Tuesday 21 June 2016

Trying Out Twitter to Communicate with the Guardian #2

I think this started with the quote below, the kicker in a text by Gaby Hinsliff about Jeremy Corbyn

And so to many commentators, his victory just didn’t compute. It made no sense. We treated it like a glitch in the system, almost a mistake.
Time may or may not prove it to be both those things, but in retrospect we could have been more curious about why those who backed him did so; we should be asking even now whether and why they still feel the same. (For every shrill social media warrior there are dozens of perfectly nice, normal people who backed Corbyn. They’re a lot more fun to ask.)

So presumably the nice normal people are face to face. The shrillness is on social media.

And another thing. It is one thing to get a series of reports completely wrong during a leadership election. It is another to behave as if the leadership of the Labour Party was something for journalists to decide, ignoring actual events and giving space to figures from the past or anonymous sources that fit the rest of their argument.

Going back to the topic for this blog I still think that Jeremy Corbyn has been making a consistent and positive Remain case as followers on Twitter will know. The problem has been that he is not reported. Anyway, leaving that aside for a couple of days, just looking at the social media aspects.

Not sure how to link so here are some screenshots






Why are journalists so concerned to assert the negative aspects of social media? Why would Gaby Hinsliff take time out from the Jo Cox tribute to make a general purpose remark about the sort of people who contribute to Twitter?

It might help to back to some facts. I have been trying for a while now to communicate with the Guardian on the basis that includes the experience of Guardian Unlimited Talk ,  a talkboard that was widely supported then trashed without notice. Max would be an offer of the archive for those who wrote it. Minimum would be to admit it existed when writing about social media. We seem to have reached a stage when print journalists are mostly negative about social media except when mentioning their own contacts. So they must realise where the audience is going. Myself I buy the paper less and go direct to Twitter online. It may find the Guardian, maybe not.

Back on topic for the blog, my impression is that TV comment is also very concerned about the negative aspects of social media and so far is reluctant to comment on the recent print media reporting on immigration. But let us leave that for a while, trying to stay positive.


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