Kristine Lowe

The Tyranny of International Index Rankings

International Index rankings are random and open to manipulation, an academic study suggest.

I'ts an illusion that Norway is the world's best country to live in, a Vg.no headline informed me this week, citing an academic paper by professor Karl Moene et al - but the article didn't link either to its award-winning source or the actual paper, which is here, and makes for very interesting reading.

I always thought there was something not quite right about those top ten lists of the best countries and cities to live in, especially since Norway and Oslo often bagged the top spot - and, frankly, I have lived in many better places. If I were to compare Oslo with Amsterdam, Brighton, London, Palo Alto, they would have very different pros and cons, and Oslo wouldn't be an obvious winner.

In fact, I'm inclined to think I had a better quality of life living in England than I have in Norway - especially if we disregard plumbing, housing and public transport;-) However, if I was still living in England, perhaps my conclusion would have been the opposite, and if I'd stayed in Palo Alto longer, perhaps that would have been my all-time favourite place to live. My inklings seem to be supported by the aforementioned study:

"International index rankings emphasize country differences where similarity is the dominant feature. The rankings of the Human Development Index, Freedom House, and Doing Business can be misleading, not because of wrong indicators, but because the estimation of the scores ignores inherent uncertainty. Re-estimated with a method that captures this uncertainty, it becomes clear that the practice of comparing adjacent countries is a rather courageous activity," the abstract reads.

It asserts that such rankings are close to useless when it comes to differentiating between Norway and other rich democracies, and are only useful for telling us who scores really high and low.

"One can hardly open a newspaper without finding a reference to an international index. International country rankings provide an instant idea of the relative success of a country vis-`a-vis other countries in the world.

"Their appeal lies in their simplicity. Their users need no more statistical knowledge than readers of the sports pages in the newspapers. Just as boxers and football teams are ranked according to their performance, countries are ranked according to their ability to provide a high standard of living, democratic rights, and an appealing business environment.

"Just as pundits use sport rankings to place their bets for the weekend, journalists use country rankings in their search for an easy way to finish their Saturday commentary and policy makers use the country indexes to guide their decisions over own policy and evaluate other countries. It seems like we are blessed with a tool that everybody can understand and that is appropriate for a wide range of purposes," reads the introduction.

I'm reminded of Jeremy Clarkson's less scientfic, but spot-on and immensly amusing take on international index rankings in "Let's be happy like the Danes"(2007), worth reading in full:

"Apparently the main reason why Danes claim to be so happy is that they always expect life to be worse than it really is. They expect to be cold. They expect to pay 95% tax. They expect to be decapitated by a gang of youths who’ve found the little mermaid has already had its head kicked off and are now looking for another target. They are therefore delighted when they get home to find their family still have all their limbs, that the heating is working and that their tax bill’s been reduced to 94%."

And as if to prove that human beings, especially a nation's guardians and those who are supposed to guard them, are vain creatures who sometimes find it easier to stir up a storm in a teacup than grapple with structural, long-term challenges that are not so easily or quickly resolved, professor Moene et al's study also warns:

"Media, policy makers and researchers often end up discussing the deep causes of a slight alteration in the internal [index] rankings. What is even more problematic, especially for the Doing Business Index, is that policy makers may design policies more to improve their rankings than to improve their real performance. Governments may be tempted to engage in what we denote “rank-seeking” behavior to improve the relative standing on the indexes more than the situation on the underlying phenomena." In other words, plenty of food for thought here, well worth a read.

Tienanmen + Twitter = Teheran. Journalistic balance + Social Media = Toast?

What's happening in Iran now tells us something important about Twitter as a news source and as a tool to help people self-organise, but why are mainstream commentators still struggling to get their heads around it?

My Twitter-feed is abuzz with people tweeting about and linking to stories on what's happening in Iran and what impact Twitter's key role in the uprising is having on mainstream media short-term, and will have for the long-term.

