Going off on a Tangent - AKA The Streisand Effect

Here we go again.

Luke Bozier, a Labour blogger yesterday wrote a blogpost where he questioned the standard of websites provided by a company called Tangent PLC to The Labour Party. They apparently provide the "WebCreator" platform upon which lots of Labour sites are based. He singled out Gordon Brown's site particularly suggesting its design did not befit a former Prime Minister and included this information in a tweet. You can read his full comments on the blogpost linked to above.

You know what's coming next. Yes, the legal chill kicked in. In an update to the post, Luke informs us:

I just received an email from Tangent PLC’s executive director threatening potential legal action for my Tweet earlier suggesting that Gordon’s Brown website wasn’t very well designed:

I respectfully suggest you delete that tweet, issue no more similar ones and generally try to sell your products in a more professional way. I really don’t like the prospect of either a public slanting match or legal action, but if I need to protect my company’s business and reputation, I will.

As an aside, Luke himself (along with many bloggers and tweeters) runs a very small start-up business himself in this field although it is clear to me that he was just writing in a personal capacity bringing his professional experience to bear whilst doing so rather than trying to tout his own products.

Then it started. The blogging and tweeting community do not react well to these sort of threats. Almost straight away the hashtag #OffTangent started trending with many people chipping in their views about the design of Tangent's websites. There were hundreds of tweets about this yesterday from all across the twittersphere. Lots of people who would never have heard of Tangent or even considered the quality of their website design are now very aware of them and have expressed their feelings at the tactics being deployed.

Tangent are learning the hard way that responding in the way they have done can be very counter-productive. It is known as The Streisand Effect following an incident in 2003 when Barbara Streisand's attempts to censor use of a picture of the Californian coastline which included a picture of her mansion (citing security concerns and launching an unsuccessful legal action) resulted in hundreds of thousands of people viewing the image online, most of whom would never have known of its existence were it not for Streisand herself. We see a similar effect here with Tangent.

As a demonstration of this, Luke himself tweeted this morning:

My blog received over 5,000 unique visitors today. Completely mesmerised.

Also, Jack of Kent, the legal blogger (and friend to many bloggers) has been involved from very early on yesterday in this situation. Indeed it was he who started the #OffTangent hashtag. His involvement is very heartening as it shows that Luke already has heavyweight support from people who know the law very well indeed.

Tangent would be well advised to quietly walk away from this. Luke was just expressing his view about the design of websites used by his own party. He is surely within his rights to do this?

If they don't they should be prepared for #OffTangent to continue to heavily trend for quite some time to come.

David Allen Green and Dave Osler on House of Comments - Episode 33

The latest "House of Comments" podcast with myself and Stuart Sharpe of the Sharpe's Opinion blog is now live. The 33nd episode which we recorded on Tuesday 6th July is available to download raw mp3 file here or you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here.

The format is to invite political bloggers on each week to discuss a few of the stories that are making waves in the blogosphere.

This week we were joined by David Allen Green, convenor of Westminster Skeptics who also blogs at "Jack of Kent" largely on legal issues and Dave Osler, journalist and Labour blogger who has recently been David's client in a libel case brought against him.

We discussed Dave's libel case and the wider issues around libel reform, the effects of cuts on the economy and politics scene and political developments in general this week.

If you are a political blogger and would like to participate in the future, please drop me an e-mail here.

Jack of Kent and Skipper on House of Comments Podcast - Episode 14

The latest "House of Comments" podcast with myself and Stuart Sharpe of the Sharpe's Opinion political blog is now live. The website for the podcasts is here and the fourteenth episode which we recorded on Tuesday 9th Feb is available to download via this page here (raw mp3 file here if you prefer). You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here. Or you can listen to it right now here:

The format is to invite one or two other political bloggers each week and discuss a few of the stories that are making waves in the blogosphere.

This week we were joined by Allen Green, convenor of Westminster Skeptics who also blogs at "Jack of Kent" largely on legal issues and Bill Jones, Professor of Politics at Liverpool Hope University who blogs at Skipper.

We discussed the Simon Singh libel case appeal which is scheduled for next week and more widely about the libel reform movement, Joanne Cash and the problem of perceived parachuted in parliamentary candidates, we asked if great campaigning (and the related skills most likely to get you into parliament) is really the best grounding for ministerial office, Gordon Brown's ITV1 interview with Piers Morgan and an assessment of the Twitter "outrages" of the week.

If you are a political blogger and would like to participate in the future, please drop me an e-mail here.

What difference does political blogging really make? - Event review

I attended a "Westminister Skeptics in the Pub" event titled "What difference does political blogging really make?" last night.

It was a panel discussion with Paul Staines (Guido Fawkes), Sunny Hundal of Liberal Conspiracy, Jonathan Isaby of Conservative Home, Mick Fealty of Slugger O'Toole and journalist Nick Cohen of The Observer. It was chaired by Allen Green of the Jack of Kent blog.

Nick Cohen started by asking why bloggers do not cover things like select committees. He also made the point that he thought that bloggers would not ultimately fill the gap left behind as local (and national) media ebbs away in the coming years. A concern he expressed several times during the evening was that there is very little money in blogging and therefore it impacts on the ability of blogs to do proper investigative journalism which requires time and resources.

Jonathan Isaby was introduced as the first journalist to have left a national paper in order to devote his full time to blogging professionally (he worked on the Daily Telegraph until about a year ago). He suggested that blogs and newspapers have a symbiotic relationship with them both feeding off each other and also that blogs often bring emerging stories to the sharp attention of the public via the mainstream media. In his opinion blogging is a great democratisation of the space and it largely removes the barriers to entry that used to exist for people to have their voices heard and read in print.

