Zero Comments is something that I know about….

The report MPs online: Connecting with constituents published today by the Hansard Society touches on the decay of traditional media in its investigation into the attitudes of our Parliamentarians towards ‘new media’, it’s use and its value to them in political communications.

The internet creates “an opportunity to restructure communication between MPs and their constituents” writes Andy Williamson in the Background to the report. ” This has,” he writes, “led to both an increase in opportunity and, in some cases, motivation for MPs to communicate online.” He continues

“It is not just the volume and immediacy of communication that is changed by the internet, new network technologies change the very nature of communication, conversation and engagement and this is clearly visible across the wider online world.”

While the use of ICT has increased year on year, much of the experimentation with internet based communications by political parties, elected representatives, government departments and other bodies such as local Councils tends to miss opportunities for modifying the practices of communication away from vertical, uni-directional marketing and message propagation. Frequently we see not ‘zero comments’ but actually no comments at all. Where the experiment is with a ’social networking website, some corporate bodies have ‘zero friends’ (although Stockport Council has a few friends now, following an ‘OLD media’ source printing a story about it).

Andy Williamson concludes that

The internet has had a demonstrable impact on parliamentary communication. Most MPs are now communicating online and many have websites, some blogs and a handful maintain a presence on social networking sites. Although the internet does clearly support MPs to become more independent, the primary paradigm remains rooted in the party model. The foregoing suggests that the internet is a tool to communicate outwards, self-promote for the purposes of re-election and to gauge opinion and it is not seen as a tool to aid representation or to enhance engagement: internet-based communication by MPs is largely about delivery and devoid of strategies for engagement.

(MPs online: Connecting with constituents, 2009, p. 6)

A new Hansard Society report, sponsored by Microsoft, MPs Online: Connecting with Constituents, reveals that MPs are using the internet primarily to inform their constituents rather than engage with them. The most widely used digital media are those which are mainly passive in nature, such as website. Interactive forms of media which could be used by MPs to develop a two-way dialogue with their constituents, such as blogs and social networking, are used less commonly. Where these tools are used, it is often in passive ’send’ mode with few MPs exploiting their full interactive potential.

Sponsored by M$? Since when did M$ make any ’social media’ tools?

The use of online strategies is becoming increasingly important, encouraging grass-roots activism and enabling mass mobilisation. But there is no guarantee that the cooption of online strategies will guarantee electoral success or promote healthy dialogue between politicians and citizens.

Chair: Dr Laura Miller (Hansard Society eDemocracy programme)
Speakers: Derek Draper (LabourList.org), Mark Pack (libdemvoice.org), Jonathan Isaby (ConservativeHome.blogs.com)

Tuesday 24 March, 10am, House of Commons, Westminster.

I wonder if the new Director of Digital Engagement will be in post by then and if that person will attend this event.

I’d love to share more with you, but the report is not yet available online for downloading or purchasing.

With regard to TCPs use of  Nozic’s Anarchy, State, Utopia to interrogate the hyper-individualised networked society I had this to say (emphasis added):

Amongst the libertarian Nozick’s many failures in Anarchy, State, Utopia is his failure to properly deal with conflict between his ahistorical individuals. It is the abstraction of the individual and the social order in Nozick’s work dislocates individuals from themselves, from the choices they make and the communities they form that is the source of conflict. What the neo-Kantian Nozick fails to recognise in demanding the priority of individual rights over the common good is that this “can only exist in a certain type of society with specific institutions and that it is a consequence of the democratic revolution.” (Chantelle Mouffe, 2005, The Return of the Political, p.65) That is to say that neo-Kantian liberals fail to recognise the historicity of liberalism, for some reason missing the very context of the emergence of liberal political theory from the struggle against arbitrary and absolute authority.

So what then of politics in our liberal age? Do we really have to choose between the liberty of the Ancients and the liberty of the Moderns? No. We do not have to accept a false dichotomy between individual liberty and rights, i.e. the choice of the neo-Kantians, or between civic activity and a strong political community. As Mouffe argues “Our choice is not only one between an aggregate of individuals without a common public concern and a pre-modern community organized around a single substantive idea of the common good. To envisage the modern democratic political community outside of this dichotomy is the crucial challenge” (ibid).

The project of the networked liberal is then to defend extend and deepen the liberty of the networked and to democratically build meaningful institutions to articulate and resolve conflict.

