While we wait for the election result (more on this anon) the new interactive Arcade Fire clip is a must see. You need to have Google’s Chrome browser – then go to http://thewildernessdowntown.com and punch in your details. Revelatory. A link to my version, including my childhood home.
Whack a pollie
Here, perhaps, is something new in negative campaigning in Australia: a game offering you the opportunity to “whack” a Labor politician, courtesy of the Liberal Party. They’ve been kind enough to make it embeddable.
Will this work, or is it more a form of therapy for the Liberal faithful? And has anyone noticed an undercurrent of violence in the campaign this time around?
UPDATE: I was reminded on Twitter of this game from Labor. Also a little disturbing in wishing harm to the body of one’s opponent?
Two clippings on the media and election campaigns
CLIPPING 1
CLIPPING 2
The transformation in the way news organizations conceptualize their role has impacted on election coverage in a significant way. The notion of an engaged citizen needing campaign information has been largely replaced by the perception of a consumer with little political appetite – a consumer likely to desert worthy but dull coverage. While in the days of limited outlets and competition such concerns were less pressing, in the increasingly competitive contemporary media environment this lack of appetite puts pressure on media organizations. News outlets need to consider how much time and space they can afford to devote to campaigns, which have limited appeal, and how they can best package them to ensure audience interest. Research tends to suggest that the perception of an audience with a limited enthusiasm for campaign coverage, combined with competitive pressures, is having potentially damaging consequences for democratic political communication systems.
Worried about falling audiences, the established news organizations have sought to change the way elections are covered to maintain audience interest. The large body of research on news coverage of first-order campaigns in [both the USA and the UK] has detected a number of significant changes. One key trend is… the changing focus of campaign coverage, which, according to various studies, has shifted from a concentration on substantive issues to portraying the campaign more as a game, in which the findings of the latest opinion polls are highlighted in an attempt to inject excitement into the proceedings…
For Patterson (1993) and Capella and Jamieson (1997), the game schema, or strategy frame, portraying politics as a a competitive process between self-interested vote-maximizers, becomes the dominant frame subsuming other interpretations of events and politicians’ behaviour.
James Stanyer, Modern Political Communications: Mediated Politics In Uncertain Terms, 1st ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2007): 115-116.
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Tagged channel nine, elections, political communications, politics, television
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A decade of Australian newspaper readership, Part 2
I
You’ll be aware of the debate that’s been happening on the performance of journalists in this campaign. What hasn’t been considered – except briefly – is one part of an explanation for changes in journalism that those who take a “systemic” view of political communications often point to. That is: in modern, deregulated media environments, where the audience is fragmenting in the face of practically limitless choice, news outlets come under intense competitive pressure, and more and more think of audiences as consumers rather than citizens in need of information.
There’s been some moralising about the behaviour of individual journos. This might seem warranted occasionally, and it’s definitely therapeutic for that part of the audience which is frustrated about the lack of attention to policy. But it only goes so far as analysis. Dragonista has observed that you need to understand what journos do in relation to the media management of campaigns, which is a very good point. The interactions between these two elements of the system is important. But there’s another “death spiral” at work besides the one Tim Dunlop told us about in his post the other week.
Mid-century, in what Daniel Hallin calls journalism’s period of “High Modernism” – which is the unspoken object of nostalgia in a lot of these critiques, I think – broadsheet and broadcast journalism were largely shielded from the worst of the commercial pressures that now afflict journalism. Broadsheets were protected by high circulation, proprietors with an interest in maintaining them as prestige news organs, and the money that came from classified adevrtising. Broadcasters offered citizen-directed news because they were often compelled to by regulation in Western democracies, but also because in a low-choice media environment, they had a “license to print money”, and offering high quality news and current affairs as a “service” rather than a “product” was something they could easily afford to do. Throughout much of the 1960s and 1970s in the US, the UK and Australia, this arrangement prevailed. (For those with an interest in pursuing this line of thought further, Daniel Hallin’s book We Keep America On Top Of The World is as good a start as you’re likely to make).
A decade of Australian newspaper readership, part 1.
