Politics

Geert Lovink, in his book ‘Zero Comments’ (2007), argued that blogs were the cause of a “decay of traditional broadcast media” … exhibiting “a ‘nihilist impulse’ to empty out established meaning structures.” In a network based on reciprocal linking and peer-recognition, he wrote that the “lowest rung of the new Internet hierarchy are those blogs and sites that receive no user feedback or ‘zero comments’.” Zero Comments is something that I know about…....

It’s published. A new Hansard Society report, sponsored by Microsoft, MPs Online: Connecting with Constituents, reveals that MPs are using the internet primarily to inform their constituents rather than engage with them. The most widely used digital media are those which are mainly passive in nature, such as website. Interactive forms of media which could be used by MPs to develop a two-way dialogue with their constituents, such as blogs and social networking, are used less commonly....

Just digging around the Hansard Society website for a copy of the report on MPs online, published by the e-democracy unit and I found the blurb for this event, The Online Campaign, in late March. The use of online strategies is becoming increasingly important, encouraging grass-roots activism and enabling mass mobilisation. But there is no guarantee that the cooption of online strategies will guarantee electoral success or promote healthy dialogue between politicians and citizens....

Just been listening to the Toady programme on R4 and heard in the news report at 8am that the Hansard Society had published a report on MPs online. According to the Societies' website, this “research attempts to understand how MPs themselves feel the internet affects the way that they work and communicate with their constituents. The research includes a survey of MPs and a focus group of MPs and their office staff....

I’ve recently been following Tony Curzon-Price’s essay The Liberty of the Networked (and part 2 and part 3) published over at the excellent openDemocracy.net to coincide in with The Convention on Modern Liberty to be held in London and across the UK on February 28th. Tony’s paper considers the social role of technology with regards to political thought and activity, comparing the liberty of the Ancients with the liberty of the Moderns to discover the liberty of the Networked....