Tag Archives: Twitter

Click & Tell: Get Safe Online Week 2012

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Help your friends and family stay safe online

I’m proud to be part of Get Safe Online, Britain’s leading source of unbiased, factual and easy-to-understand information on online safety. Tomorrow marks the start of Get Safe Online Week 2012. Get Safe Online is asking everyone to pass on online safety tips to
friends, family, colleagues, neighbours or even strangers who you think may
benefit from the advice. In short: Click and Tell!

Here’s my piece of advice. Don’t click on links in Facebook or Twitter messages that say things like ‘What are you doing in this?’ or ‘Who took this photo of me in my bathroom?’. Another one to watch out for is ‘I can’t believe what they said about you in this blog’. Ignore them even (especially) if it comes from a friend, as they’ll probably have had their Facebook or Twitter account taken over by nasty people.

These messages are clever: the senders know that people will be anxious to see photos of them or to learn what others have said about them. If you get one claiming to be from a friend, don’t click – instead give your friend a call. Chances are they’ll have no idea what you’re talking about as they won’t have sent the message. (It will have been send by someone who’s taken over their account.)

You’ll find a huge amount of helpful advice about staying safe online on Get Safe Online’s website. And if you’re in Cardiff, London, Leeds, Edinburgh and Belfast, watch out for Get Safe Online’s roadshow this week.

Twitter: powerful, but not yet stronger than mainstream media

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John Prescott’s Guardian article about Twitter this week caused a stir.

The former deputy prime minister seized on the fact Twitter now had 10 million UK users to claim that Twitter was now more influential than the mainstream media. He pointed out that just nine million buy a national newspaper.

Now I’m the first to accept that Twitter is influential. It is now a news source, noticeboard and echo chamber. It is richly entertaining. I will link to this post from my @robskinner account. But its influence is closely linked with the mainstream media. Britain’s top media groups and their journalists are prominent on Twitter. Many of the most popular links from Twitter content are to the mainstream media. After all, 140 characters leads you wanting more information about a big story.

Prescott argues that Twitter takes power away from the mainstream media. Here he’s on stronger ground. There’s little doubt that social media gives an important counterbalance to the rich and powerful. Prescott cites the backlash against Jan Moir’s poisonous article about Stephen Gately‘s death as an example. But it’s ironic that a politician at the heart of a government notorious for spin and control freaks should see himself as a champion of the battle against bias:

“It’s given me a voice and a connection to millions of people that the distorted prism of the mainstream media denied.”

Prescott is well on the way to national treasure status. And Twitter is largely responsible for that.

A question of taste: the treatment of Louise Mensch and Roy Hodgson

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Two high profile names were in the headlines today as victims of poor taste.

Tory MP Louise Mensch hit out at the abuse she received on Twitter after she refused to support fellow MPs’ condemnation of Rupert Murdoch as unfit to run a major international company.

Mensch told BBC Radio’s Today programme that critics were immoral and misogynistic for describing her as a slut and a whore. Cumbria’s chief constable Stuart Hyde (responsible for e-crime at the Association of Chief Police Officers, ACPO) described the comments as sexual bigotry at its worse.

Meanwhile, The Sun mocked new England football manager Roy Hodgson. Its headline ‘Bwing on the Euwos’ made fun of the way Roy pronounces ‘r’ as ‘w’. The headline has provoked a debate about the way we treat people with speech impediments. (Topical, with the recent film The King’s Speech about King George VI’s stammer.)

Mensch’s case shows once again how base online reaction can be. Obscenities once mouthed in pubs and clubs now go viral on social media and online forums. It’s deeply unpleasant for anyone affected, but hard to combat. Legal action is one possible approach, but as we saw with the Paul Chambers Twitter joke trial innocent but foolish people can suffer when the law is involved. (Chambers was regarded as a terrorist for making a silly joke on Twitter to blow up Doncaster airport after he was delayed.)

The Sun’s treatment of Roy Hodgson is rather different. In some ways it is worse – a national newspaper, rather than a loutish tweeter, mocks Roy’s speech in its front page lead story. Yet the line between humour and cruelty is a very fine one. Thirty years ago broadsheets routinely made fun of SDP leader Roy Jenkins’ identical affliction. (Anyone remember the song about Jenkins and fellow SDP leader Shirley Williams: ‘If you were the only Shirl, and I were the only Woy’?) More recently, supporters of Roy Hodgson’s firmer club Fulham wore shirts with the slogan ‘In Woy we Twust’.

Hodgson is a fine manager who speaks a string of foreign languages. (Not a skill I imagine the Sun headline writer could match.) He’ll shrug off the ‘joke’. Yet an unconfident teenager may not feel so happy about being mocked for a stammer or other speech trait. We should be sensitive to other people’s feelings.

 

 

Britain makes joking a crime – official

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Can you imagine a country in which telling a joke could give you a criminal record? Welcome to Britain, 2011. 

