Twitter

Twitter can get you sacked, so be careful what you post – ugly online banter can live forever

GUEST BLOG BY LAWRENCE SHAW, http:///www.http://collectiveinvective.blogspot.com, Twitter @LawrenceShaw

Journalists are expected, as a matter of course, to engage and interact fully with social media. Twitter has quickly become one of the single biggest global sources of breaking news.

With stories and seismic political events like the Arab Spring being driven and played out through Twitter, it’s not hard to see why desk-bound and under-resourced journalists are trawling the network regularly for stories.

The problem is that journalists are not simply using Twitter and Facebook to find and follow stories. Many use it as a platform to promote themselves and their work and interact with readers and viewers.

This is where trouble lies. Too many journalists willingly list and link to their employer on their personal Facebook and Twitter profiles. Even where the link to the employer is not made directly clear, or people follow their profile with the classic “views my own”, staff journalists everywhere are now laying themselves wide open to potential disciplinary action or even dismissal.

Many hacks fall into the trap of thinking that in our celebrity obsessed world, having a big shiny twitter profile and lots of followers will equate in some way to increasing their professional standing and gravitas.

Whether or not this is true, it leads many journalists trying hard to build up their number of followers.

One surefire way to guarantee piling on a big following is to be reporting live from some major event before the live cameras manage to get there.

But in the absence of this good fortune, the only other way to bump up the follower count is to tweet constantly on the big trending topics – and in most cases, say something controversial on those topics. In other cases, even the profile pages themselves are controversial – over sexual or over sensational – to try to attract attention.

All of this can all too often end up with journalists being hauled up by employers for appearing to sully the good name of the publication or organisation they work for.

I have dealt with a multitude of disciplinary hearings in the past few years relating to conduct on Twitter – and unfortunately seen several people lose their jobs as a result of that conduct.

Many journalists (and non-NUJ members) will read this and sniff, saying that they get on fine with their editors and are doing well so need not worry about a bit of ugly twitter banter.

But as many people I have represented will testify to – employment relationships can change overnight and very often, particularly in the smaller workplaces, the golden girls and boys can quickly go to being the dunce in the corner.

Facebook also brings with it many dangers. Virtually every workplace bullying or harassment case coming into my orbit at the moment has evidence involving some comment or status made somewhere on Facebook.

Colleagues you had counted as friends can have a nasty habit of copying and sending on those little barbed comments you thought were just amongst a small select group of people all the way up to management. Something similar to this happened to me in the dim and distant past, so I’ve had first-hand experience of this.

Regular readers of my blog will even know how we managed to expose the behaviour of the scabs on the recent South Yorkshire Newspapers strike by simply looking at their publicly available interactions on Facebook. Funny as it was, we should all learn from this.

I recently authored a draft set of points that I hope the NUJ New Media Industrial Council will adopt as formal guidelines for our members using social media, setting out ways journalists can use the technology professionally but safely in terms of protecting their rights at work.

In the meantime I urge all journalists to play safe online and try never to mix business with pleasure in the online world.

My basic advice is thus:

If you’re not happy with a picture or comment being put on a piece of paper and put directly in front of your entire team of managers to look at, then don’t say it ANYWHERE on the internet, even privately. If you must live out your entire life and all your personal interactions online – remember that everyone in the world could potentially be able to see everything you write and you should work on the assumption that a permanent record of everything you say will exist FOREVER.

Lawrence Shaw is a full-time official with the National Union of Journalists and a Labour party member; he blogs about unions, journalism and politics. 

Pic credit: Winnond, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1970

Arms fair hoax report prompts all-time record number of visits to my blog

Had an astonishing, gobsmacking, all-time record number of blog hits at the weekend from my post about the London arms fair Life Neutral hoax.

http://fwords.co.uk/2011/09/16/arms-trade-hoax-is-outed-as-organisers-admit-it-was-%E2%80%9Can-elaborate-stunt%E2%80%9D-to-embarrass-weapons-dealers/

The number of views on Friday was a record for me – nearly FOUR TIMES higher than the previous most-hit-making post in my relatively short blogging career.