Many are those who are now predicting this will be the big shift in how we view the potential of social media. But just as I had pulled together a few of my favourite links on what was happening for a post at The Norwegian Online News Association's blog Monday morning, some of those less informed arguments against Twitter surfaced in an Op-ed in Norway's newspaper of record -leading to some interesting events and thoughts.

Twitter revolution?
Let me just recap and expand on some of those links I started with Monday morning for my international readers: First, I was taken by Antoine Clarke's thoughts on Tienanmen + Twitter = Teheran, an argument repeated often in the last few days - with Clay Shirky in his evangelic way even saying "This is the first revolution that has been catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media".

However, Richard Sambrook, whom I said on Monday has provided some of the most useful links from and about the upheavel in Iran on Twitter, urges us to call it an uprising, not a revolution, as what's happening is led by part of the political establishment in the country. He also provides an extremely useful analysis of using Twitter as a news source from Iran, concluding that it would probably serve only to mislead the average news consumer but would be more useful than mainstream media if you had a reasonable understanding of social media, the political situation in Iran etc.

Journalistic "balance" + Social Media = Toast?
Then, also via Twitter, I was alterted to an Op-Ed that repeated some of the usual logical fallacies about Twitter (in Norwegian). It wasn't a bad Op-Ed, in fact it was in part both fun and interesting, except it brought to court how journalists and politicians only used it to share trivia, and VIPs like the prime minister for oneway-communication, for the billionth time - not as arguments for how the VIPs don't get Twitter but as arguments against signing up to the microblogging service in the first place.

Three things occurred to me, and I'll start with the least scientific:

1) I wondered if the fact that these arguments are brought to court again and again is just a side-effect of (false) journalistic balance - as in: "Hey, we need some counterarguments, what should we say? Oh, yes: lots of people use it to share trivia and the prime minister never talks back." I'm reminded of the second rule journalism:

Be balanced. No matter what anybody says, find somebody to say the opposite. If a scientist claims to have a cure for cancer, find somebody who says cancer does not exist. If a man says "My name is Fred," make sure you find somebody who says "No, your name is Diane." Etc.

2) The Godfather of the Norwegian blogosphere, Hjorthen, put together a parody of the Aftenposten Op-Ed where he just exchanged 'Twitter' for 'Aftenposten' (also in Norwegian)- which threw up some brilliant formulations like how reading Aftenposten can easily become a continuation of garden parties in the posher parts of Oslo.

Demographically, Aftenposten is the Norwegian equivalent of The Times, and if you try exchanging Twitter for The Times next time you read one of those anti-Twitter articles it may lead to surprising insights. For one, Twitter is often accused of being elitist, attracting certain types of users, and for narrowing the users' horizon because they only follow people with similar values to their own - but all of those arguments could just as easily be used against The Times. For my part, I get a much broader pool of sources with much more diverse political agendas on Twitter than I'd ever get from reading newspapers, which leads me to the third argument:

3) I came to really appreciate the second part of this post by my friend Brian: "I’ve said it many times before, but it will bear constant repetition. When some new technique of communication is invented or stumbled upon, you should not judge its impact by picking ten uses of it at random, averaging them all out, and saying: Well that’s a load of trivial crap, isn’t it?!? How will “I am just about to make another slice of toast” change the world? The question to ask is: Of all the thousands of uses already being made of this thing, which one is the most significant? And then: Well, is that very significant? If yes, at all, then forget about the toast nonsense.

Jackie Danicki chips in with a telling anecdote in the comment section of that post:

I witnessed a discussion today in New York between a reporter for CNN, a reporter for Fox News, a reporter/anchor for NBC, and a producer for NBC - moderated by a veteran blogger whose wife happens to be Iranian. The blogger, Robert Scoble, had been taking CNN to task all weekend over their lack of coverage of the Iranian situation, and he and his wife were getting accurate reports (later confirmed by her family) via Twitter.

