Justin Trudeau...Too Smart For Twitter?

So, Justin raised 25 large at that unplugged event last night.  He also fielded questions.  One was:

Q. Which country’s government does the “future prime minister” most admire?

A.  You know,  there’s a level of of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say ‘we need to go green  fastest…we need to start investing in solar.’ I mean there is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harper must dream about of having a dictatorship that he can do everything he wanted that I find quite interesting.

But if I were to reach out and say which…which kind of administration I most admire, I think there’s something to be said right here in Canada for the way our territories are run. Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and the Yukon are done without political parties around consensus. And are much more like a municipal government. And I think there’s a lot to be said for people pulling together to try and solve issues rather than to score points off of each other. And I think we need a little more of that.

A fairly coherent argument can be pulled from this 1) China, being a dictatorship, can move quickly to tackle issues of national importance, like growing their economy or becoming a leader in green tech.  And there is nothing remotely controversial about such views.  People on both left and right have expressed admiration for this aspect of the Chinese state.  But then 2) While the ability to move the state along faster to good ends would be "quite interesting", someone like Stephen Harper dreams of having such powers, and would only use them for Evil.  Again, nothing controversial.  While the temptation is there, checks and balances are needed, etc. etc.

 That's the first paragraph.  Paragraph two is lovey talk about building consensus, which according to Justin is what we really should have more of,  and yada yada.  I find it uninteresting, so I'll ignore it.

In any case, paragraph one is what has sent the twittersphere into a rage this morning.  The eye rolling is particular unfortunate in the case of  Dan Gardner:

@acourtroom Yes, I get. But this is the political equivalent of taping a “kick me” sign to yourself. It’s unbelievably dumb.
— Dan Gardner (@dgardner) November 8, 2013

Because Dan is constantly lamenting the state of political discourse in the country, and  then when he sees something that strives to be a little better than moronic, he shits.

Because after all, the argument we're talking about is pitched at about the couple-beers-in-a-college-pub after-poli sci-class level.  I got drunk and argued the limits of democracy thing many times, back in the day..  But apparently, even that kind of argument is too hard for twitter.  Again, Dan's response is representative in its weird two-sideness.  On the one hand, he says Justin is being dumb because he is allowing the dumb people who watch Sun News to cry commie!, on the other hand, its dumb because its positively Friedmanesque:

@univrsle @acoyne @davidakin @JustinTrudeau It’s straight Thomas Friedman. He’s written that column a bunch of times.
— Dan Gardner (@dgardner) November 8, 2013

...and Dan's disagrees (strongly!!) with Friedman on such issues.

But wait!  A Justin Trudeau answer at a ladies night event makes Friedman momentarily relevant to Canadian politics. Just the kind of thing Deep Dan has been crying for from politicians.  And then he sees it, and retreats into the kind of  glib one-liners that Twitter encourages.  (It apparently makes people dumb the same way powerpoint does.)  Not that he's the only offender.  @acoyne has spent the morning cracking what I'm sure he thinks are very clever jokes rather than actually talk some policy talk when given the opportunity by a Canadian politician.  But, as far as I'm concerned, the punditocracy cannot ask for intelligence from their politicians if they are only going to turn around and, en masse, play silly bugger when they hear some.

Ezra, Hate Speech, And Sun TV: Shit That May Or May Not Be Going Down

From Dr. Roy:

I was on Sun Tv with Jerry Agar ( replacing Ezra ).

From that horrid social networking device know as Twitter:

Not sure of the provenance of this last item, as George Smiley might say, but I will note that @sunnewsmedia stills gets you results via google but seems gone from the twitterverse.

This of course is a follow-up to that.

Sue-Ann Levy, In Flames

Man, social media is just poison.  Twitter destroys careers the way Facebook breaks up marriages. I'm almost feeling sorry for Sue-Ann Levy at this point. I'm just barely managing to avoid it. 

PS.  Go here to watch the crash&burn unfold in real time.

Twitterverse Tilts Left

 From a Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism study on how selected U.S. MSM print and media outlets use twitter:

Other interesting bits from the study; the kind of thing our own beloved Kady O'Malley does pretty frequently--crowd sourcing her news gathering--seems to be quite rare in U.S. journalism:

Of the 13 most heavily followed individuals at the news organizations in the study, the average number of tweets in a week was 32, or five times per day.

When these journalists did tweet, very little of that material was information-gathering in nature. Eight of the 13 reporters examined never asked followers to help provide information. On average, only 3% of individual reporters' tweets did so.


Other findings, for instance that a outlet's main twitter feed acts mostly to drive traffic to the outlet website, are less surprising.

Here's another neat study the Center just over a year ago on blogging and the MSM.

PS. Nowhere in the study does it say the twitterverse skews left; that's just my interpretation of a couple of their graphs.

Why I Don't Use Social Media (Much)

Creepy is a software application that, when you type in someone's twitter username, downloads and gathers every tweet they've ever posted, every photo they've ever uploaded,  extracts the location data from them (apparently this is recorded  when you take a shot on a cell-phone), and displays the results in map form as above.   So if they post alot from their house, or place of employment, you can find out where they live or work.