My hits were already getting close to the previous record by 5pm, when I wandered up the health club to get the latest gossip from the Boys in the Steam Room. The Boys were in earnest discussions about veruccas, hip replacements, The Dirty State of the Steam Room Walls, and How To Rehabilitate Prisoners, so I didn’t stay long before returning home to more absorbing subjects.

When I got in the hits had gone way, way, over the previous record, and every time I checked back throughout the evening the number was still rising.

Saturday saw 2.7 times my previous record number of hits and yesterday got me 1.4 times the previous record – almost all views of that one blog post.

Interest was boosted by retweets – notably by the hoax organisers, www.spacehijackers.org , and by www.stopthearmsfair.co.uk. I had about 300 hits from Facebook alone, after someone posted a link to my blog there. There were also links through from other blogs and, bizarrely, from a cycling forum whose members had taken an interest in the arms fair.

My hit-rate was partly due to timing – I happened to be mooching about watching Twitter when the hoaxers were being “outed” on the BBC. Until then, a lot of people had taken as a sick reality the spoof, claiming that arms manufacturers wanted to “offset” the deaths they caused in the developing world by funding Western parents to have more children. I listened to the BBC World Service interview, during which Space Hijackers ‘fessed up to it all being a big hoax, and quickly banged out a blog post on the subj.

But more than sheer timeliness, the number of hits, I think, reflects the growing unease about the way our country happily sells weapons of mass destruction to certain countries and in the next breath accuses other countries of attacking their own people. There is a particular, and peculiar, contrast between Libya (where we are backing the overthrow of a government to which we sold weapons until recently); and Bahrain, which is openly attacking its own people, yet to which we were selling weapons at last week’s arms fair. It seems we really don’t care whom we furnish with murderous weapons, as long as there’s a profit to be made. There are too many commercial interests involved for the mainstream media to openly criticise our country’s warmongering, so people are turning to the internet to get the information they want about the steadily-growing peace movement.

A minority continue to believe that the arms trade is necessary for our economy. As many have more sensibly pointed out in response to this specious argument, “they said that about the slave trade”. Our economy survived the cessation of slavery; why shouldn’t it survive the end of the trade in mustard gas, leg irons, restraint equipment, white phosphorus, and bullets and bombs without end?

Pic credit:  Africa, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1803

It’s not what you say, it’s who you are: my MP never tweets yet has 6x as many followers as me!

My MP has amassed six times as many followers on Twitter as I have – despite the fact that he never tweets! It just goes to show, it’s not what you say but who you are when it comes to gaining a Twitter following.

I discovered this when I decided to follow Tory Crispin Blunt (Reigate) only to find that he has not uttered a word since he commented “test” in September 2009. I and his other 352 followers are eagerly sitting by our PCs waiting for the next utterance from our parliamentary representative.

Blunt’s not alone in his lack of interest in the internet. His fellow Surrey Tory MPs Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell), Paul Beresford (Mole Valley), Jonathan Lord (Woking) and Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton), don’t appear to be on Twitter at all – though Raab is on Facebook.

Other Surrey MPs toy half-heartedly with Twitter; perhaps someone’s told them to do it but they’re not convinced. Kwasi Kwarteng in Spelthorne went through a spell of tweeting in the run-up to the elections in May last year but hasn’t uttered since.

Education minister Michael Gove of Surrey Heath has issued only 15 tweets, most of them last month.

Of the remaining Surrey MPs – all Conservatives – culture secretary Jeremy Hunt (south west Surrey), Anne Milton (Guildford) and Sam Gmiyah (East Surrey), are all active on Twitter. Gmiyah seems to be a particularly keen user.

I accept that being a social media user is not necessarily a qualification for being a good MP: Twitter is fairly new to all of us and we all managed our jobs perfectly well without it in the past. I daresay those MPs who don’t use it would say they are too busy handling parliamentary business or dealing with constituents’ problems to sit down and mess about on the internet. But it would certainly seem to be a way for politicians to raise their profiles and to communicate quickly and easily with constituents.

Be that as it may, I’m still a bit peed off that my 57 followers @susanfenton – actually not bad for a newbie and growing slowly but steadily all the time – can be so easily beaten hands down by someone who’s only ever tweeted once.