At the end of the panel - in which the mainstream media people all held their hands up and said that informed Twitter users were beating them at their own game - the CNN guy said, “Well, but if we weren’t doing our jobs, you guys would have nothing to link to. If we disappeared, so would a lot of Twitter content.” The moderator, not missing a beat, replied: “But you DID disappear last weekend, and Twitter filled the gap.” The CNN guy had to concede, and the comment was met with much applause.

Never underestimate the value of any tool which can help people to find solace in one another - like the samizdat during communist rule - let alone pass information which is important. I’m not sure why anyone would object to interest being taken in such a matter, apart from perhaps a general fatigue with all that is good in life. Too bad, so sad for them. :)

Update 19.06.2009, 14:30 CET: Just discovered this post on why journalists write so much rubbish about Twitter via Strange Corante, which explores a different line of reasoning.

Using social media to change the world

Here's something which, despite all the current doom and gloom, makes me both hopeful for the future of the world at large and despondent about my own industry (and if you'd rather focus on the former, feel free to jump past my chronology of frustration:-) )

A chronology of frustration: Mainstream media discovers Twitter and moves en masse there. Incidentally, politicians discover Twitter about the same time and follow suite. "All of a sudden" everyone that is someone is talking about Twitter, hence media commentators are ordered to write about it and conclude - surprise, surprise - it's the social network of the elites.

Now, this secenario is taken from Norway, where journalists and politicians have really only discovered Twitter's potential over the last few months. Since I do my share of talking about why journalists should be on Twitter, and how they can use it in their work, I'm hardly going to complain that a much larger contingent of Norway's hacks have finally started using the microblogging site, but the scenario in the above paragraph is a potent reminder that our understanding of social media is defined by how we use it.

It's not the technology... As a result, our arguments about what social media is often become circular, and categorisations such as "it's the network of the elites" or "it's just people sharing trivia" will often reveal more about how people making those statements use or don't use Twitter than about the site itself. I am, of course, fully aware that sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter have different demographics, but, at the end of the day, it's neither the technology, nor the individual social media brand as such I find interesting: it's what it enables us to do.

And since commentators, in Norway and elsewhere, have been so busy analysing what they and/or their colleagues talk about on Twitter lately, let's instead look at a compelling way to use the site to raise awareness of a social issue. I've been followingMark Horvath for a few weeks now, after a shout out from Tim O'Reilly alerted me to his Twitter profile:

Giving a voice to the voiceless
"Mark Horvath was a top TV executive in Hollywood and then lost it all. Out of work and with a home going into foreclosure, Horvath quickly became homeless. With no income or a roof over his head, Horvath still had to do something. So he started Invisiblepeople.tv, a personal first account video blog designed to give homelessness a face and voice," Mashable wrote in March.

Or to use his own words from 1 April this year: "Fifteen years ago I was a TV executive. Fourteen years ago I ended up homeless on Hollywood Blvd. I now am 14 years sober and am rebuilding my life but homelessness is once again a very real possibility. I lost my job in St Louis over a year ago. I took a job here in Los Angeles, moved here, and was laid off. I lost my house to foreclosure last week. With $45, a small camera and a laptop I started Invisiblepeople.tv, a homeless awareness vlog. I had to do something.

"Every week I take a few minutes to get to know a different person without a home. I learn how they survive, how they came to find themselves homeless, and who they call friends. I ask them about their biggest wishes, their greatest hardships and their plans for the future.

"Then, I introduce them to the world via social media. My video blog is a testament of the character and strength of people living on America’s streets. It gives them a voice and a chance to tell their story and become more than a coat sleeping on a park bench. To get the word out about my vblog, I began using twitter ..." (full post here, follow Horvath at @hardlynormal ).

Now, you may fault me, of course, for citing a former TV exec as an example, but his forceful example of being 'the change he wants to see in the world' somehow gives me more faith that we will find our way through the current crisis - and doing what he does while facing homelessness and personal ruin is truly something...

Here's video clip from The Berkman Centre, about The New Change Makers which is also well-worth checking out (via Paul Bradshaw on Twitter)

Brown aide Damian McBride's resignation: one more down for the bloggers

One down, two to go, says Iain Dale after Gordon Brown's chief political adviser Damian McBride resigned over what The Guardian dubbed "Labour sex smear scandal" .

