It’s clear that the internet and social media have played a part in recent events in Egypt and in Bahrain.
Most of the coverage I’ve seen on mainstream media uses content from protesters and others as source material, subsequently reinterpreted by journalists. In other words, the content being generated in the social media sphere is an ‘output’ and results from what is happening. The question is whether such content is also being an ‘input’; and is being used by protestors and other observers (for example you or me) watching the #egypt or #bahrain hashtags on Twitter to follow, communicate and perhaps shape events.
Three observations, and then some discussion:
The dispersed nature of the leadership of the protests in Egypt made it very difficult for the centralised leadership of Mubarak to respond and control events;
The visibility of events in Egypt to the wider world (often unmediated by mainstream media) and the use of the internet and mobile devices in realtime to communicate and, presumably, organise made a big impact. Compare the cases of Egypt and Bahrain with the terrible events in Libya over the past 24 hours; and,
It is probably not going to be possible to distinguish between the extent to which we are seeing the impact of ‘influence’ versus ‘homophily’ (sometimes called ‘flocking’) in network behaviour. Remember this when you hear the term ‘Facebook Revolution’.
“Tweetin’ bout a Revolution”
Have a look at this:
It shows an analysis of trends on Twitter of certain recent country names over the past 90 days. That’s all. But the implications are worth considering.
The compelling discussion at the “FIRST WEDNESDAY SPECIAL: Egypt – what happens now?” at the Frontline Club and the insights of the panel in London and Cairo (via Skype) set me thinking about whether the changes in Egypt will persist and what the impact on the rest of the region might be.
During the event (which I livetweeted alongside the tweets of the indefatigable Julie Tomlin), Alan Patrick tweeted a link to his post “Talkin ’bout a Revolution” where he has begun to analyse what he describes as the “Revolutionary Media Ecosystem” together with some of the implications. Yesterday and today, largely because my sister is in Bahrain (she’s a teacher), I’ve been glued to the #Bahrain hashtag on Twitter and looking at Sky News and the Al Jazeera English service. Most of the media coverage is way behind what I can find out in realtime for myself. So I thought, could I use some of the social media analysis tools I know about to investigate and try to see the potential for links between what is happening in Egypt and what might happen in Bahrain?
Now look into the detail of period since 24 January, showing trend analysis for Egypt, Bahrain and Libya:
Examine the features of the Egypt trend timeline and think about the dates and what the various peaks relate to. You can clearly see the ‘false alarm’ on February 10th when Mubarak agreed to ‘step down’ (but not until September) and the subsequent peak when he actually did. Worth looking at the early part of the period too – especially where the trendline really begins to move on 28th January. Now look at the Bahrain timeline (updated to 1000hrs UTC today).
Of course, it’s too early to draw conclusions on this – but collecting the data in realtime is something new.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Trendistic for their trend tracking tool.
Particular thanks to the Frontline Club (of which I am a member). Their First Wednesday series, directed by Julie Tomlin and brilliantly chaired by Paddy O’Connell always provides insight – particularly so last week. You can see the video of the meeting here:
From the Frontline Club/ On the Media event site which describes the event and speakers:
“For the first On the Media discussion of the year we are going to be putting the spotlight on the media and asking what the WikiLeaks operation and the media coverage of it tells us about the press.
How have journalists responded to this new kid on the block? The future will no doubt see the emergence of similar organisations, but what impact will this have on the culture of journalism? How will the media adapt and how will this currently uncomfortable relationship develop?
Chaired by Richard Gizbert, presenter of The Listening Post on Al Jazeera English.
David Aaronovitch, writer, broadcaster, commentator and regular columnist for The Times;
Mark Stephens, media lawyer with Finers Stephens Innocent and Julian Assange’s solicitor;
Ian Katz, deputy editor of the Guardian;
Gavin MacFayden, director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism.
In association with the BBC College of Journalism.”
A particularly apposite time to hold this event. Here’s an event overview from Universities UK
“In light of the comprehensive spending review, and following the changes to the regional development funding structures, we will need to assess what this will this mean for collaboration between higher education and the creative industries.
This conference will launch a report on the role of UK universities in supporting the creative industries, particularly during the current economic downturn. The report will make a number of key recommendations to Government regarding their future thinking around supporting the creative industries through higher education partnerships.”
You can find more information on speakers and programme here
Immediately after the event, I made an audioboo piece – which gives you a flavour of the feeling in the room and some thoughts on “Frustration and Fear”:
What does the future hold for universities? What could the role of the university be in the Big Society? As part of the Inside/Out Festival the University of London hosts a debate on the issue.
Speakers:
May Chien Busch, MCB Enterprises, ex Chief Operating Officer Morgan Stanley Europe
Professor Geoffrey Crossick, Vice-Chancellor, University of London
Professor AC Grayling, Birkbeck, University of London
Professor Rick Rylance, Chief Executive, Arts and Humanities Research Council
Rt Hon David Willetts MP, Minister of State for the Universities and Science
Chair:
Anne McElvoy, New Statesman Columnist and Executive Editor of the London Evening Standard.
