Stap isi

7 December 2008

Bartlett's view on political blogging

Andrew Bartlett has been blogging since 2004.

For much of that time he was a Senator in the Australian Parliament. His blog was the first by a Federal politician, and it has had over 20,000 comments.

Some of his posts about blogging would be useful for councillors who want to engage in this way.

The blogging VC

There was an interesting piece on the value of blogging in the Education section of The Australian by Steven Schwartz, the Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University, who started his own blog last year.

His straightforward assessment of the interactive benefits of genuine blogging is just as applicable for politics, business, academics or many other fields as it is for a university leader.

read more

Political blogging in the UK

One longstanding blogging politician is Peter Black, a Liberal Democrat member of the Welsh Assembly, who has been at it for over five years. He has written an interesting piece on the impacts of blogging and the internet on politics, focusing particularly on Wales, but also the UK more broadly. The use of blogs by politicians in the UK is far more widespread than in Australia, but also different in tone and nature to those in the USA or those I’m aware of in some south-east Asian countries. If you’re interested in the general topic, it’s definitely worth a read.

read more

the Power of Blog

It would obviously suit me to push the line which sometimes gets argued that politicians using blogs are revolutionising politics and opening a whole frontier of democracy. I think this is a gross exagerration. Blogs and other web-based communication have the potential to provide the general public with more meaningful engagement with the political process, and I’d like to see some more genuine blogs by Australian politicians, but I don’t think people should overstate its potential as far as its use by politicians and political parties goes.

However, the area where I think blogging does have significant political value and potential is not for politicians, but for people outside the small group of political and media elites who try to shape and control political ‘debate’ and information. This is particularly important when opportunities to get different views aired are constrained.

read more

— b3rn   blogging, councillors, politicians   Dec 7, 03:36 PM   #

Comments

no HTML, use Textile

Name

E-mail

Website

Remember

• « Previous
• Next »