Zadie Smith, who is an extraordinary novelist and critic, has some fascinating things to say about Obama in this lecture given last month at the New York Public Libray. “Speaking in tongues” is an entertaining speech and insightful on identity in today’s world.
READ MOREAn excellent lecture on the Internet and democracy
This was a lecture given by Stephen Coleman, professor of political communication at Leeds University at the RSA in London at the end of last year. It includes discussion of the Obama campaign and a very good Q&A session. Here is the blurb from the Princeton site: Coleman believes there is a disconnect between government and the [...]
READ MOREFacebook and the US presidential election
Some impressive statistics are emerging around the impact of the Presidential election on Facebook usage: Preliminary data shows an increase of more than 20 percent in activity on the site on election day vs. last Tuesday (measured by page views). More than 5.44 million people clicked the “I voted” button on Facebook to tell their [...]
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George Negus and the ‘boy’ comment
Some people have got a bit excited about Negus referring to President-elect Obama as ‘boy’ on last week’s Dateline election show. According to the transcript, it’s not even clear that Negus is referring to Obama singular or his administration more broadly. But, anyway, so what? It’s clear that Negus is using it in an Australia [...]
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Kristol, Palin and the NYT: a tale of intrigue and punditry
Conservative commentator (Weekly Standard, Fox and the New York Times) William Kristol is said to have been Gov. Palin’s ‘patron’ and is now in the centre of a post-election losers’ firestorm which could see him dumped (there’s even an online poll about who should replace him) from his prestigious NYT columnist role. It raises questions about [...]
READ MOREHuffington: Obama would not have won without Internet
If 1960 was the year television came of age as a political force then maybe the same is also true of the Internet in 2008: Huffington says flat out that if it wasn’t for the Internet, Obama would not be president. Trippi notes that Obama’s YouTube spots gathered an aggregate of 14.5 million viewing hours. [...]
READ MORESome interesting Saturday links
Branding 101: How to Promote Your Blog Like the Big Guys Do Social reader Twitter Goes Mainstream: A lot more people — and businesses — are finding new ways to tweet Perhaps iPods Aren’t Replacing Radio Nearly One-Third of Web Users Watch TV While Surfing Google at 10: Searching Its Own Soul Palin denounces her [...]
READ MOREPhillip Adams baulks at media democratisation
Phiilip Adams has an opinion piece this morning which is one of those classic big media lamentations about the passing of their control of the audience. This one has a twist because Adams, who made a fortune from advertising, is an acknowledged leading left-wing intellectual in Australia and a long-time proponent of more media diversity. [...]
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