Notes on #janmoir - don't 'blame' Fry

I've seen a few media reports now on yesterday's unprecedented new media revolt against the Daily Mail.

Of all of them the Huffington Post's takes the biscuit for 'worst take'. They reckon it's about a fight between the Daily Mail and The Guardian. Seriously. I suspect a showbizzy intern selected their quote heavy, googled contribution.

A meme in practically all the reports is the role of Stephen Fry. This has now culminated in a Telegraph piece titled 'Don't laugh – Stephen Fry is giving the orders now.'

Those, like Fry, who are "deeply dippy about all things digital", argue that the internet is the ultimate tool of democracy. But it could just be that historians – if they are so permitted – might look back on this period as the moment when the techno-savvy few seized control of the minds of the many.

The blogger Guido Fawkes seems effectively to run British politics. Ashton Kutcher – actor and tweeter with over three million followers: "life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift" – is our spiritual leader. And Fry? Well, he's bigger than both of them.

Where to start? Iain Dale has a lot more blog traffic than Guido. Not sure what Kutcher's in there for save to keep the 'celeb's rule' idea going (and his Twitter following like that of other Hollywood celebs doesn't seem to translate to followers automatically watching their shows). And as for Fry?

I was actually dipping in-and-out of the #janmoir Twitter stream yesterday and very, very few of the tweets were Fry Retweets. Sure, his numbers are huge but the 'Twitosphere' is far, far, far huger. Presumably far too huge for most journalist's to get their minds around.

By 2010, 26 Million (1 in 7) U.S. Adults Will Use Twitter Monthly.

Edited to add: Thanks to to commentator Ian Hopkinson for pointing to some evidence.

Here's the trendastic tracking of #janmoir

Showing it peaking at 11am - @stephenfry first tweet on #janmoir was at 12:27pm.


What the ubiquitous Fry mentions in their reports are about is a journalistic laziness and the ever-present need for a celeb mention. A real piece of good work would be to actually track #janmoir all the way from where the first rock was thrown out to the furthest reach of the ripples.

Such as the excellent American analyst Evgeny Morozov's tweet:

notes on the new public sphere: Twitter has shrunk the Atlantic and purely local UK scandals are now global news

That's why HuffPost bothered putting Gately on the front page - #janmoir was number one or two trending topic when they woke up, and it had that celeb angle they love. 

It's notable that they've ignored what it by far the most game-changing event on Twitter this week, #trafigura - something which Gill Hornby in the Telegraph thinks is also down to Mr Fry.

From his palm-top device .. he struck a major blow for press freedom – when the Dutch company Trafigura won an order preventing the press from discussing the impact of its pollutants on the African coast, Fry tweeted the details to his vast audience and the gag was lifted.

Sigh.

Flashmob as political satire

Chancellor Angela Merkel may well have a new enemy to worry about when she is making her campaign speeches: irony.

Der Spiegel

On 18 September as Merkel gave a campaign stump speech in Hamburg she must have at least blinked as every so often the air was punctuated by loud 'YEAH's!'

Der Spiegel reports that a Flickr user posted a picture of the placard announcing Merkel’s rally online on September 11 and sent the link to friends on Twitter. Placard said, “The Chancellor is coming,” and underneath, the user wrote: “Yeah.” Ironically.

Soon after, the invitation went viral on Twitter and sites like Nerdcore and Spreeblick and the flashmob was on.

The people who went did it apparently as a joke and Merkel soon cottoned on.

In Mainz the flash mobbers held up yellow and black signs with "Hurrah" written on them (yellow and black are the colors that symbolize a coalition between the CDU and the FDP) and they too called out "yeah" after Merkel finished every sentence. However, at Monday night's meeting the chancellor did address the hecklers. "It can't hurt to yell something else other than yeah after every sentence," she said. The group then repeated Merkel's words, saying nonsensical things like "growth", "back door" and "five" after the Chancellor did.

The phenomenon could have unintended consquences. A German Twitter user said after the Hamburg flashmob, "Wouldn't it be funny if the international audience got the wrong impression?" Maybe, she worried, they would think it was some sort of "alarming German political euphoria."




There has been some German un-ironic talk of 'banning' and although I can imagine how delicious something like this might be during the 2010 UK election campaign I can also imagine the reaction of the British bobbies vs the German polizei — which is kindof ironic ...