In de Nederlandse media is een toenemende interesse in de praktijken van spindoctors. De Wereld Draait Door is bijvoorbeeld continue opzoek naar de spins en sprak meerdere malen met Jack de Vries, die door de schrijvers gezien wordt (werd) als dé spindokter van Nederland. Het boek “U draait en bent niet eerlijk” (vernoemd naar de beruchte uitspraak van Balkenende tegen Bos in een belangrijk radio-debat aan het begin van de 2006 campagne) bespreekt wat het ambt van een spindoctor exact inhoud. Maarten Molenbeek en Chris Aalberts interviewden politici, journalisten, woordvoerders en persoonlijk assistenten van politici, en deden literatuuronderzoek naar de Amerikaanse en Engelse situatie (2010).
For upcoming months I will use this blog to share my thoughts about my MA thesis about Transmedia Storytelling and the upcoming Dutch Parliamentary Elections. I’ll probably split my blog into a Dutch and English version in the upcoming weeks.
Anyway, I found this cool Alice in Wonderland iPad app that I just wanted to share with you:
I’ve written a paper about how framing shapes the health care reform debate in the U.S. I think it shows the tip of the iceberg, from what is possible with ‘Digital Methods’, a very interesting approach, that uses software to research society. It also includes some ‘old-fashion’ opinion polls from Harris, with quiet disturbing results. Did know for example that 37 percent of adult Americans believe that “the proposed reforms would create panels that would decide who should live and who should die”?
Abstract After a widely applauded presidential campaign, enabled by grassroots and rhetoric, Barack Obama finds himself in a less comfortable position in the ongoing debate around the American health care reform. Linguist George Lakoff (2009a) argues that the decline of support on this issue is caused by an elaborate framing campaign of conservatives, and the lack of framing by the Obama administration. With the help of special software, I examined three spheres, the Web sphere, blogosphere and newssphere. This (limited) research mainly confirms Lakoff’s theories, but also show that Obama’s counter-frame is becoming more effective, which arguably led to mystification and misinformation (Castells, 2009).
You can find my paper here, or click on the read more button (I encountered some trouble with the layout in wordpress, there seems to be a big difference in some browsers) Read the rest of this entry »
This is a paper proposal, suggestions will be really appreciated!
Introduction
According to Henry Jenkins we’re moving to a participatory culture, and there is an intersection between popular culture and politics (Jenkins 2009a). Despite of the widely spread criticism, both politics and the entertainment industry try to use this participatory culture. We’ve seen the first results in the presidential Obama campaign (and later on in the fight around health care). Jenkins and Duncombe think because of the engaging factor it is even a solution to Putnam’s Bowling Alone. Like Putnam acknowledged in his newer work Better Together, social media seems to engage.
A lot of journalists discussing Twitter seem to fall back on an old habit, criticize. I guess it is a journalistic-reflex, maybe even a purpose to criticize. But in case of Twitter it is regrettable the discussion didn’t moved forward. The role of journalism might start with a critical look, but it definitely shouldn’t end in criticism only.
It might be just a ‘journalistic echo’, but most criticized is the lack of meaning and purpose of Twitter. “I don’t care what people are doing right now”. In my opinion this is a high culture reflex and can placed next to ‘stupid morons watch garbage on their televisions.’ First it is a reflex because it seems to be smart to criticize. Secondly, most journalists didn’t even discovered Twitter well enough to tell what Twitter is, not to speak about thorough research at all. Read the rest of this entry »
The Dutch organization Buma Stemra, monopolist in collecting copyright-remuneration for artists, announced a new price-plan today. In it’s brochure Buma Stemra proudly explains the model which starts at the 1st of January 2010. Although the brochure isn’t really clear, it comes to this: embedding 6 videos will cost a blogger 130 euro a year, 30 video’s will cost 650 euro. For company’s (with sales above 6500 euro a year) the price will be even higher.
It’s totally vague how Buma will use this price-plan in practice. Bloggers with embedded video’s will receive a warning-letter from Buma first. Buma told the VPRO small blogs are not their first priority. (So you don’t have to delete your videos immediately ). But what Buma treats as small remains unclear. I’m also not totally sure about what will be seen as a Dutch weblog. Hosting your website in another country seem to be not enough. It is also questionable how Buma will charge big websites like Hyves, and Blogger.nl (and what about Blogspot?). If these organizations will be charged for all the embedded video’s uses post, they will probably delete or prohibit this functionality at all. The technical aspect seem to be a problem too. To search for embedded video’s in source-code is not hard, but how do you determine what music is used (and what about remixed content?). Read the rest of this entry »
In 2005 social finance arises from the web 2.0-era. Participatory web projects offer a broad spectrum of opportunities. Banking 2.0 is “a way for people to lend and borrow directly with each other online[…]”. You can own a small piece of a footballclub at myfootballclub.co.uk. “You are invited to join members from over 80 countries who own Ebbsfleet United and vote on all key decisions from team selection to financial budgets. Membership costs £35 annually.”. Obama raised an enormous amount of money online and at Sellaband.com you can invest in a band.
