Flicking through the Sunday papers showed yet again how, when some old media journos are looking for a story, taking a pop at new media is an easy option.
First, Gill spotted the Sunday Times’ diatribe against Twitter courtesy of assorted psychologists including Dr Oliver James who maintained: ”Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity.” Using celebrity Twitter users such as Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross to make its point, the piece argued that Twitter is “often so breathtakingly mundane”.
Well yes, that can be true, but celebs only show one of the ways Twitter is used. Because of their profile, inevitably their communications become mass broadcasts to a huge audience (Fry currently has 223,573 followers) rather than ongoing connected conversations.
The discussions taking place at a more intimate, local level are where Twitter scores highly. People use it to do the stuff of everyday life: find things out, share information, build friendships, make arrangements - whatever they need to do. I can’t claim to be a prolific Twitter user, unlike Lewis and the rest of the Shiny Red team, but I do know the more I use it the more I see the value.
The second article which made me choke on my cornflakes was the Mail on Sunday’s piece headlined: “What a bunch of Twitters: Government advertisers for £160k ‘digital communications’ internet supremo”. In it, Conservative MP Philip Davies decried plans to hire a senior figure to work across government departments to encourage greater digital engagement (advertised salary from £81k to a maximum of £160k). His view? “‘It defies belief that ministers are faffing around on Facebook and Twitter. It is a grotesque amount of public money to waste on a pointless job. It is absolutely obscene.”
As readers of this blog know only too well, we live in an age when sales of newspapers and magazines among teens and 20somethings have fallen off a cliff. When tv ratings are plummeting. When people of all ages spend increasingly large amounts of time online. Against that backdrop, surely it’s responsible government to want to engage effectively with the taxpaying public?
David Cameron showed he understood that by building his webcameron site. And much has been written about the Obama team’s breathtakingly successful use of the internet in his Presidential campaign. With digital comms set to play a significant part in the next General Election, maybe even Mr Davies will choose to spend some time on Twitter and Facebook.
Cool post Helen. Those two papers in particular have been some of the slowest to get onto Twitter, and have the fewest journalists present on there. While the Twitter backlash is only to be expected, these pieces are essentially written by non-users, which explains why they’ve missed the point and focused on celebrities rather than the more subtle conversations you refer to.
I think this government role sounds really important, while the role will address lots more than Twitter, as an example, the No 10 twitter profile is by far the best interaction I’ve ever had with politics – and I’m still a paper reader (just!).
[...] Related reading: Shiny Red – The Twitter backlash starts in earnest in old media. [...]
[...] can also read our post about last week’s Sunday Times scandal on the Shiny Red blog Share and [...]
Well I can only speak for weak sense of identity self but my life has immeasurably improved since I started on Twitter.
Better than google, gets rid of the boring app’s on facebook, allows you to gossip and bitch on a global level.
What’s not to like?
Teehee.
Like your site, and all the great tips that are mentioned on it, it has really helped out. Thanks!