The problematic of what sort of institutions - through which claims, of rights or otherwise, can be articulated and conflict mediated - would work in a networked society is often underthorised at the expense of an over-emphasis on the negative spectres of Orwell, Kafka and other writers on totalitarian politics. I’m not trying to play down the dangers to our socio-political relationships, threatened by the database state or the surveillance state. I’m simply more interested in the challenge from Mouffe (2005) to find meaningful frameworks beyond the institutions of modern liberal democracy. These are themes continued in Dean, Anderson and Lovink (2006) ‘Reformatting Politics’; a collection of papers on the notion of post-democracy, information technology and global civil society.

I’m going to post again on this topic with regard to the current fluttering around ideas of new localism in the UKs political settlement as the themes of liberty, democracy and the nature of politics in network society remain open and contested: hackable. Investigating the positive possibilities rather than imagining dark nightmares is my contribution to the Convention and to civil society.

Our democracy is stratified like a company organisational chart. A simplistic drawing would show Government at the top and parish councils at the bottom and a myriad of other organisations with decision-marking powers over any number of areas of our daily lives arranged on the intervening levels. An upper tier has a more inclusive scope than a lower tier and roles and responsibilities are appropriately distributed according to scale and competence.

Well, that’s the textbook anyway.

Dave’s post to LD highlights the problem with that model and the institutions and relations conditioned in practice. Locality is as fluid as other post-modern political problems such as community and identity. Localities dependency is perspective and there are many perspectives.

So how do we get away from institutions, or ’structures’ as Dave said, that are out of perspective with locality, community and identity? Well, as a good post-structuralist and radical democrat I’m not disappointed by exploring that dependency. A broad and rich body of research exists exploring precisely this area of political geography. Indeed, this theme was central to my papers in ‘Hacking the Networked Society’. ‘Who governs in a networked society’ explored precisely this growing disjuncture between institutions and governmental frameworks in our contemporary networked society.

Many boosters talk up the potential of new media in its self to engender new forms of political communications which will have meaning at any / all different tiers of locality. I’d say that is simply twittering round the edges, a confusion of quantitative changes, i.e. more engagement, and qualitative changes, i.e. new / different modes of engagement.

Dave’s general point about linkages still stands however. Stronger and meaningful relationships between ‘the people’ and ‘the people when they govern’ need to replace those tried and tired tiered relationships of our contemporary democratic settlement.

When the Evening Standard reported this (18th Dec 2008) it was suggested that “the protest could emulate the sit-in at Bangkok airport that led to it being shut for several days.”

One source said today: “If there are only 50 of us I doubt it will stop the airport from running but if there are 500 of us that is a lot of protesters in the check-in area. If we are really successful, we could attract thousands down there and that would stop the airport functioning on the day.”

So, what’s the plan?

“We will arrive in Edwardian dress (under a big coat!) with hampers of food to have our ‘Dinner at Domestic Departures’.”

Not quite the same as the boots and balaclavas of the anti-Stansted expansion special-forces. But the idea is similar. Go to an airport in some kinda costume, make a spectacle for the media and disrupt the normal operations of the airport.

Which will be fun! In the photos of the Parliament Square invasion, everyone looks like the are having a riot! Save the planet and have fun!

This is civil disobedience. “Civil disobedience on grounds of conscience is an honourable tradition in this country, and those who take part in it may well be vindicated by history” Lord Justice Hoffman

On the recent granting of bail to Climate Rush organiser Tamsin Omond, District Judge Michael Snow spoke of the need for ‘proportionality’ in civil disobedience cases, and his reluctance to refuse bail to someone who was “simply exercising her democratic right to protest”.

“The word ‘democratic’ is key here. The idea of democracy is perhaps the key to explaining why middle-class fathers and middle-aged ladies are donning sashes and chanting slogans all of a sudden.”  - Hazel Cullen at Greenvoice

I’m looking forward to this. It’ll be interesting to see how The Climate Rush get on. It’ll also be a great test of the surveillance and policing of the public transport links to London and Manchester’s airports (climate change protesters wouldn’t drive, would they?) Can anti-terror police and airport security spot and intercept a potentially large number of people wearing concealed Edwardian dress and carrying hampers, heading to the airport? Or will 50? 100? 500? 1000? people be able to just walk right up and sit down to a picnic in the domestic departures area of two major airports? Imagine if all of the Campaign against Climate Change marchers, something like 7500, turned up at airports and just sat down…

“BAA is understood to have invited Ms Omond to talks to discuss the protest.” Perhaps BAA do feel threatened! Perhaps they think she’ll call it off if they ask nicely.