This post presents some things that are a by-product of my research into “political fans” and regional public spheres. In each case I’ve wanted to find out how big the audience was for particular newspapers – whether they’re local papers or the national “capital P politics papers” favoured by the intensely politically engaged. I also wanted to discover if/how that had changed over time.
Something that gave me a more direct kick-along with this work was the discussion arising from Grog’s post about his dissastisfaction with the nature of political reporting in this Federal election campaign. A Herald Sun reporter, Ben Packham, came up with one of the range of predictable responses journos trot out when they’re criticised:
Most of the time this sort of moaning is coming from armchair Lefties who are upset their side is looking shakey and blaming journos
I always think that’s a peculiar line of reasoning – after all, a lot of Mr Packham’s paying customers will be digesting his work in their armchairs, and I would have thought their view would have counted for something. He redeemed himself by entering into discussion productively a little more later on. But over the fold I go through some reasons that there is no real room for complacency on the part of any journalist.
Nasty not new in political advertising
Contemporary campaigning deserves criticism, but personal attacks, emotive material and scare tactics in political advertising are not new in Western democracies. Anyone who believes they are is probably looking at the past with rose-coloured glasses on.
Using a typology of political advertising which is itself almost 25 years old, we can see how long political parties have been trying to push people’s buttons with TV ads. Over the fold, I go very briefly through Devlin’s (1986) typology of political ads, and Jamieson’s (1986) addition to that typology, using material from the current Australian election campaign where possible. This might be additional food for thought for those who watched the Gruen Transfer’s examination of political ads the other night.
There won’t always be an exact correspondence for all parts of the typology because the campaign has a while to run. It’s really just warming up after a fortnight – as usual the parties will save most of their cash for the final weeks. There are reports suggesting that the Liberal Party doesn’t have a lot of cash to play around with anyway – a lot of their shots will be fired as undecided voters make up their minds late in the campaign.
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Summer research progress
Just thought I’d update with a couple of the things I’ve been working on over the (all too brief) Summer.
The first is a paper I was asked to do on the basis of the Rural and Regional Broadband workshop that was held in Wollongong in early 2009. My paper is essentially a case-study of a regional public sphere – in Townsville, North Queensland, that questions whether the decline of regional news media can be reversed with the “quick fix” of broadband investment.
The second is a paper I’ve been working on for awhile with Melissa Gregg from the University of Sydney on Australian true crime television drama, Underbelly. The television stuff is a bit of an additional interest for me alongside the stuff I usually do, but with this we hope we’ve put Underbelly in the broadest possible context, and we’[ve observed the way the series draws in so much – night time economies, codes of masculinity, urban geoigraphies and changing valuations of “ordinariness”.
I’ve reproduced them as fully readable and downloadable Scribd documents over the fold. I still have a couple of things I hope to knock off before teaching starts – keep you posted.
Underbelly Paper
Just thought I’d post a copy of a paper that I’ve written with Melissa Gregg on Australian true crime drama, Underbelly. We’ve submitted it for a special edition of Continuum which arises from the “Television and the National” conference held in Melbourne last year.
Although we’ve both presented papers and written journalism on this topic before, for me at least this is my debut in formally publishing television scholarship.
We were both impressed by Underbelly, both as a television text and as something that offered an appraisal of recent changes in Australian cultural life. Although it’s not developed extensively in this paper, in future work in this area we’re likely to further develop the idea of Underbelly as a kind of underground history of the Howard years.
Anyway, our author copy is available for download as a PDF at the link below. It will go through the review process now, and is likely to change substantially if it’s accepted for publication. I’ll keep you posted as to the ifs and whens of that. Meanwhile, comments are most welcome.
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Faking on Twitter – Fake Steve Fielding
This is the third interview I’ve conducted in the course of writing a paper on the practice of faking on Twitter – this one’s with Fake Steve Fielding. (A bit of a gap this time, as it’s been very brisk on a number of fronts for me in recent weeks.)
For those outside Australia, Steve Fielding is a prominent, balance-of-power Senator in Australia’s Federal Parliament. Senator Fielding represents Family First, a small party that draws heavily on the values of the Pentecostal churches in taking its political positions. Due to the vagaries of the Senate’s voting and preference systems, Senator Fielding was elected in 2004 on the basis of about 1.6% of the primary vote in the state of Victoria. He now wields considerable power, though, due to his importance in a Senate where neither the ALP government, nor the main opposition parties have control of the numbers.
