before Councillors cop on to this? And local [...]
Minarets, trade offs and direct democracy
The recent outcome of a Swiss referendum in which a majority have voted in favour of a minaret ban has helped to highlight a few important issue around the question of direct democracy.
Dan Hannan says that – while direct democracy is a great idea, this particular result is regrettable.
Make of that what you will. For [...]
Should local authorities subsidise independent local newspapers?
In today’s Guardian, (and here with footnotes) George Monbiot asks:
“I can think of only two local newspapers that consistently hold power to account: the West Highland Free Press and the Salford Star. Are any others worth saving? If so, please let me know.”
His observation ….
“Most local papers exist to amplify the voices of their proprietors [...]
Why bringing politicians and the public closer to each other is important
Here’s Peter Levine on the study of deliberation:
“The other main source of evidence in Neblo et al is a field experiment, in which people were offered the chance to deliberate with real Members of Congress. They were more likely to accept if they had negative attitudes toward elected leaders and the debates in Washington. Again, [...]
An idea
Following the Daily Mail’s crusade against council employees using Facebook, Sunny, here, (in the comments) thinks it’s time for everyone to write to their local authority to find out how long council employees are spending on the Daily Mail website.
This is what FoI requests are for, isn’t it?
News…. on a computer?
Apologies to anyone who thinks that a blog about local democracy has been hijacked and turned into one about how the internet effects newspapers. In defence of this focus, I’d argue that the way that local issues are reported (and how the internet changes this) is one of the big issues that will shape local [...]
A few links to be going on with
Just a few interesting things I’ve seen over the past few days that impact further on this councils v local newspapers issue. The first is that – when councils decide to factor in ad-revenue into their communications budgets, it adds a significant amount of uncertainty – because ad revenue can go down as well as [...]
Football phone-ins v consultation exercises
Matthew Taylor has a good post up about the architecture of morality, and it’s all the better for the fact that he’s chosen an important issue (football) to illustrate his point.
Personally, I spend six days a week tut-tutting about the way that popular political discourse is convened and managed. Panel shows on TV and radio, [...]
A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. How will peer-to-peer communications change local democracy? How is representation changing? 
