RUOK, the death of Facebook and Gene Hunt, plus Lent, not borrowed

First things first: I have just been sent a paper on how people use blogs in times of crisis called RUOK. Havent had time to read and analyse it yet myself but will return to it soon. I'm very grateful so far for those who received my lecture who've taken the time to comment on it. (And no I still haven't worked out how to put the PDF version here but I hope it will end up on the Nuffield website soon).

Second I have been thinking a lot about social networking given so many aid agencies are increasingly turning to Facebook, MySpace and Bebo to promote their messages. I joined Facebook at Nuffield before it was thrown open and did little. Then everyone could join and my summer turned into a mass of poking, superwalling, status updating and adding photos. There have been increasing numbers of negative articles about Facebook recently - particularly this one from the Guardian. The truth is - as Richard Sambrook once mused in his status update - is the tumbleweed now blowing through the 2007 sensation. Is it - dare it be said - turning into Friends Reunited; once equally must have and now reduced to sending emails reminding you of its existence.
Last week I conducted a small unscientific yet rather telling experiment. If 2007 was the year of Facebook, it was also the year of Gene Hunt with the second series of Life on Mars. The sequel - Ashes to Ashes which began last Thursday was much anticipated.
Because of a feature I was helping out on at the Telegraph I got hold of a copy of A2A a day earlier. And in irritating fashion I immediately updated my Facebook status to say I was watching A2A right then. Obviously partly to annoy people; but also to see how many people were still checking Facebook.
The results were as follows: one person emailed me mid Thurs to see if his friend who was playing the clown had a big part.
Conclusion:
1. Facebook is over (if so, bad news for the aid agencies who think social networking could be the answer)
2. Gene Hunt is over (bad news for the BBC who have pinned so much on A2A)
3. I have no friends anymore (bad news for me)
I think it may be a combination of all three.

Finally Ash Wednesday last week means it's Lent. This year having read Affluenza by Oliver James (good idea, although the writing irritated me in parts) I decided I would launch my own assault on the consumer society by only buying things I need, not what I want for six weeks to try to stop being so wasteful (and maybe save a bit of cash too). This is obviously slightly subjective but I think it goes as follows:
In brief this means I can buy newspapers (essential) but not magazines. I can't buy new clothes although I can reheel boots. I am only buying lunch, not chocolate and snacks (although who says no good deed goes unpunished; I got sent some chocolates from Save the Children for my talk which I feel I can eat as I didn't buy myself).
The big test is: can I buy books? I was arguing this as a necessity in my life (I feel physically panicky if I travel somewhere without reading material) But then I remembered I have a library card.....

No more secrets....?


In between trying to finish my Guardian lecture I wrote this quick blog for AlertNet about how Burmese bloggers were the latest example of UGC...the use of user generated content is a big part of my lecture following on from the seminar I gave earlier in the year entitled Can You(Tube) Save the World?
I think it's very easy to overstate the importance of UGC but I still find it fascinating that only six years ago - at the time of 9/11, the kind of citizen journalism that we take for granted now was not around. When I talked to the BBC about this they said they got no images from ordinary people and only a handful of emails....fast forward to the Pakistan earthquake where they received 3,000 in one day.

Mind your language
I've been back home for a few days over Easter and away from the internet. Came back to find several great media stories blooming.
First this http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2053278,00.html
As the Guardian says this has provoked a storm from bloggers saying that any attempt to restrict comments would impinge on freedom of speech. But this is becoming more of an issue thanks to the Kathy Sierra case - in which she cancelled her ETech speech because of death threats that had been made on her blog.
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/03/as_i_type_this_.html
What do I think about this? As a journalist I've been on the receiving end of bitter and abusive anonymous comments which I've accepted as part of the territory. I've never had death threats although I've sometimes kept letters that seemed to be more than usually abusive in case anything escalated.
As someone who's worked in old media where libel laws and the need to avoid affecting public outrage and decency, I'm used to having the kind of language I use monitored and restricted every day. So perhaps I am conditioned to having my words restricted. Plus having been on the receiving end of abuse...I don't like it.
But I certainly also have sympathy with Dan Gillmor's point, as quoted in the Guardian

To define unacceptable behaviour is to create a monster, he says, as "Who'd be the judge of it? The government? Libel lawyers? Uh, oh."

(PS Paula Scher in the New York Times op-ed pages points out the life-cycle of a blog: http://blog.pentagram.com/)

Then there's also another big freedom of speech issue being discussed...that of Faye Turney et al selling their "kidnap and tell" (thanks to Geoff White for that turn of phrase) stories for up to £100,000 - from taking the Queen's shilling to the Murdoch pound. This, most people agree has turned out to be a complete mess. No one comes out of it well: the MoD for agreeing and then doing a U-turn; the sailors who took the cash, the papers who offered it.
The Guardian in its editorial points out that the world has changed thanks to mobiles and the internet; as it says there is no way the slaughter of the First World War could have happened if "our great grandfathers were blogging every night from Picardy". And it asks the question: should we condemn the navy personnel when Sir Christopher Meyer and Alastair Campbell have been able to do similar things. It calls for a thorough review over selling stories to the media that goes wider than just the military

But Allan Mallinson in the Telegraph also raises a pertinent point, making a comparison with Pte Johnson Beharry's memoirs:

There is nothing wrong, or against regulations, in writing about one's military experience. The rules simply require the manuscript to be scrutinised by the MOD to ensure there is no breach of operational security. Had the captives' story been one of true heroism rather than "victimhood", there would surely have been only public admiration.

Was part of our disquiet that this was not a glorious tale to tell?