I’m liveblogging the event using a web-based service called CoveritLive
[Please note that the liveblog is my notes taken in realtime at the event and not a transcript – happy to take any comments or corrections].
In this STIR Lecture (Simulator Teaching Innovation Research) at Imperial College, the role of design in London’s future was to be ‘debated’; except there was no debate. Mighty good stuff though.
Sir George Cox plugging away; telling anecdotes (mostly about the previous administration) and giving really good examples of how design skills and process can contribute value to product and service design.
Matt Hunter, head of the Design Council – using the ‘hokey cokey’ approach to rhetoric (you put London in, you take London out . . . .) and speaking passionately about the need to ’embed design in policy-making’ (bless)
Dan Phillips Group Director of Sustainability of Buro Happold got off to a bit of a slow start but got into his stride, talking about the need for a big change in attitude from both the designers and providers of goods and services; “There’s a sense that the utilities want to sell us power and gas – but they ought to be selling ‘warmth’ and ‘light’.”
And why was there no debate? Because all the speakers agreed with each other (and themselves) that Design was central to the changes we need to make in our economy and society – but is anyone listening?
I heard the Jeremy Hunt MP, the new Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport deliver his first keynote on Media and Technology on 8 June 2010.
Jeremy Hunt spoke with the confidence and assurance of someone new in a job he’s wanted to do for ages and an awareness, I felt, that this bit is the easy bit. He also mentioned his happiness at having a new baby recently. If he has a 100 day plan (which I suspect he has – look at the 15th July date mentioned in his speech), then the first 30 are going well. He set out with clarity the areas he will focus on; three main strategic objectives:
Rapid roll-out of superfast broadband
Access to infrastructure
A new vision for local media
The real strategic goal is, of course, the new vision for local media. It plays strongly into the New Localism agenda and potentially opens up a way of unlocking the over dominance of Big Media. By relaxing (perhaps abolishing) the cross-media ownership rules he may stimulate local developments that will rescue some of the sub-scale regional media groups. Forcing the Telcos to share infrastructure through access to ducts and poles also opens up interesting possibilities for new entrants.
In all probability, we won’t be able to realise the new vision for local media without the rapid roll-out of (carefully undefined) ‘superfast broadband’ and that will require shared infrastructure. Hence why we have the 3 areas he will stand and fight on.
I say ‘stand and fight’ because the existing mainstream media and telco players with Significant Market Power will, while smiling, fight him every step of the way. The broadcast media industry hasn’t spent the last 20 years consolidating just to give it all up to a ‘New Vision for Local Media’. And there will be lots of reasons why access to infrastructure will be ‘problematic’ – some valid; many specious (remember all the shenanigans at the beginning of the unbundling of exchanges!).
Zero-basing the media
The existing models can’t deliver local TV/radio news, the IFNC idea was never going to work and the public service regional news broadcast model has over-centralised – look at the BBC and ITV. I live in Kent and my ‘local’ news often features things happening in Oxfordshire; well over 100 miles away.
We need a radical rethink of how local news is generated, managed and delivered. And that means teaming up communities, bloggers, journalists and coders. It means finding ways for local advertisers to support local news stations (I think you can make local advertising ‘cool’ on the web) and it needs to be done over broadband.
I think if you start from a zero-base and team up geeks and journos – you just might get somewhere.
I was invited to hear his first keynote on Media and Technology – and here is the liveblog of the event.
At the bottom of this post you can see the liveblog I made at the time; while Jeremy Hunt was speaking. Using Scribblelive, I also added in content from those making comments on Twitter. I streamed live from the event using Ustream Broadcaster on the iPhone but just some of the questions. There’s no point trying to stream the speech – Ministers rarely depart from their prepared texts and in any event the transcript is usually available immediately. Questions are different however.
I’m embedding the stream archive here. The person in shot on the immediate left is Mark Thompson DG of the BBC – check out the body language.
In a busy, buzzy and engaging event, over 100 of the NE’s leading business people and entrepreneurs discussed the Future of Broadband – looking at the prospects for the NE in the new wave of broadband services, often called “Next Generation Access” or “NGA” some of which are being developed here in the region.
The scale of the opportunity
The event was sponsored by NorthernNet represented by Mercedes Clark Smith and Sunderland Software City represented by Fred Pernet of Codeworks.
In their opening remarks, Fred and Mercedes mentioned the importance to the NE’s businesses of getting to grips with the coming services as broadband develops; this is especially important given that the region is increasingly looking to create new jobs in the digital and creative sectors; such as games, animation and software. Mercedes described how NorthenNet offers types of technology and broadband speeds to smaller companies previously only available to the very largest and on a much more flexible basis. She argued that “It’s not about the technology; it’s about the people” and that the benefits of creative and technical people working together are beginning to be realised.
