Image via Wikipedia

Does UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt believe the Murdoch buy-out of BSkyB is “against the public interest in media plurality”?

Will the competitions commission review do anything more than delay the merger?

This would be more of a cliffhanger if we didn’t already know that Murdoch has been spooning with the Tories since the run-up to the last general election.

On the one hand, Murdoch is feeding billions of much needed capital into the media industry and as a former journalist myself, I have to accept that a monopolised media industry is better than no media industry at all.

Besides, according to the latest Ofcom report on media consumption, the majority of the UK population gets its news from the BBC (37%), a run, but not controlled source of news, which in theory regulates media objectivity.

But I can’t shake the notion that the 22% hold Murdoch will have if the merger goes ahead does go against the public interest. Murdoch is not backwards in coming forwards with political allegiance or agenda; a rose by any other name would be called propaganda.

Many fingers have pointed at the internet for contributing towards the media industry’s downfall, but if you look to The Changing Business of Journalism and its Implications for Democracy by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, a reliance on advertising has done more damage to newspapers than the distribution of news online ever did.

If anything, the internet is the one thing that can keep journalism in the public interest.

There will always be critically minded people who trawl the internet for several perspectives on a single news story. As long as those people are socially active and share what they find across micro blogging platforms like Twitter; there will always be a constant stream of media plurality.

The Murdoch merger may be inevitable, but there’s no reason why we can’t put the public interests of journalism into the hands of the public.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I watched the Trip on BBC2 last night.  I laughed, I had a little think, I may have even drooled a bit over the Hipping Hall seven course tasting menu that formed the backdrop for Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s inspired back and forth comedy master class. Personally, I don’t think there is anything to compare to it on British television at the moment and in terms of international competition only HBO, with its outstanding output, can eclipse it. It’s wry, engaging and knowing, but at the same time touching and never afraid to be cruel or outrageous. The writing provides quiet contemplative pauses that add to the tension and the comedy, but in no way feel forced.

The Trip, putting the rest of TV to shame

This is in stark contrast to the reality TV phenomenon, typified by the audioshite that is X Factor and the celebopreening that is I’m a Celebrity Get Me out of Here. Here pauses are forced to stir fans up into even greater pre result frenzy and to provide more time for people to ring in and ‘vote.’ Now this short blog post isn’t going to be a rabid diatribe on the rise and rise of reality TV. What would be the point; it’s been written before and wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference.

But, what relevance has this for a social media agency and its clients? Why am I qualified to even offer an opinion? I thought it behoved me to analyse the way that the public were feeding back on the differing TV institutions utilising some of the free analytics tools out there. After all my profession and I were referred to as ‘blood sucking social media gurus’ by a certain Telegraph journalist this morning, maybe I can give something back.

In terms of the sheer number of Twitter conversations, #xfactor has dwarfed #imaceleb and #thetrip no great surprise there (according to Google this month there have been 1,110,000 #xfactor tweets, 361,000 for #imaceleb and just 50,400 for #thetrip.)

My faith in humanity is somewhat restored when it comes to sentiment for the 3 shows. According to the guys at Tweetfeel the Trip’s Twitter conversations are nigh on 100% positive (startling when you consider the strong language in the episode aired last night and the normally vocal nature of the BBC’s critics.) Meanwhile the reality shows’ ‘fans’ seem to be divided into lovers and haters. Is reality TV a marmite thing? Tweetfeel pumped out results of 54% negativity in tweets for #imaceleb and an impressive 69% negativity for #xfactor. Are the trolls circling reality TV, the contestants, organisers or is it just the very nature of the format that it generates the hate?

Anyway, I can but urge you to watch the Trip, in fact sack off the rest of the working day and watch all four episodes again and again and again:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00w78p8/The_Trip_Hipping_Hall/

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

In a recent online poll by Faxo.com, the public was asked where they would most like popstar, Justin Bieber, to tour. The public said North Korea. When ‘the public’ cast its vote on July 7th, it was, however, predominantly made up of fans of the online bulletin board, 4chan.org, which encouraged visitors to hijack the poll and manipulate the results.

Given that Faxo.com is currently running a new poll entitled ‘‘Justin Bieber Loves Animals’’ it looks as though the site’s intentions have always been sardonic rather than sales-driven. And given that 4chan.com members delighted at the thought of sending Bieber to the ‘axis of evil’ this again looks unlikely to be a PR ploy.

This is the latest in a series of online attacks against Bieber – BBC News online reports that 4chan.com also recently encouraged visitors to search for ‘Justin Bieber Syphilis’, sending the search term up to the top of the ranks of Google Trend’s Hot Searches list. Bieber is also dead, apparently. Read the full article here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10506482.

Bieber’s record label, Universal, has denied any involvement in the poll, calling the whole thing a hoax. Even the most guerrilla of campaigns will avoid associating clients with animals, STD’s, communism and/or death, so by process of elimination we can assume the conversations were not sparked by the Bieber marketing camp, but by a cult of Bieber-haters ready to topple the pop prince. The joke, however, is on them, because all they’ve done is give him a leg up.

Team Bieber was quick to react to the attacks, reinforcing his social media presence and ensuring he had a steady stream of tweets going out to fans both responding to the attacks – “let’s take some time to answer some crazy rumors….these are always fun.…” – and thanking them for their support – “I like answering all your questions. Thank u all for caring. Just want u to know I care to and I’m just a normal kid [sic.]”

By July 16th Mashable reported that Justin Bieber was battling with Lada Gaga for the YouTube top spot – his video for “Baby ft. Ludacris” having captured 245,746,720 views. By maintaining a strong microblogging presence and openly responding to the attacks, Bieber has successfully managed to convert what could be career-damaging sentiment into one of the most viewed online videos of all time.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites