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Experiments / Media Sources / Mobile / Social Media — Comments Off on A new trick for old dogs and reporters using Twitter
03
Jun 13

A new trick for old dogs and reporters using Twitter

Or at least it was new to me when I heard this yesterday. News reporters in “legacy” media who are besieged by predictions that technology is eating their livelihood can be forgiven for being sceptical about techno-hype which lauds new gizmos for being ingenious without actually asking if they do anything useful.

Here’s a smartphone app that might help solve a problem which has been faced by anyone who has ever been parachuted into an unfamiliar area on a breaking story. How do you find people with knowledgeable opinions on the event/issue/disaster, and find them quickly?

I heard about this at the World Editors Forum from Justin Arenstein, who instanced the use of layar.com to find quotable people with the example of reporters arriving in a small South African town to report the failure of the local authority to keep the public water supply flowing. Layar, a Dutch startup which is in the “augmented reality” (or AR) business, overlays extra information on what your smartphone sees and is often used by travellers to discover more information about, say, a building. The bit that caught my attention is called “Tweeps Around”.

With the app turned on, you can walk down the street or scan a room and your phone will find people who have been tweeting. It will, Justin said, locate the phone of the tweeter within a distance of three or four feet – easily accurate enough for a knock on the door and request for an opinion. The sending of a Twitter message in the first place, a public act, eliminates any concern that they’re going to object to at least being asked to expand on their tweet.

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South Asia / Wit — Comments Off on The ever-changing styles of protest and the fashions of 2013
03
Jun 13

The ever-changing styles of protest and the fashions of 2013

I’m in Thailand (at the World Editors Forum) and the news is full of protest all over the world: Bangkok itself, Turkey and in the unpredictable places where the ladies of Femen pop up and take off their clothes.

Protest needs innovation as much as any department of life and perhaps it needs it more than most because protest goes nowhere if it isn’t noticed and doesn’t spread. Innovation is deviation and new protesters must find new and original ways to imprint a message instantly in as many minds as possible, preferably without words. It must be an image delivered instantaneously because protest can be snuffed out fast and because there is anyway so much else competing for peoples’ attention. Compelling visual wit is harder than it appears.

The examples above represent a remarkable cluster of originality in this specialised global competition. In Turkey, they wave beercans to protest against new restrictions on alcolhol. Much better, a hundred or so people held a kiss protest at a subway station in Ankara to make fun of the increase in rules on public behaviour.

guyfawkesHere in Thailand, demonstrators have reached back into an example distant in both geography and time. Political movements in Thailand have long been signalled by colour (yellow vs red mostly) but yesterday, the anti-goverment crowd wore Guy Fawkes masks and the (equally peaceful) counter-demo wore red masks. Needless to say, young Thai activists have not been reading books about 17th century British history. They picked up the cue from the 2005 film V for Vendetta in which people march on the parliament in London wearing the masks. (The use of these masks isn’t confined to Thailand and didn’t start here – examples here – but looks especially odd so far from its origins).

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China — Comments Off on Liu Xiaobo: small things can matter
10
Oct 10

Liu Xiaobo: small things can matter

Two sidelights on the Nobel Peace Prize given to the imprisoned Chinese rights activist Liu Xiaobo. There has been plenty of commentary, both understandable and doubtless right, that awarding a Nobel to a jailed dissident in China will make not the slightest difference to the attitude taken towards human rights by the Chinese communist party.

Perhaps not. But there are a couple of things to note about Liu Xiaobao’s case which give tiny fragments of hope that this prize will focus people across the world and maybe even in China on what is wrong. The Nobel committee have selected Liu not because he has suffered more than any other dissident but because he zeroed in on why rights don’t actually exist in China while they are theoretically written into the country’s constitution.

What Liu always seized on was the inability of a Chinese citizen to use the law against the government if the government has, or may have, broken the law. Rights written about in a constitution are worthless unless enforceable by law which also covers the authorities. This is succinctly summarised in this “explainer” from Slate. It may be a small and, for now, apparently insignificant point but this will one day be the hinge of political reform in China. One day.

Secondly, the Nobel promotes a name and an idea like almost nothing else and there is one thing that many people outside China, without resources but with the qualifications, can do to help freedom of expression inside China. I would not know this if I had not happened to announce an award to two Chinese journalists, Shi Tao and Li Changqing, a few years ago. Neither man was at liberty to collect their award; both were in jail. (The award was the “Golden Pen of Freedom” given annually by the World Editors Forum and World Association of Newspapers; citations are here and here).

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