I've actually downloaded the software and lets just say its a bit buggy, not recognizing obvious usernames and encountering all sorts of errors when trying to down-load pictures.  All the X girlfriends who dumped me have nothing to worry about. Nevertheless one twitter user, chosen at random from politwitter (and I'll leave their name out of it), gave the result above.  A rather useful tool, under some circumstances.  Also rather sinister.

A Quick Note On The Death Of Journalism, Or: Would You Like Fries With That, Sir?

These lines from the Toronto Sun Family Blog caught my eyes the other day:

The 21st century hasn't been easy on Canadian freelancers, with mass layoffs flooding the market and citizen "journalists" willing to work for free

I am not one of those people who feel that blogging, or "tweeting", or all such similar nonsense has altered the practice of journalism that terribly much. The great changes--basically: newspapers turning into a combination of website and video-clip repository and firing everyone connected with the creation of the old paper product--would have happened with or without Blogger or Wordpress. However, one definite effect is the one noted above: blogging has rapidly decreased the monetary value associated with word-smithing.

Take The National Post, for example, which makes extensive use of unpaid bloggers to maintain fresh content on its website. Baglow (Dr. Dawg) always writes eloquently; Beardsley is a solid Tory who nevertheless refuses to partake of the koolaid; and, seriously, is MacNair any crappier than Gunter or Kay? Certainly, NP readers consume their words as they consume the words of the paid pros, and can't seem to tell the difference.

An economist friend said it best as we were perusing some statistics related to the business. "Wow!" he said, "You can actually watch their market value declining!" That will be blogging's legacy: the death of the paid opinionizer. Which may be a good thing.

Guy's Got A Point

Charlie Angus, after calling for a ban on twitter in the HOC, defends himself against the media blowback on Facebook:

Kady O’Malley calls me draconian. The National Post says I’m a luddite. It’s all over my comments that MP twitter posts lie between the banal and the inane. Have no fear national media — your ability to read what Carolyn Bennett eats for breakfast will not be shut down. I only wish I could have gotten this national uproar over the crisis being faced by children in Attawapiskat who are sleeping in tents tonight.

My two cents: I hate twitter but am enjoying the rank chaos it has engendered in the HOC.

The Kids Are Alright--They Think Twitter Sucks!

This wisdom of 15 year old Morgan Stanley summer work intern Matthew Robson, whose report, How Teenagers Consume Media, has become a Industry sensation:

On Music

[Teenagers] are very reluctant to pay for [music] (most never having bought a CD) and a large majority (8/10) downloading it illegally from file sharing sites. Legal ways to get free music that teenagers use are to listen to the radio, watch music TV channels (not very popular, as these usually play music at certain times, which is not always when teenagers are watching) and use music streaming websites (as I entioned previously).

[...]

A number of people use the music service iTunes (usually in conjunction with iPods) to acquire their music (legally) but again this is unpopular with many teenagers because of the ‘high price’ (79p per song). Some teenagers use a combination of sources to obtain music, because sometimes the sound quality is better on streaming sites but they cannot use these sites whilst offline, so they would download a song then listen to it on music streaming sites (separate from the file).

On Social Networking & Twitter


Most teenagers are heavily active on a combination of social networking sites. Facebook is the most common, with nearly everyone with an internet connection registered and visiting >4 times a week. Facebook is popular as one can interact with friends on a wide scale. On the other hand, teenagers do not use twitter. Most have signed up to the service, but then just leave it as they release that they are not going to update it (mostly because texting twitter uses up credit, and they would rather text friends with that credit). In addition, they realise that no one is viewing their profile, so their ‘tweets’ are pointless.

Newspapers

No teenager that I know of regularly reads a newspaper, as most do not have the time and cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text while they could watch the news summarised on the internet or on TV.

The only newspapers that are read are tabloids and freesheets (Metro, London Lite…) mainly because of cost

Cinema

... it is possible to buy a pirated DVD of the film at the time of release, and these cost much less than a cinema ticket so teenagers often choose this instead of going to the cinema.

Mobile Phones

As most teenagers’ phones have Bluetooth support, and Bluetooth is free, they utilise this feature often. It is used to send songs and videos (even though it is illegal) and is another way teenagers gain songs for free.

On HD TV

However, many are not utilising this HD functionality, as HD channels are expensive extras which many families cannot justify the added expenditure. Many of them don’t want to sign up to HD broadcasting services, as adverts are shown on standard definition broadcasts, so they can’t see the difference.

Note here, and in the original report, how often the word "free" comes up. And, frankly, with respect to movies, tunes, and TVs, I can see little difference between teen and adult behavior. Nobody I know (mostly 30 to 50-ish) has bought music in years.

Harper's Brain

Can be found on Twitter. Its limited to 140 characters per thought.

Is Twitter Doomed?

Gawd I hope so. Several new scams have afflicted the latest time-waster to ensnare the increasing pointless YOT (Youth of Today). Basically you sign on to a bogus site, your twitter ID and password are stolen, and spam twitter messages are sent out to your friends in your name. I suppose the question is, are the spam messages any more lame than something you would send legitimately?