It’s fair to say that Senator Fielding has been a target for parodists, and to some he’s a figure of fun. He’s given to odd stunts, he has an idiosyncratic rhetorical style, and he has recently become a prominent voice for climate change scepticism. Recently, he had an unfortunate bout of poor spelling, which led to him confessing to a learning disorder, and much discussion in the press and the blogosphere about whether or not this should make him immune to criticism.
Certainly many, especially those on the left, have decided that Senator Fielding is hopelessly out of his depth. And that’s certainly the attitude that comes across in the work of his parodic faker, who we’ll identify as “FakeFielding” for the purposes of this interview.
Interestingly, this is the only faker I’ve talked to who’s had any trouble with Twitter – details in the interview.
Could you explain why you chose your specific target for parody? What was the attraction to that particular person, or the circumstances that led you to choose them?
I’ve always been attracted to Steve Fielding as somebody perfectly ripe for parody and ridicule. I mean, does it get any better than an accidental Senator clearly out of his depth and desperately searching for relevance, all the while hiding his true motivation (religion) behind a co-opted and misrepresented word (family)? To top it all off Fielding has a beautiful habit of frequently acting like a complete goose, sometimes on purpose. How can you not have a laugh at a grown man whose single most important contribution to Australian democracy is going to work in a bottle suit?
Parody is often said to be about exaggeration for effect. Are there particular aspects of your subject’s demeanour, public speech or personal style that you exaggerate? Is there anything in particular that you play up?
I think the only aspect of the real Fielding that I play up is his tendency to screw up his speech by mixing metaphors, mangling clauses, or putting the completely wrong words in sentences. Oh, that and his relentlessly and embarrassingly self-aggrandising ways. The rest of FakeFielding is based on the popular caricature of real Fielding: bumbling, simple, a bit stupid. Those qualities I play up mercilessly. Then there are characteristics that are unique to the Fake Steve such as his childlike manner and desires. Even though this stuff exists only in my head (I’m sure that real Steve doesn’t call his wife in tears when he can’t open the tomato sauce bottle) it’s plausible because … well, it just is.
What do you usually bounce off when you’re composing parody tweets? E.g. does the news or the public appearances of your targets form the basis of tweets, or do you simply stay in character?
Sometimes I react to what’s going on in the news, and I especially try to make FakeFielding’s tweets match any of his appearances in the media, but most of the time I just try to write something in character.
Do you have a writing process? Is there a particular craft that goes into your parody tweets, or are they reasonably spontaneous?
Very spontaneous. I generally update my personal Twitter account and then switch over to the FakeFielding account with no idea about what I’m going to write. I’ll then jump into character and see if I can think of something funny to write.
Do you publish elsewhere, either in or out of character?
I blog and write elsewhere out of character.
How do you feel about Twitter as a platform for parody? Does the character limit impose a useful discipline? Does the interactive/networked platform make a difference?
I reckon Twitter’s great for parody. Being able to mimic a person’s stream-of-consciousness train of thought or report on their mundane daily routine opens up a goldmine of parody potential. The character limit only reinforces the “thought bubble” nature of the tweets and increases the chance you’ll tweet something that’s short, sharp and funny. The only drawback to the interactive nature of Twitter is that if you tweet a response to one particular person the exchange is invisible to other followers.
Have you had any interactions – negative or positive – with the target of your parody? Has Twitter ever been in contact to try to rein you in in any way?
I’ll let an email I received from Twitter in March ’09 do the talking:
Hi
We’ve received a complaint from a fellow Twitterer. It has come to our attention that your Twitter account:
http://twitter.com/senatorfielding
is in violation of our basic Terms of Service, specifically article 4 which mentions impersonation:
4. You must not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Twitter users.
In this case “impersonation” is the issue. Impersonation is against our terms of service unless it’s parody. The standard for defining parody is, “Would a reasonable person be aware that it’s a joke.”
To settle this issue we’ve removed the profile image and changed the user name to “fakefielding” in the full name and username fields in order to eliminate confusion.