I’ve got my decks out and spun round a few new tunes for a merry mixxmas session 2008. It’s all about playing track 10. Seriously. You’ll understand when it drops (about 40mins in…)

Tracklisting:

1. Plump Night Out ‘Elektonaughts Bumper RMX’
2. Brothers Bud ‘Remedy’
3. Plump Night Out ‘Pucker Up! Pucker Up! RMX’
4. Brothers Bud ‘The Sting’
5. Beat Assassins ‘vs’ Ludacris ‘Stand Up’
6. DJ DefKline and Red Polo ‘Can I Dance’ (The Like A Bear Mix) - Ghetto Style Guaranteed
7. Crisp Biscuit ‘Brooklyn Banger’#18
8. Dreadzone ‘Once Upon A Time [In Jamaica]’ (Brothers Bud Mix)
9. 3DB ‘Baader’ (Dreadzone Mix)
10. Bassbin Twins ‘Woppa’ [Cool And Deadly]
11. Son Of Kick ‘Bad Groove’
12. Twin Motion ‘Scream!’
13. JDS ‘Scorpion’
14. Beat Assassins ft Ragga Twins & Yolanda ‘The Hotness’

Enjoy.

Last month anti-government protesters in Thailand where able to close the country’s major international airport for over a week. Hundreds of thousands of people and hundreds of flights were disrupted and rerouted where possible. The world’s attention was focused on the protest, shining a light onto the political problems in the country. Most amazing was the peaceful passing off of the protests. I doubt that within a few days the mass sit-in will fade, becoming just a surreal memory. This protest was a success, internally and internationally.

The Beeb asks a few questions, some of which are pertinent to the Plane Stupid protesters:

• How could a country as advanced and as dependent on exports and tourism as Thailand allow such a vital transport hub to be stormed by a mob that never numbered more than a few thousand?
• What is the PAD, and what gives the movement the confidence to commit its dramatic acts of economic sabotage without fearing any legal sanction?

No more than a few thousand people halted a major international airport for over a week. This large group took action with impunity; Thai police could not or perhaps would not use force against these protesters.

Now, how does all this relate to the old-school black-ops methods of Plane Stupid this last week? To my mind the protest which closed Stansted was a flash in the pan, a stunt. The airport authorities and police responded with force, treating this militaristic assault on key infrastructure as a terrorist attack. Rightly so! What if these were not Plane Stupid protesters but rather stupid hi-jackers?

Environmental protesters like Plane Stupid should take notice of Flash-mobbing, silent raves and other network-powered interventions in the public space. Organise a flash-mob of an airport, all the airports! Just get a lot of people to head to their nearest airport and just sit down….

Here are a few steps to taking over every airport in the country on one day…

1. Pick a day, any day and a time… just make sure its far enough in the future to allow your network of activists to…
2. …Buy up tickets on the cheap flights (this is the important part) on that day all around the same time.
3. On the scheduled day, set off with a packed bag, a passport and a ticket to local airport - this is the black-ops part, when the radical environmentalists disguise themselves as people going off for the weekend on a cheap flight.
4. Wait for the agreed time and sit down.

If Plane Stupid or another similar group were to co-ordinate such an action this would be a flashmob of epic proportions causing much more serious and significant disruption to air travel infrastructure.

Yet the real beauty of this networked direct action is that the Plane Stupid protesters would most likely be able to close every airport in the country even without having to turn up on the day. The very threat of this direct action and very fact that of it being discussed openly, perhaps via Facebook or a custom social network site hosted on Ning, would probably be sufficient for the authorities to seriously reconsider opening airports on the appointed day.

Some may call this weeks action by Plane Stupid terrorism, others may call it civil disobedience. What I’m proposing here combines direct action and electronic civil disobedience backed up with the threat of real people turning up and paralysing infrastructure in a very public way. For the cost of a place ticket on, say, the 1st April 2009 (which is cheap if booked now) Plane Stupid could close every airport in the country…..

Just a thought.

While there are many political uses of the information, the lists of names of membership of any organisation should be kept private. Lists of names, as Tom Steinberg (MySociety) said, start us down a path best not begun. There are lots of lists of names missing or lost about the place, perhaps they shouldn’t be seeded as torrents or publicly searchable. Just because there are techniques to mash this data and present it in interesting ways (against ethnicity data, or social deprivation indexes, or just against voter turnout) does not mean that anyone should.

From an Information Governance and Information Security perspective, these BNP kids are going to have to get their act together. The Information Commissioner is going to want to have words with them. Perhaps there will be court proceedings for breech of human rights act and data protection legislation; although perhaps in not quite the way that Nick Griffin expects, with claims against the BNP for negligence.