Sunny Hundal spent much of his initial contribution rebutting Nick Cohen's claims about investigative blogging by listing examples of bloggers he knows such as Tim Ireland and Adam Bienkov who have regularly broken stories that have then made the national or regional media. He also said that Liberal Conspriracy's main objective is the "destroy the right".

Mick Fealty (who based on the two times I have now seen him live is a very good public speaker) suggested that the ability for all to be able to publish is a "disruptive technology". He said that lots of bloggers do try to pull things down and that often skeptical questions can stray into cynicism. In his view there are also not enough blogs discussing positive things that governments could actually do. He also thinks that the government and establishment response to blogs has so far been pretty poor and that they are hampered by an 18th Century structure trying to respond to something that is only a few years old and constantly evolving. Quite a nice line he came up with is that "blogging gives opportunities to opportunists". He then discussed how his blog was able to forensically examine the statements of Gerry Adams regarding the Liam Adams case (he described it as a qualitative analysis) of the kind that the media often don't do. He rounded off by saying that bloggers are "emotionally free" to explore stories that the mainstream media are not.

Paul Staines started by saying that there are about 3,000 people who run the UK (politicians, financial people and the media) and about half of them regularly read his blog. They are the people he is trying to reach although his primary purpose in writing it is to amuse himself. He suggested that there is very little readership for special issue blogs. He also quoted Alex Smith (editor of Labourlist) as having recently listed the different categories of blogs: influential, policy based, and interest group. He said that despite Nick Cohen's lament we really do not need parliamentary reporters any more as everyone can get Hansard on their laptop if they want to know what was said although he did concede that the specialist interpretation would not be there for that. He also pointed out that his Sunlight Centre for Open Politics had originally reported Labour MP Jim Devine to the police with the implication being that blogs and associated organisations are often ahead of the curve.

After a short break it was opened up to the floor for questions. There were lots of them and the event ultimately went on for two and a half hours.

I managed to make a small contribution myself where I explained about the impact that my work last May on MPs' expenses and the apparent link to the electoral system had had on the national debate at which I was amazed given that it was just me blogging in my pants in my bedroom. I also suggested that some of the work that e.g. Conservative Home and Left Foot Forward do on policy development are examples that address some of Mick's concerns. Finally I asked if the panel thought blogs would get more polarised and mud-slinging or whether there would more and more policy analysis. The consensus seemed to be more the former than the latter.

Here are a few of the points made by audience and panel that stuck in my mind:

• In response to a specific question Paul said that he does not read the comments on his blogs. He also said that half of the 400,000 comments annually are made by 50 people! He thinks that people who complain about comments on blogs should "f*ck off". In contrast Mick came straight in and said that he does read and value his comments.
• In response to a question about science coverage on blogs lamenting how the Climategate e-mails were covered Mick pointed out that like journalists, bloggers are generalists.
• Paul thinks that the New Statesman is read by old tramps in the corner of the library!
• Mick suggested that when the history of this period is written, there will be an analysis of how Paul has been able to deconstruct the character of Gordon Brown and strip him bare in a way that the mainstream media is just not able to do.
• In response to a question specially for Paul and Sunny: "Nadine Dorries, snog, marry, avoid", after briefly threatening to read out some of Nadine's texts to him Paul said that his relationship with Nadine was private. Sunny said "avoid".

For a political blogger like myself it was an absorbing discussion although I think it probably could have been half an hour shorter. I noticed a number of people having to rush away just before and bang on the end (me included) which was a shame as there were loads of people there who I would have liked to have talked to afterwards.

I am not sure the main question was thoroughly addressed by the panel but there were some interesting vignettes on how blogging functions from some of its leading lights.

Thanks to Allen Green for organising the event and I will certainly try and get to more Skeptics in the Pub events in the future.

How much difference does political blogging make?

...will be the subject of an interesting looking panel discussion tomorrow hosted by Westminster Skeptics tomorrow and moderated by House of Comments podcast participant Jack of Kent.

Here's the blurb:

Leading political bloggers on the impact and lack of impact of blogging

When?

Monday, February 8 at 7:30PM

Where?

The Monk Exchange
Strutton Ground
London
SW1H 0HW

Who?

Panel Discussion

What's the talk about?

Four accomplished political bloggers:-

Guido Fawkes: http://order-order.com/

Jonathan Isaby of Conservative Home: http://conservativehome.blogs.com/

Sunny Hundal of Liberal Conspiracy: http://liberalconspiracy.org/

Mick Fealty of Slugger O'Toole: http://www.sluggerotoole.com/

will join mainstream media journalist Nick Cohen http://nickcohen.net/ to discuss whether political blogging is actually making any difference to the course of political events.

Moderated by Jack of Kent: http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/

I originally thought I wasn't going to be able to go to this but I have moved a couple of things around and will hopefully be able to make it now.

See you there...

Sara Bedford and Jack of Kent on House of Comments Podcast - Episode 10

The latest "House of Comments" podcast with myself and Stuart Sharpe of the Sharpe's Opinion political blog is now live. The website for the podcasts is here and the tenth episode which we recorded across Tuesday 12th and Wednesday 13th Jan is available to download via this page here (raw mp3 file here if you prefer). You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here.

The format is to invite one or two other political bloggers each week and discuss a few of the stories that are making waves in the blogosphere.

This week we were joined by Sara Bedford from the "Always win when you're singing" blog and Allen Green, convenor of Westminster Skeptics (which I will get over at some point soon!) and who also blogs at "Jack of Kent" largely on legal issues.

We covered the Greg Stone case that I recently blogged about, the banning of Islam4UK, Britain's stop and search powers, last week's attempted coup against Gordon Brown and a computer game that attempts to engage children with the work of MPs and parliament.

If you are a political blogger and would like to participate in the future, please drop me an e-mail (address in the sidebar near the top of this blog).