2010-04-25
post/547939097
John Naughton: Old media, new media and the UK election. The whole piece is worth a read (as, I suspect, is the Peter Preston article he quoted from, which I haven’t read in full).
It’s certainly an interesting counterpoint to the Economist’s piece, quoted here, which claims that the old media are dominant. Perhaps the problem is the millions of overlapping friends networks of discussion aren’t visible, but they surely take what used to be water-cooler discussions between five colleagues in an office and broaden them to a hundred, or even thousand, people - and more immediately, too.
Anyway, I’m sure there’ll still be argument about old vs new well after the result’s in.
2010-04-24
post/545614083
Media and politics: The shock of the old in The Economist. The entire article is worth a read: it points out the ways the mass media still reach far more people, particularly older ones, who also vote more.
There were two other articles in the Britain section this week that caught my eye. One is on university students in Chester and elsewhere, and the other looks at how people’s opinions change when the costs of policies are stated. Both are worth a read, but the latter is perhaps the most universally relevant (and will be long after this election has come and gone).
