Social media has given everyone the power to publish, participate and choose. Is this to good effect? MP Hazel Blears doesn’t think so.
In a lecture this week, founder of Custom Communication and journalist, Matthew Yeomans discussed social media and the influence of the community within journalism. Furthermore, Matthew Yeomans said the media has a symbiotic relationship with this community; indeed, there is a level playing field between professional and amateur through the use of such platforms as blogging. Indeed,
Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid (www.laughingsquid.com)
anyone can have a blog.
However, our very own communities’ secretary, MP Hazel Blears, has attacked blogging this week. She said blogging was fuelling cynicism and despair in her speech Tackling Political Disengagement, to the Hansard Society. She believes it’s dominated by a “self-appointed political class”, excludes ordinary people and fails to report responsibly.
This doesn’t sound like a level playing field to me.
Hazel Blears continued to question the wielding of power in blogs where commentators’ views are held in greater esteem than those of elected politicians, for example, blogger Guido Fawkes, saying this was undermining democracy.
“Unless and until political blogging adds value to our political culture, by allowing new and disparate voices, ideas and legitimate protest and challenge, and until the mainstream media reports politics in a calmer, more responsible manner, it will continue to fuel a culture of cynicism and despair” she said.
Perhaps this is most important aspect of her attack. Whilst blogging is a valid platform to vocalise opinions and exercise democracy, not everyone is part of this conversation.
ChrisWhite3 commented on Hazel Blears speech on the Guardian website. However in trying to defend blogging he reiterated her point: “Anyway, every discussion on a blog has a hundred exactly like it in pubs everywhere.”
Whilst there is one comment on a blog, there are several others that take place elsewhere – not on the web – which are not thrust into the web sphere. Blogs cannot, therefore, represent political opinion from all. Only those with the access to computers can communicate.
Blears emphasises this when she said political blogging needs new and disparate voices, ideas and legitimate protest and challenge.
Another comment on Blears’s speech emphasised this. StormForce999 said, “Free media is essential to liberal democracy”. Yet joining in the media conversation is certainly not free. Poor people or those without computers may well be missing out.
Gordon Brown’s ‘laptops for all’ pledge in 1999 has not materialised. The global “knowledge economy” is perhaps still a long way off.
Hazel Blears is reinforcing the point that technological tools are only as good as what you do with them. Whilst blogging is taking place and social media is exercising its influence, many people will be excluded from the social media conversation until technology resources are freely available to everyone. This will balance the bias and perhaps then it will be a more reliable source of journalism.
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