Blunt’s 353 followers pale into insignificance against higher profile politicians like Ken Livingstone, with 14,000, Diane Abbott, with 22,000, George Galloway, with 37,000, and avid tweeter and “cyber warrior” John Prescott, former Labour deputy leader, who has an astonishing 92,000 followers.

Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour Party, also has 92,000 while Nick Clegg, deputy prime minister and leader of the Lib Dems, has 65,000. Boris Johnson, London mayor, outdoes the lot of them with 192,000. Interestingly, David Cameron has only 6,000 in his own name, though 1.8 million as “prime minister”.

As a newcomer, I’ve totally revised my previous opinion of Twitter as being an outlet for the intellectually vacant to talk about what they had for breakfast. Some do Tweet frequent updates on what train or café or airport they’re in, apropos of nothing in particular. But if you want interesting, intelligent, challenging or alternative views – and instant, informative updates on topics that interest you, you can easily find them on Twitter. Maybe more MPs should try it.

PS Have just spotted that @PhilipHammondMP, which purports to be the Twitter account of transport secretary and MP for Runnymede and Weybridge Philip Hammond, is actually a spoof. Do go and have a look – he says some funny things, like “William Hague wears underpants made of tweed. He suffers terribly with chafing”.

Pic credit: Naypong, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=2617

Foreign Secretary fends off tweets about Libya and silly Qs about baseball caps & Bronski Beat

Foreign Secretary William Hague spent nearly an hour on Twitter this afternoon answering questions about the “intervention” in Libya, at #askFS.

See http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/news/latest-news/?view=News&id=649927082 for the transcript, just issued by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

He got quite a hard time, with most of those tweeting seeming to be at best sceptical about this latest war. Including me.

I asked “Wasn’t the real purpose of the invasion of Libya to gain control of the oil, by installing an unelected puppet government?”

Hague replied: “No. purpose was to prevent Qadhafi massacring innocent people & to support a better future for #Libya #askFS”

A childish oversimplification, and one that no-one truly believes. Hague’s Twitter-fest was touted as being a wonderful example of democracy in action. So democracy is being able to get a handful of 140-character answers to a large number of questions about complex issues. That’s our fast-food, sound-bite society for you.

If you followed the exchange, you couldn’t help but notice that Hague answered only some of the questions posed. The published transcript of the session would suggest that his office selected a handful of the easier questions, to which Hague could repeat nice easy platitudes about massacres of innocents.

Those many people who asked questions like those below will have been left deeply unsatisfied, I would imagine…

+ do you ever wonder that if Europe stopped selling so many weapons worldwide, you’d have less problems like #libya?

+ isn’t it ironic that previous arms deals to Libya means that you’re responsible for arming both sides in Libya

+ how can you pretend to humanitarian, despite the fact the UK has sanctioned arms sales to #Libya for the last 6-7 yrs?

+ how ironic do you think your name and the place you will be charged for illegal war crimes being one and the same is?

+ why was Britain still selling weapons to Arab dictatorships in February after the Arab spring had started? or at all.

+ Don’t you find it a tad ironic to be claiming to be bringing freedom & democracy abroad while suppressing it at home? #askFS i know i do

+ so bombing libyas free schools/hospitals is helping them how exactly?

It wasn’t all heavy political stuff though – there was some light relief from some wits who appeared to see Hague as a figure of fun that they could poke with a stick for the amusement of anyone hanging about on the internet. One asked: “What made you go into politics after you left Bronski Beat?” while another wanted to know if Hague ever regretted wearing “that” baseball cap.

He was also asked:

+ what are your favourite biscuits?

+ What’s your 8^th favourite Kajagoogoo song?

+ What’s the capital of Moldova?

+ do you agree that David Cameron looks a bit like C3PO but made out of spam? If not, why not?

As you can imagine, these were among the many questions the Foreign Secretary left unanswered. So we’re no further forward in any respect. Anyhow, Hague signed off half an hour or so ago, apparently for a phone chat with the Libyan rebels, but the questions at #askFS continue to come in.

