Welcome to Porter Novelli’s weekly digital news post (originally posted at Clicking & Screaming).
If you think blogging is ’safe’ by definition, think again. Over the last few years there have been countless instances of anonymous bloggers being outed, and bloggers being brought to account for their content on legal grounds. This week, a couple more bloggers have been tripped up, but it seems as though their treatment has been exceptionally harsh.
On Sunday, blogger “MelanieDawn” found herself featured – without her permission and including a photograph – in an Irish Mail on Sunday article which quoted her as saying that her workmates were sexist. Understandably, she’s not happy and claims that the Mail crossed its wires when unscrupulously lifting content and a photograph from her blog (now deleted in its entirety).
It’s an awful example of a newspaper destroying a reputation for no discernible reason, not to mention the massive can of worms that is stealing content from bloggers. However, it sounds like “Mel” made an error of judgement while posting somewhere along the line, and bloggers must bear this in mind. Thankfully, legal proceedings should be heading the Mail’s way and a decent payout should soften the blow somewhat. Thanks to Chris Applegate for the tip.
I read about the second incident while doing my bloggy rounds this morning. Online Journalism Blog has been covering the story of an anonymous blogger – revealed by Rory Cellan-Jones, with permission, to be Leeds University graduate student Joseph Wiseman – whose site, Seismic Shock, has been at the centre of a storm this week.
The blog, “a voice for those dedicated to exposing and opposing modern anti-Jewish religious attitudes”, is highly critical of an Anglican vicar named Steven Sizer, and matters came to a head when West Yorkshire Police visited Wiseman and asked him to take down his blog. The most worrying thing, as Paul Bradshaw at OJB noted, is that the police – armed with nothing but a complaint – were willing to trace the offending IP and successfully request computer files from Wiseman’s university.
Nutshell version: you are not anonymous. Ever. (Almost.)
Labour kicking Twitter ass…or are they?
TechCrunch, the US version of which is now successfully unhacked, reported yesterday on Tweetminster’s study of UK Members of Parliament (MPs) on Twitter. Perhaps unsurpringly given David Cameron’s clueless and short-sighted use of the classic old Twitter/Twatter routine (copyright Rory McGrath and every other rubbish comedian on the planet) on Absolute Radio back in July 2009, the Conservatives lag behind Labour, which has amassed comfortably more tweets and more followers. Too busy mucking about on mydavidcameron.com, Dave?
However, the Conservatives have the edge in one aspect of Twitter: the almighty retweet. From TC:
The report finds that the Conservative Party’s tweets from its official Twitter account have greater reach in terms of how many times they are re-tweeted (another Twitter user reposting the original ‘tweet’), which is comparable to mainstream media, and concludes that “the next election (on Twitter at least) will be between the Conservative party machine and Labour’s grassroots activists.”
Science v Religion: Social Media Death Match
In entirely unrelated (until now) news from the worlds of science and religion, NASA and the Pope are trying to put their stamp on social media.
According to The Social, the deliciously-named TJ Creamer, a US astronaut and dairy product enthusiast, sent the first tweets from space on Friday. Disappointingly eschewing the “Greetings, Earthlings…” approach Clicking & Screaming might have adopted, @Astro_TJ instead opted for an address to the “Twitterverse” and invited questions. 6/10.
Meanwhile, God’s representative on earth, Pope Benedict XVI, has encouraged priests to embrace social media. According to Catholicism’s top man, priests should blog, tweet, use Facebook and “otherwise harness the power of online communications for the kingdom of God”. He delivered his address via his YouTube channel, naturally.
Admirable and sensible though it may be to recognise social media as a powerful set of marketing tools, I can’t be the only one who read about the Pope’s address and instantly thought of the “Catholicism WOW!” campaign from Dogma. Let’s see what the Buddy Christ says:
Thought so.
The internet in numbers
Some Royal Pingdom statistics on web use in 2009: 81% of email are spam (of a total 90 trillion), there are 274 million websites, 1.73 billion internet users and 126 million blogs, and 30 billion photos are uploaded to Facebook each year. Ouch!
Speaking of which, you have too many Facebook friends for your brain to handle. Best get that sorted.