I've always been sceptical about warnings from civil liberties campaigners that Britain is fast becoming a police state. But I was wrong. We're fast losing our sense of humour and our love of essential freedoms. Government and the criminal justice system seem hell bent on using the terrorist threat to sweep away the freedoms and tolerance that once set us apart. 

So it should have come as no surprise that a foolish joke by a 27 year old man should have resulted in his conviction, and the failure of his subsequent appeal. Paul Chambers, frustrated by the closure of an airport near Doncaster, sent the following message on Twitter "Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!" He was held in custody for seven hours in a police cell, which should have been plenty of time for the authorities to realise this was a stupid joke not a terrorist threat. Yet mindless prosecutors still decided to waste public money taking him to court. Worse still, a judge called Jacqueline Davies upheld the conviction, as The Guardian reports, bizarrely claiming "Any ordinary person reading [the tweet] would … be alarmed." Any ordinary, out-of-touch, foolish judge maybe, but few other people. More sinister still, the Crown Prosecution Service deliberately prosecuted Chambers under legislation against nuisance calls rather than laws against hoax bomb threats because they required less evidence of intent. 

Any sensible person would have recognised that joking about blowing up an airport was foolish and in bad taste. I suspect Chambers quietly wishes he'd acted more wisely. But that's no reason why he should end up with a criminal record, a £1,000 fine and lose his job. Stephen Fry has offered to pay the fine. Let's hope the backlash against this stupidity makes us more vigilant in the defence of traditional British freedoms.  

Isn't it ironic that the airport at the centre of the storm is named after an outlaw? Looks like the authorities were determined to create another folk hero…

The TV and social media election

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It was billed as the social media election. Yet television – invented the year my father was born, 1926 – has electrified Britain's 2010 general election campaign.

Nick Clegg's performance in Britain's first leaders' debate a week ago catapulted the Liberal Democrats into pole position as the party for change. For seven days, Labour and the Conservatives have agonised how to respond. Should they attack Clegg or ignore him? Should they play the man or his party's policies?

Tonight's second televised debate was eagerly awaited. Would Nick maintain his lead? Would the two other party leaders perform better?

I thought all three leaders did well tonight. Interestingly, Irish journalist Christine Bohan said on Twitter that she'd kill for a leaders' debate of this calibre with Ireland's political leaders Cowen, Kenny and Gilmore. (Thanks to Orlaith Finnegan for a retweet of this.) Brown, Cameron and Clegg were impassioned and smart.

I blogged recently that talk of a social media election was overplayed, as BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones became a digital election reporter. I don't think Twitter will win the election, but it has complemented the role of the TV debates. And it's giving fresh power to the people and the political parties against the deeply biased old print media. The brilliant #nickcleggsfault viral Twitter campaign, mocking the Tory press's smears about the Liberal Democrat leader, rattled the Daily Telegraph, which was forced to defend its smear against Clegg earlier the same day.

Here's to next week's final debate.

Why the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones is wasted on digital election stories

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I'm a huge fan of the BBC's technology business reporter Rory Cellan-Jones – or @ruskin147 as he's known on Twitter. I first appreciated his expertise and enthusiasm after reading his book about the dot com boom and bust, Dot Bomb. 

But my heart sank when I heard that Rory had been given a temporary role as the BBC's digital election correspondent. Not because I don't think social media will play a role in the imminent British general election. No, my concern is that the move appears to confirm the fears of the BBC critics who think the corporation is obsessed with Twitter and – to a lesser extent – Facebook. More significantly, it suggests a preoccupation with the medium rather than the message. 

Don't get me wrong. I love social media. I've been blogging since 2005, and have embraced Twitter and Facebook with a passion. But Rory's new (temporary) beat suggests the BBC is desperate to be seen as cool and in touch. His blogpost about the budget confirms my fear. As he says, the Facebook election page has just 1,000 fans active and 12 contributors. I sense that Rory is desperate to find a new digital angle to the election, rather than judge possible stories on their newsworthiness. That's a great shame for such a talented journalist.

The political social media enthusiasts constantly point to Barack Obama's 2008 campaign as the model for future engagement of voters through social media. But America is, as they say, another world. Obama was engaging in a great debate with Democratic party rivals, followed by the actual race for the White House. The idea of change was compelling after eight years of George W Bush. Britain is very different. British political parties seem to have transferred Punch and Judy politics to Twitter and Facebook. (The Tories' Cash Gordon stunt was pitiful.) We're hardly likely to be impressed. If they're going to succeed, they must remember that social media is about transparency and authenticity, not control and yah-boo insults. Individual MPs, such as Labour's Kerry McCarthy and Eric Joyce, often rise above this in their blogs, and provide a compelling insight into the role of the MP. (Though interestingly Kerry appears to talk more to the converted on Twitter. Does 140 characters lead politicians to be more partisan?)  

My view is that the televised leaders' debates will have more of an impact on the 2010 election than the political parties' social media efforts. The real impact of Twitter and Facebook will be from voters commenting on the debates and developments in the campaign, not the parties' own efforts on social media sites. But Kerry and Eric are great role models for other candidates.