Has your parody practice ever had any effects – negative or positive – on your life beyond Twitter?
No. Real life and the Internet coming together is like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters.
What is your sense of your audience? Do you feel that they’re politically engaged; does everybody get it; are you broadly interactive with your audience; or is your audience too large to generalise?
From the replies I’ve received to my tweets I sense that my followers are generally politically active. I guess they’d need to be to have an interest in following a fake politician.
Do you feel that what you’re doing has politica; significance? Is targeting this person in line with your broader politica; outlook? Are you having an effect in terms of your own political beliefs/commitments? Or is it done mainly for laughs?
Laughs. Full stop. My parody of Steve Fielding is in line with my own contempt for his politics, but I’m not silly enough to expect that FakeFielding will have any political impact outside pandering to people who probably share my contempt.
Will you be maintaining your efforts into the future? Is it time-consuming? Does it take away from other things – other writing projects or your work or home life?
I’d love to continue with FakeFielding, especially through his campaign for re-election in 2010. I sincerely hope, for the health of Australia’s democracy, that the FakeFielding account will become redundant in 2011.
Speaking in the broad terms, what’s your take on Twitter as a platform for parody AND/OR political debate? Is it emerging as a space where people can “do” politics and humour? Any favourite exponents?
I’m a big fan of Twitter. I think it’s a great tool for networking, exchanging ideas, and having a laugh. I’m not sure that it is the best forum for in-depth political debate, but I’d love to be proven wrong on that. The way that people use Twitter is constantly evolving so who knows the role it might play in the heat of next year’s election campaign. At the moment I think the most likely situation will involve people having one conversation on Twitter that somewhat overlaps with a more detailed conversation on blogs and other websites.
My favourites on the fake Twittersphere are undoubtedly @andrewbolt and @Penny_Wong.
Faking on Twitter – Fake Andrew Bolt
This is the second of my faking interviews for my ongoing project working towards a paper on faking and parody on Twitter.
This one is with Fake Andrew Bolt. (I hasten to add that this was actually conducted before my recent little run-in with the real Andrew Bolt.) Bolt, for those outside Australia, is a right wing columnist for the Melbourne News Ltd tabloid, the Herald Sun.
In Australia, he’s come to prominence by pushing trenchant, ultra-conservative views on social, political and environmental issues in his columns, and on his blog. Favoured topics include human-induced climate change (Bolt says it’s a myth), “radical Islam”, multiculturalism (which he considers a failure), the Labor government (of whom he takes an extremely dim view), and indigenous affairs (he’s argued that the history of Australia’s indigenous Stolen Generations is also a myth).
As I’ve written elsewhere, Bolt’s blog, in particular, is characterised by an extremely combative style, and his commenters are also part of the package for anyone that he trains his sights on. Academics, naturally, are favoured targets.
There’s a lot to say about parodying prominent journos – I’ll just offer a few brief thoughts. Parody accounts for opinion journalists embody a recognition that they are, or have been significant political actors. (Certainly, during the years of the previous Howard government, Mr Bolt appeared to have a degree of influence in Canberra beyond that we’d normally associate with a commentator or analyst.) With Bolt, it’s also a sign of how large he looms in online political discussion.
But the parody here has an edge that’s perhaps a little sharper than last week’s example. This faker is suggesting that ultimately Bolt’s positions are irrational. He also critiques Bolt’s position by showing up how predictable, even formulaic, Bolt’s schtick is. The occasional, imagined vignette of life at the Herald and Weekly Times, or his home life are simply ridicule, and we might ask questions about whether that’s effective or not as political parody. Having said all of that, it’s interesting that the faker in this case considers that his parody has little or no political significance.
Anyway, I’ll analyse it more in the paper, and leave you to draw your own conclusions, for now, from the interview with Andrew Bolt’s creator, who gives his name as John Winston. Once again, comments are welcome.
Q Could you explain why you chose your specific target for parody? What was the attraction to that particular person, or the circumstances that led you to choose them?
A I chose Andrew Bolt because I felt he was ripe for parody, essentially. Anyone who can suggest that the world’s scientific bodies have secretly come together to organise a global warming con to destroy capitalism is asking for it – they’re on Planet Delusion. As is anyone who actually socialises with Terry McCrann.
