Strategy + Consulting
My decision to start twittering again has tied together nicely with a post by Will McInnes all about Twitter types. Which one are you…..
7 observed Twitter archetypes
These are the archetypes I’ve noticed using Twitter.
- Mickey ME-ME-ME!
- Tina Trivia
- Freddy Fragmentation
- Polly Phoney
- Cedric Spam-again
- Lucy Local
- Ozzie Occasional
I’m convinced a wine-loving Mickey Me-Me-Me broke my previous phone which couldn’t handle the unrelenting text updates 😉
Technorati tags: Twitter, Will McInnes
Apologies for the dearth of new posts around these parts – loads of
great stuff happening but work too busy to let me check my
feeds regularly!
But I thought I’d definitely flag up a working paper by Nick Anstead and Andrew Chadwick from Royal Holloway University‘s New Political Communication Unit.
The paper, Parties, Election Campaigning and the Internet: Toward A Comparative Institutional Approach [downloadable here as a pdf] examines the use of the internet comparatively between political institutions in the UK and US.
The description reads:
"This paper argues that a comparative approach to
analysing the relationship between technology and political
institutions has the potential to offer renewed understanding of the
development of the Internet in election campaigning. Taking the
different characteristics of political parties and the norms and rules
of the electoral environment in the United States and the United
Kingdom as an illustration, it suggests that the relationship between
technology and political institutions is dialectical. Technologies can
reshape institutions, but institutions will mediate eventual outcomes.
This approach has the potential to generate a theoretical framework for
explaining differences in the impact of the Internet on election
campaigning across liberal democracies."
I’m particualrly interested in the author’s suggestion that the
relationship between technology and institutions is dialectical – and
that they are working towards a theory for understanding the
relationship.
I haven’t read the paper yet (although at 16 pages, it’s not a lengthy
read) but as far as I know it looks like a valuable study of what the
UK can learn from the US in terms of political campaigning on the
internet.
Anecdotally I don’t think anyone could argue that the US is streets
ahead of the UK in this sphere (just look to Labour’s poor record) –
what the paper hopefully offers is some reasons why and how.
Technorati tags: politics, internet, UK, US, New Political Communications Unit, comparative study
I love this quotation from J.S Mill’s On Liberty:
"In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others."
Ok, so it’s not about social networks. But the idea of giving individuals the freedom and responsibility to improve things, share that improvement and collectively make society better is surely a major part of the change in corporate culture and social behaviour underway.
It may be 150 years old but a lot of organisations could learn from it.
Technorati tags: JS Mill, social networks, corporate culture
So… I’m thinking aloud here. Most people think Hitler was a bad person… ditto Mosley and Mussolini. Democracy is the bedrock of liberal western society and anything that threatens it – such as Nazism or Fascism – is bad. Agreed?
But there is are alternatives to democracy that aren’t as totalitarian Nazism or fascism. Plato for instance advocated a state governed by benevolent dictators. leaders trained to rule effectively and efficiently for the good of the people.
But then there’s the argument that while this is good in theory, it overlooks government by the people – ie. it bypasses the people who live within and form part of the system.
So Jonathan Wolff argues that
“In a democracy people show their interests … by voting: they vote for what they want. Hence voting is more than a decision-making procedure. It is a way of revealing or expressing the very information that decision needs to take to take into account: what the people want”
So imagine you’re a big ol’ corporate brand. It’s not for nothing that both Mussolini and Mosley saw their view of Fascism as the ‘corporate state’.
Drawing that analogy how many corporate brands allow their users to vote – and i don’t mean shareholders – how many allow their citizen consumers to have a say in what happens to the brand?
I’d argue not many because the company will probably see this as the consumer making decisions in which they have no part to play. Or alternatively see consumers voting through sales.
But I think it’s more than that – we can call it crowdsourcing, wisdom of the crowd etc – but i think the above examples show us that the ability to exercise our personal preference is not just about a shallow indication of whether we agree or disagree with a change in colour or style. It gives a more complex look into the reasons why people want to be enfranchised in the world around them.
Maybe it’s glib to link political democratic rights with those of citizen consumers…. but then again, maybe it’s not?
Ian Delaney has a great post* all about the way we customise – or not as the case may be – our online presence.
Digital natives are much more comfortable treating sparkly add-ons as de rigeur according to this report. Not only that but they don’t differentiate between the online and offline version of the content.
More proof if needed that for those growing up with the internet as a central part of their lvies that there is no on- or offline. Just life.
* well it’s an ok post but I just wanted to display the cool image! 😉
I’m not a big fan of Second Life but only in a rather general way. I have yet to see a really good articulation of what works and what doesn’t about it.
Well, I came across this great insight from Tim Pendry who is a friend and nouveau blogger. Tim’s background – I think it’s fair to say – isn’t really tech but I think that’s what gives him the edge I analysing SL.
It is definitely worth reading… here’s a snapshot of what I think is a central piece of his argument:
“SL is confusing at least five different tasks – psychotherapy, gaming, community building, sales promotion and public relations … It is our suspicion that the tool will only become revolutionary when it learns to concentrate on function, much as Web 2.0 products such as Facebook have done, rather than on offering a general platform.
Virtual worlds are not like simple telephony or e-mail. They have to deal with multiple identity within open societies. People are guarded. They will want to restrict access (to themselves) to a community such as friends or associates (as Facebook does) or they will want anonymity – or they will want a platform where there are guarantees exerted by the platform owners on what and who they are facing.”
His blog is also worth subscribing to for insights into contemporary British and international current affairs and politics…. and and a healthy interest in online communication.