political blogging

i have to say out of all the topics we've covered so far, i found this one to be particularly interesting. i feel like i say that every week; i guess i'm just suprised at my level of enjoyment stemming from this paper. i wasn't convinced it was a subject i was interested in, but i was proved wrong. i'm studying pols here in dunedin (but communications is my major) and have always been an avid follower of both domestic and international politics. i'm known amongst my friends to get pretty riled up about it all sometimes.

in one of my other papers, we spent some time focusing on the situation in china/tibet, and the level of censorship faced by those within china. so relating my own views and knowledge to last week's readings was pretty easy (and interesting!) for me. the lecturer even showed us a website that (somehow... not sure entirely how it works...) lets you see whether or not particular websites are accessible in china. from the websites tested in class, it was pretty restricted. i also heard something on the news the other night about how wikipedia was now able to be accessed within china. even though i don't agree with a lot of the political blogs i come across, viewpoint wise, i appreciate that here in new zealand, unlike china, we don't get so censured when it comes to voicing our own opinions. or even our right to read whatever we like. and even though i read quite a few, i had never really thought about political blogs being the domain of right-wing males - until i read it in this weeks readings. so i had a bit of an "ahhh" moment when reading. on the other hand, sometimes coming across certain political-based writings in the blogosphere makes it hard to be of the opinion that free speech is always a great thing. there are lots of blogs out there that spread not only ignorant bias (on the lower end of the scale) but also full-blown hate at the other end. but i guess that's the way the world is really.

again, another one of my papers this semester has had elements focusing on the use of new technology such as the internet in the political arena. i'm currently working on a group assignment, where my role is to basically pretend i'm a member of the green party's campaign team, whose area of research is the benefits of utilising the internet. i've come across blogs from political parties and mmp's themselves... but not sure really how significant social platforms and that kind of thing are on election results. i dont think you can really argue the fact that the internet is a fast growing communication medium, and political uses are continuing to increase. but do political blogs, facebook pages etc cater only to those who are super interested in politics? does average joe bloggs (no pun intended, but doing it anyway) really care about john key's facebook page, or even heard of http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/? will political writings online have any effect at all on the politically apathetic or noncommittal?

ps

did anybody else see the news tonight, about that hacker from new zealand? interesting stuff... no doubt it will be brought up in class sometime this week

week 5

as you can see, i've run out of creative (?) titles. week 5's reading (i couldn't make the classes that week so....) is all about the credibility of wikipedia. i found that pretty interesting, because as somebody who sometimes has the bad habit of leaving things until the last minute, i have often begun an essay by first having a browse of wikipedia. don't lie, everybodys done it!! i guess with wiki you have to be careful not to take everything written as gospel... but that would have to be a pretty fair general rule of using the internet for stuff like accuracy. not even only information for the odd assignment (as a starting point, give me some credit here), but also interaction with other people. nothing new though i'm sure.

from the chesney article, it was interesting to read that the "cynicism" of both groups (experts and non experts) was similar, although it was equally interesting to note that the reported cynicism, being purely subjective, was about as accurate as wikipedia is perceived to be. just like real life, you can't take everything you hear/view/read with a grain of salt; it's up to each individual member of an audience to make a judgement call as to whether or not to trust each piece of information. yet another example of the web reflecting real life... as chesney suggests, further studies need to be conducted in order to form more accurate conclusions. while using purported experts is a very interesting and valid idea, maybe anonymity for things such as the level of cynicism felt by each participant would have resulted in potentially more accurate results.