Podcasting as a tool

Podcast:

Links to websites mentioned in my podcast:

TED

Academic Earth

LSE Public Lectures

Election on Twitter

Much focus has been placed on the importance of television in the UK General Election (as for the first time there have been three live TV debates between the leaders of the main political parties) - This however has occurred at a time when the internet has played a major role in the election.

The "digital election" has been well reported, from interesting (though at times silly) blogs, more series articles on the phenomenon, as well as the websites and social media accounts of candidates.

One example of Web2.0 at work in the election is this attempt by the Guardian for readers to assess the campaigning in their constituency. Readers simply enter their post code, the party campaigning and a rating from 1-5 of how "active" that political party has been. The map is formed by users tweeting the data to them:

Tweet your score, postcode and the party abbreviation with the hashtag #ukvote - eg N1 LAB 3 #ukvote or CV32 CON 4 #ukvote -

What does this have to do with digital history? Isn't this simply election journalism in the internet age? Well I thought about this for a while, is this really something of historical value?

I think that this is of historical value as it potentially shows us where political parties are focusing on, it provides a lot of data albeit in a rather simplistic way. In twenty years time if we were to assess the 2010 UK General Election it might be of use to look at a collaborative effort such as this to see where campaigns were highly fought.

Twitter in Elections:

The screen shot above is from my Twitter account, while I was using a Google Chrome extension for Twitter. The image is annotated to show the differing tweets from those involved in the General Election.

The rise of Twitter

David Cameron once joked that he refrained from using Twitter because "too many tweets make a..." Anyway, at the start of this year there were as many as 55 million tweets being made daily, so while Cameron may be avoiding the social networking website, not everyone else is!

Twitter is being described as the "new Facebook", the extraordinary growth of Facebook in 2008 was being matched in percentage terms by Twitter in 2009.

What is Twitter?

• A micro-blogging website.
• You have your own account like other social networking websites.
• Posts are limited to 140 characters.
• You can "follow" and be "followed" by other users.
• The # key is a tag.
• Tagging allows users to see other "tweets" on similar topics.

Twitter's potential

Until the Summer of 2009 Twitter was seen as yet another internet craze but within a few days it became discussed in the media and being reported on news programmes (such as Newsnight on BBC2). This was because of the role Twitter played in the post-election period in Iran.

In 2009, people in Iran and Moldova created their own searchable tags on Twitter to organize protests against their governments and share information with each other and the world. In April, Moldovans used the network to rally more than 10,000 young people against their country's Communist leadership. And in June, Iranian opposition supporters angry over presidential election results used Twitter and other forms of new media to share news on rallies, police crackdowns on protesters, and analysis.

Twitter became such a vital source of information in Iran at a time when text messaging and mobiles phones were being blocked by authorities. This was shown by the fact that the US State Department even requested the company delay a planned shut down of the site for maintenance, showing the site had become crucial in the coordination of anti-government protests.

As well as being a force against authoritarian governments, Twitter is becoming a vital tool in other ways. The head of the NATO mission in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal stated that the website was a tool in mass communication to troops. In the UK during the General Election campaign tweets related to the election are being posted using a variety of tags (including #ge2010 or #ukelection) allowing for everything from the latest opinion polls to spoof posters to be shared.

The success of Twitter is down to the fact that posts are limited to 140 characters, thus you get a short and brief message - like TED, you get a big idea in a few minutes!

#

No the # was not a typo! Tagging is central to understanding twitter. By tagging your posts (using the # and then a word connected to the topic) it allows for debate and collaboration to occur through the site.

Education & Business using Twitter

If Mike Cosgrave had his way, he would "be well past discussion forums and making them use Twitter" by getting students to use the tag connected to their course (ie. #Hi2007) Twitter as a tool in education is a separate issue, but it shows other areas Twitter can be of use in.

Businesses have been entering the social networking arena in recent years with varied success, Twitter is no exception, as print media advertising becomes less popular (and is increasingly reaching an older demographic) the Twitters of this world are becoming a popular tool to reach people otherwise not accessible to companies. It does have dangers for businesses, as furniture shop Habitat discovered when they tried to piggyback on the popularity of Iranian election tags.

Conclusion

David Cameron might be right to avoid using Twitter based on the number of politicians red faced after making inappropriate comments on the site, or worse sharing the banality of their lives. Twitter is however being used by huge numbers of people and for a huge variety of purposes, which is helping it maintain its success. It is easy however to see it as a place for people to share with their friends what is in the contents of today's sandwich or what they thought of that penalty decision in the final minutes of a match - however it would ignore a huge amount of what Twitter is about and why people use the site.

Digital Media = Brevity?

Emily Bell in the Opinion page in The Guardian's Media Suppliment (11th Jan 2010) made fascinating point about a previosuly unknown (unknown to me at least) benefit of digital media.

Unlike her traditional print media article for the paper which has to fill a certain amount of space, digital media allows for a reappraisal of "what is enough in terms of good reporting, or commentary". Unlike the print media, digital media has no minimum or maximum word limit.

Bell points out that the format media is being presented on is changing rapidly as the technology revolution is altering the way we access media. Just as users are questioning the need for music albums as a format (if music is being downloaded why have a dozen tracks when I only like two or three of the songs) or the need for TV channels now that their favourite programmes are available online; we are now questiong the way our news is delivered.

She argues that "content, journalism, programmes and visual communication" will have to become comfortable moving onto the "smaller screen" as we start accessing them on mobile technology.

Despite the need to be versitile (ability to be accessed on the smaller screen) this doesn't translate directly into an increased apitite for brevity.

Despite the success of Twitter (which limits posts to a mere 140 characters) there is evidence according to Bell that "well differentiated long form content is as eagerly consumed as the quick soundbite". She points to statistics on The Guardian website which showed that a feature piece in the G2 suppliment (on Victorian sewers of all things) was the most viewed article of that specific month, which challeneges preconvied ideas of the results of the switch to digital media.

In addition Bell even questions the need for quotes in the new media as journalists can now link to other articles, statements or blogs.

As academic work, research and articles will be increasingly posted and debated online there is a tendancy to assume that for it to compete in the Twitter age the authors will need to be both brief and exciting - however this is an assumption which isn't supported by evidence.