The move from Copper to Fibre
To provide a basis for the conversation, Adrian Wooster, Chief Technology Officer of the Community Broadband Network, talked about “From Copper to Fibre” and covered the types of new services based on optical fibre technology and their impact on business. He mentioned that it’s important to remember that it’s not all about download speed. Increasingly the speed at which you can upload files and other content is becoming more critical to businesses. He said “New technologies are coming, some of them already being implemented in Gateshead, that offer the potential for new services. You can get closer and closer to customers.” He stressed the business relevance and innovation potential of new services.
G-ti – “Getting it done” in Gateshead
Liz Reed from Gateshead Council (pictured above) focused on G-ti (which stands for Gateshead Technology Innovation) a ground-breaking project bringing ultra high speed service to the Baltic Business Quarter. “Our job is to make sure we get businesses and jobs; jobs for local people.” That G-ti is an example of collaboration between the private and public sectors, is a very open and competitive network and that it demonstrates what Gateshead needs to be competitive. That it’s important for local authorities to demonstrate leadership. She spoke passionately about the “need to unite creative and technical people in using this new stuff”. Liz said that Gateshead was “About getting things done.” At the end of LIz’s presentation, Brian Condon a director of CBN and an independent consultant on technology and business, did a ‘straw poll’; asking the audience to vote on whether this project was a good use of public funds – admittedly an unrepresentative audience – but they voted in favour (with not a single hand raised against).
Caring for the “Not Got Anythings”
Other local projects featured highly in the session – Cybermoor Limited whose Operations Director, Kevin Wood, said that in his area of Weardale ‘NGA’ stands for “Not Got Anything”. Cybermoor are working with local communities to install optical fibre and improve access to services and innovations such as high capacity ‘Telehealth’. He agreed with Liz that it was about “Getting things done”. He said he wasn’t afraid of the “Community” word. He was open about some of the issues of small scale projects; and that a lack of depth of resources could give problems. He concluded that “It’s about making things happen when no one else cares.”
George’s “Stories from the Coalface” from ITPS and Virgin
George Galloway, MD of ITPS brought what he called “Stories from the coalface” of real business in the region. ITPS is a successful and growing privately owned IT services business with over £10m of turnover. George, who was on stage with Chris Walsham from Virgin Media, provided examples of how ITPS operates. They were the first Service Provider to offer services on the G-ti network (there are now 5 competing providers) and they partner with a range of companies including Virgin Media. Chris stressed the importance of partnership working and the need to collaborate. He said that their strategic relationship with ITPS was a good example as it shows that both large (and Virgin Media has a £15bn network) and smaller players can benefit. George gave the example of a successful project where a move from Copper to Fibre (of one of the types described by Adrian earlier) had delivered operating cost savings of 30% while simultaneously provding a 10-fold performance increase. Chris added that these new technologies can help companies reduce their carbon footprint; reducing the need to travel and saving time.
Partnership working to ‘bridge the gap’
Simon Roberson who is the NE Regional Manager for BT Group gave a different perspective from a very big player in the market. He talked about BT’s plans to deploy “Superfast Broadband” to 66% of the UK population by 2015. He said it was a very big project and that it would be difficult to reach those people described as being in the “Final Third”. He said “We have to remember that the ‘Final Third’ is one third of the population; not 1/3 of the country.” and that there are still very big distances to cover outside the dense urban areas.
Simon gave an example of partnership working in Northern Ireland as a way for the public and private sectors to work together. He argued that, despite what some other speakers had said, what will pay for the investments will be premium services such as HD and 3D TV which need more bandwidth than existing services. He said to businesses in the meeting “For you guys it’s a tremendous opportunity.”
Stand by me . .
In a charismatic multimedia keynote presentation, Houston Spencer (above, left) Vice President of Alcatel Europe (the private sector partner in G-ti) used the Ben E. King song “Stand by me” coupled with images from the 50s and 60s to show how much the world has changed and how much more change there is to go still. He showed a video called “Stand by me; playing for change” which was made in multiple locations by multiple players and brought together to form a single performance. He told us that the original record had been played over 7 million times on the radio since its original release 50 years ago but that this video, released only 2 years ago had already been watched over 12 million times on YouTube.
Houston talked about the changes that are coming; and that big organisations came about because of the ‘need to aggregate capital’ because everything was expensive. The IP/Broadband world changes all that – and that it’s now much easier to create and distribute new forms of content and products using the internet. Houston asserted that many people mistake the intent of new forms of social media such as Facebook and Twitter; they are not about “broadcast mode”; “It’s not about self promotion, it’s about making connections with people, building relationships and forming an ‘ecosystem’ of people connected together”. Houston concluded that there was a risk that the big players might destroy the ecosystems they are creating by too many rules or changing the conditions that brought them about. He finished with an optimistic picture of how relationships sustained by the internet can result in an explosion of global collaboration and connectivity.