For me, the most interesting form of crowdfunding is the microloan-service of Kiva.org. The website of Kiva.org is filled with entrepreneurs from all around the globe (especially the poorest country’s) in need of a small amount of money to start a business. For instance I can loan 25 dollars to a fishing group in Uganda. Together with another 55 other loaners there is 4000 dollars raised, which is enough to buy nets, boats and rods. The fisherman’s will pay our loan back in 5 terms. The last term ends at 1 March 2010. In March I can decide to re-lend or withdraw the funds. Read the rest of this entry »
While I was creating and editing the “Hijab Tax”-entry, I noticed that Wikipedia is still ‘just’ an encyclopedia, in spite of its mission;
As an encyclopedia building project, Wikipedia seeks to create a summary of all human knowledge: all of topics covered by a conventional print encyclopedia plus any other “notable” (therefore verifiable by published sources) topics, which are permitted by unlimited disk space.
The hijab tax is a proposal for a new tax of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders. The hijab is, according to Geert Wilders, a contamination of landscape and anti-woman. That’s why he proposes a tax of 1000 euro’s a year for wearing a hijab. The hijab tax seems to be political framing, and not serious at all. (My guess is that Wilders aimed to get people talking about the word “kopvoddentax”, which is a humiliating term.) On the other hand, I couldn’t answer the question ‘why should it be excluded from the summary of all human knowledge?’ For that reason I decided to create a Kopvoddentax entry in Dutch and a Hijab Tax-entry in de English version of Wikipedia. Read the rest of this entry »
The brand new (31th of August 2009 according to Amazon) book “Political Campaigning on the Web” is a bundle of essays around the relatively new field of political campaigning in new media in its broadest sense. The book contains a broad spectrum of different sides of campaigning. Sigrid Baringhorst wrote the first chapter, which places the field of political campaigning on the web in its historical context. From there the book takes you through a bunch of interesting topics and analyses, from political party campaigns to web activism and petitions. Those articles end in a conclusion with interesting proposals for further research. Read the rest of this entry »
Een essay over manifesto’s, fandom en de vermeende rol van nieuwe media bij politiek.
Inleiding
Rita Verdonk is heilig overtuigd van de kracht van nieuwe media. Haar mediabureau Mangrove zette een volledige website op poten; www.Trotsopnederland.com. Verdonk heeft een account op Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Hyves en zelfs een eigen wiki. ‘Net als Obama, maar wij waren eerder’, vertelde ze trots aan Matthijs van Nieuwkerk in De Wereld Draait Door. ‘Bij Obama was iedereen lyrisch, maar over ons heb ik nog weinig gehoord, hoe kan dat’, jammerde Verdonk vervolgens. Deze vraag zal ze Mangrove ongetwijfeld ook hebben voorgelegd, die haar vermoedelijk het (echte) antwoord schuldig moesten blijven.
Nieuwe media evangelisten, de zogehete digerati, buitelen op congressen, in boeken en weblogs over elkaar heen om utopische oplossingen te bieden in een veranderende wereld. De digerati wijzen er smalend op dat “oude media” het steeds moeilijker hebben, en dat wie de nieuwe media niet begrijpt kopje onder gaat. Utopische business manifesto’s als We Think, The Long Tail en Wikinomics vertellen hun lezers over een nieuwe wereld, die een nieuwe aanpak vergt (Van Dijck & Nieborg 2009). Deze aanpak wordt gepresenteerd als een formule tot succes, maar is dat lang niet altijd. In dit essay betoog ik dat er geen gestandaardiseerde succesformule is, en dat randzaken als fandom, positivisme en doelgroep een belangrijke rol spelen.
In de Nederlandse media is een toenemende interesse in de praktijken van spindoctors. De Wereld Draait Door is bijvoorbeeld continue opzoek naar de spins en sprak meerdere malen met Jack de Vries, die door de schrijvers gezien wordt (werd) als dé spindokter van Nederland. Het boek “U draait en bent niet eerlijk” (vernoemd naar de beruchte uitspraak van Balkenende tegen Bos in een belangrijk radio-debat aan het begin van de 2006 campagne) bespreekt wat het ambt van een spindoctor exact inhoud. Maarten Molenbeek en Chris Aalberts interviewden politici, journalisten, woordvoerders en persoonlijk assistenten van politici, en deden literatuuronderzoek naar de Amerikaanse en Engelse situatie (2010).
A lot of journalists discussing 
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). But what Buma treats as small remains unclear. I’m also not totally sure about what will be seen as a Dutch weblog. Hosting your website in another country seem to be not enough. It is also questionable how Buma will charge big websites like 
The brand new (31th of August 2009 according to Amazon) book 
