It’s been too cold to be doing much over the festive break, so interesting stuff online has been excellent in keeping cabin fever at bay.
Two articles in particular caught the eye in the last week, which seem worth sharing.
First of all, as a warm up to our debate in a couple of weeks, here’s an article from the Guardian claiming, somewhat boldy, that ‘the 2010 election will be won by blogs and tweets’. A lot of it’s frankly hype and nonsense, which it sort of gives away when you realise the subtext of the article keeps on getting drawn back to how new technology helps political parties co-ordinate offline activities, rather than providing something new in and of itself.
Sure, new technology will have an impact on some voting intentions amongst certain groups, and is undeniably a huge influence on the offline news media agenda in a way in hasn’t been before. But the idea that in the 2005 General Election “the internet remained undeveloped as a campaigning tool” is just not true. Likewise stating that “Politicians will for the first time in a campaign be able “to talk directly to voters” through mediums such as podcasts and blogs, bypassing the traditional media” misses the point that politicians spend a huge amount of time talking directly to voters in their constituencies during an election, and always have done. Talking directly to people has always been the way elections have been won, and whilst there are now new channels for it, the basic premise is little different.
There are going to be lots more articles like this in the next few months no doubt, but if the worlds of politics, policy and the internet are to work well together, then it’s going to be more important than ever to separate the actual reality from what sells newspapers.
In a similar vein, the other article that was interesting was about Facebook and its user demographics. It’s old-ish news by the looks of it, but nonetheless useful to know. The notion that ‘the internet = mainly young people’ is hopefully now fading, but it still seemed true for social networking sites at least. However, back in July, research came out that showed that Facebook’s demographic was getting much older at a rapid rate. Indeed, as of July 2009, the largest age group on Facebook was those aged 35-54. Surprising stuff, have a look at the figures yourself here.