Pic credit: Foreign & Commonwealth Office, http://www.flickr.com/photos/foreignoffice/

New leader Larry gets his claws into government duties

As a cat lover it would be rude of me not to use this pic of Larry, the Downing Street cat, hosting a Cabinet meeting. Larry, it seems, is currently in charge of the UK after our most senior politicians buggered off on holiday, leaving various calamitous economic events to unfold in their wake.

The pic has been circulated by serial Tweeter John Prescott (senior Opposition politician, for any foreigners reading), who has managed to get #wheresthegovernment to “trend” on Twitter these past couple of days. There have been masses of witty comments on this thread, along the lines of “I’ve just been to Ikea, I can put a cabinet together” [geddit?!!?] and “I can draw, can I be Minister for the Arts?”

There’s even been a caption competition, with a prize for the best caption for the pic. My favourite is “8 out of 10 cabinet members (who showed a preference) said that they deserved a holiday”. I also liked “Unpopular guest speaker at the Ailurophobic summer conference”.

I had been planning to whitter on tonight about my disproportionate excitement at getting my first comment on my blog, but I got all distracted at seeing a picture of a cat. Anyway, to cut a long s. short, I received my first proper “comment” – it was Spam really, in that the guy had presumably posted the same thing all over the internet, but it was interesting, and I like interesting. The guy is a campaigner against routine circumcision and posted a whole heap of links to informative sources on the subject. I was baffled at first as to why he’d visited my site, till I remembered I used the word “circumcision” in a post that was actually about something else. If nothing else, this foreskin aficionado demonstrated that my site is search engine optimised! When I’ve got nothing else to do I’ll take a look at some of his pictures, but I’m about to have my tea, so I’d best leave it till my stomach’s less full.

Which brings me back to poor Larry – I hope his stomach’s full too and that the prime minister left someone in charge of feeding the poor wee mite.

In which I wonder if social media is really for me…

Parts of this great big interweb intrigue and absorb me. I love the randomness of Twitter. Among the rash of posts about the Norwegian massacres and Amy Winehouse’s death, everyday life went on as normal. Metrobus announced that a new route would be in effect from August on Route 93 in Surrey, Leyton Orient Football Club (according to a retweet) has completed its summer signings. And a BBC travel reporter described being stuck in a “mahoosive” traffic jam on the north circular.

Young people, we’re told, stay in and do social networking because they like it. Old people stay in because they like watching the telly – they’ve heard of social networking but don’t like it. I’m in an awkward kind of middle ground; I’m doing social networking in a sort of half-arsed way, because everyone says I should, but I’d secretly rather go out and talk to human beings.

The pubs are consequently only half full, their populations consisting of middle-aged people talking to other middle-aged people and tutting about the few under-25s who’ve not understood the “social” media rules and hence sneak into the pub but spend the evening ignoring their companions and poring over their mobile phones.

Apparently, fooling around on the computer is the only way to get work these days. In the old days, getting work was all about personal recommendation. Imagine the scene. Two journo types in a pub, 10 years ago.

Bloke A: Crap, I need to get someone to do that 2,000-word feature by Thursday. Know anyone?

Bloke B: Mm, I used to work with this bird called Sue Fenton. NCTJ-qualified, knows what a deadline is, good at research, can understand a brief – even her spelling’s not bad if you can catch her sober. And she’s desperate at the moment, I gather. Here’s her number. Your round, anyway.

Bloke A: OK, I’ll give her a ring. Same again?

Picture the scene today. Two journo types sitting in their respective living rooms.

Bloke A: Crap, I need someone to do that 2,000 word feature by Thursday. Know anyone? Preferably someone you’ve never met and never worked with, of course? If you haven’t got the first idea who they are, all the better.

Bloke B: Mm, well I’ve got 214 friends on Facebook and about double that on LinkedIn. Why don’t you trawl through the lot of them and see if any of them have failed a Meeja Studies degree? Cheapest way of doing it. Take you all morning, of course.

Bloke A: Oh, bollocks.

Maybe I’m just bitter because I’m not down the pub on a Saturday night disapproving of the young people.