Q Parody is often said to be about exaggeration for effect. Are there particular aspects of your subject’s demeanour, public speech or personal style that you exaggerate? Is there anything in particular that you play up?
A I just exaggerate his posts themselves. One of Bolt’s tricks is to hint at something and let the commenters do the adding for him so he can’t be accused of saying it himself, for instance, this post in which he hints that people at a global warming rally are nazis. Of course, he won’t come right out and say it. That would be silly. @AndrewBolt says it though.
Q What do you usually bounce off when you’re composing parody tweets? E.g. does the news or the public appearances of your targets form the basis of tweets, or do you simply stay in character?
A Probably the easiest way of writing a tweet is to read Andrew Bolt’s blog, as much as I loathe it, and exaggerate his response to a story. Right now the lead post likens the American Psychological Association to the Soviet Union. See what I have to work with? A self-replenishing comedy goldmine. Free.
Other times I will continue with the Herald Weekly Times narrative I have created, which depicts Andrew Bolt as the Adrian Mole of the office. I might also take a news story and tweet what I imagine to be his view of things. More often than not, when I check his blog I find I am right.
Q Do you have a writing process? Is there a particular craft that goes into your parody tweets, or are they reasonably spontaneous?
A I don’t sit at a blank screen thinking “Shit, what will I tweet today?” Because the formula is pretty self-generating I don’t find ideas difficult to come across.
Q Do you publish elsewhere, either in or out of character?
A Nope.
Q How do you feel about Twitter as a platform for parody? Does the character limit impose a useful discipline? Does the interactive/networked platform make a difference?
A @AndrewBolt began as a challenge. Although I wasn’t sold on Twitter for myself for a while, I did notice that the 140 character limit was perfect for a one-liner. I figured if I delivered one every half hour I should be able to deliver myself a sizeable following reasonably quickly. Any trouble I do have with the character limits can usually be solved with some tight editing.
Interaction is an interesting thing. It’s great to be able to get instant responses to your tweets, but at the same time I’m often hounded by the criminally unfunny desperate for me to re-tweet them and deliver them to a wider audience.
Q Have you had any interactions – negative or positive – with the target of your parody? Has Twitter ever been in contact to try to rein you in in any way?
A One of the first accounts to follow me was the locked account @andrew_bolt. Take that how you will. I’ve received no response from Bolt, nor was I expecting one. Twitter have left me alone as well. It’s surprising, since for a long time there was no indication on my profile that I’m fake. No doubt he knows that calling attention to it is worse than ignoring it.
Q Has your parody practice ever had any effects – negative or positive – on your life beyond Twitter?
A This hasn’t bothered my actual life for a second.
Q What is your sense of your audience? Do you feel that they’re politically engaged; does everybody get it; are you broadly interactive with your audience; or is your audience too large to generalise?
A My audience breaks down into a few groups:
Commies – The broad left who despise Andrew Bolt and enjoy taking the piss out of him.
Journalists – a large number of journalists who despise Andrew Bolt and enjoy taking the piss out of him.
Liberals – A small number of Liberal voters who who despise Andrew Bolt and enjoy taking the piss out of him.
More Liberals – A surprisingly large gorup of Liberals who don’t even know I’m fake, and constantly tweet at me “great call Andrew”, no matter what I say.
Q Do you feel that what you’re doing has political significance? Is targeting this person in line with your broader political outlook? Are you having an effect in terms of your own political beliefs/commitments? Or is it done mainly for laughs?
A Sorry to disappoint you but it’s done for laughs. Political significance is zero.
Q Will you be maintaining your efforts into the future? Is it time-consuming? Does it take away from other things – other writing projects or your work or home life?
A @AndrewBolt will continue far into the future. As above, it doesn’t impede on my real life at all so time constraints aren’t a worry.
Q Speaking in the broad terms, what’s your take on Twitter as a platform for parody AND/OR political debate? Is it emerging as a space where people can “do” politics and humour? Any favourite exponents?
A Twitter isn’t really designed for political debate, which requires depth beyond 140 characters. It’s much a better tool for parody, and a piss-taking tweet can do more damage than a 2000 word blog post anyway.