I must admit I've stopped counting as I only keep half an eye on political blogs these days, but on this side of the pond there was of course the former Swedish Trade Minister 'blogged' down by Magnus Ljungkvist and now Mcbride is the latest of several UK government officials (John Prescott and Peter Hain springs to mind, more? ) who've had bruising encounters with Gudio Fawkes. I'm discounting that now rather ancient story about Trent Lott from the other side of the pond, I think the US is a different story alltogether as political bloggers there were so much ahead of the curve compared to Europe.

The role Guido's blog has come to play in the UK political landscape has been compared both by those who know him and those who don't to that played by Private Eye. 

There's also an interesting dynamic at work here between bloggers and journalists, or to quote from a post of mine from a few years back:

"My understanding is that the 'conspiracy' of which Guido is a part includes mainstream journalists. As Antoine explained in our last mp3, they tell Guido some juicy titbit. Guido reports it. Iain Dale reports that Guido reported it. The journalists can then report that 'internet sites' reported it - the plural being quite important because it makes omitting the actual names of the 'internet sites' a lot less ridiculous."

Last time I checked, Guido had some 250,000 readers, but I have to admit that was ..eh.. two years ago. It's interesting to note that McBride's resignation may be followed by that of Derek Draper, who has been set up as, or certainly come across as, the guy Labour put forward to try to emulate the success of the likes of Dale and Guido.

My only 'real-virtual-life' encounter with Draper has been his weird follow-unfollowing-follow behaviour on Twitter, but the other key bloggers in "Smeargate", Guido, Dale and Tom Watson, belong to those UK political bloggers I follow on something bordering on a regular basis (the latter is he of "Government Minister Resigns to Spend More Time With His Blog"-fame, one of my favorite headlines ever, and a man I find it very interesting to follow on Twitter, partly because he also tweets quite a bit about Web 2.0-stuff). Now I must admit at this point I'm rambling a bit beacuse I have my head down in another story I have to get back to, but follow the links for full story and context. I also meant to blog about the spat between Guido Fawkes and Derek Draper on The Daily Politics Show, one of those things I never got around to, but you can check it out here:

I you're unfamiliar with Guido's blog, check this post. Iain Dale and Jackie Danicki have more links to "Smeargate" coverage. Here's a Guardian piece with more background. Update 20:15 CET: I loved Mick Fealty quoting blog sceptic Geert Lovint, a man I don't think I'd normally agree with, on how 'blogging is a bleed-to-death strategy', only to say: "Mr Draper is a PR professional floundering in a world he barely understands, allowed himself to be entranced by the (what Lovint terms) 'banal nihilism' of one particular type of blogging, and now finds himself being bled to death through his own actions," in 'Yes, Derek Draper did get it wrong'

Icelandic media: "like alcoholics on detox"

So, Icleand has a new government, this one headed by Johanna Sigurdardottir.

Who's controlling who? Interestingly, what struck me the most when I was in Rekjavik in mid-December was the lack of agreement and uncertainty I encountered over who were actually running the place: you could call it lack of regulation of course, but it came across as a more fudamental uncertainty about who controlled the watchers and who controlled those who were supposed to watch the watchers.

Surreal After I described my visit there as "surreal" in this post, Ashok asked me in which way, and I answered surreal as in walking into a bad dream wide awake or into a surrealist painting where familiar forms are melting before your eyes into something unrecognisable: not necessarily malevolent, but dizzying perhaps; disturbing. Now, this impression could of course have something to do with the fact that it was my last reporting trip in a very busy year; the fact that neither of the three editors I met with while there seemed to know who owned the newspapers they were charged with running - or a combination of the two. 

Who owns what? As I got off the bus from Keflavik airport my emninent photographer, Hari, kindly picked me up and drove me to my appointment with Ólafur Stephensen, editor-in-chief of Iceland's second biggest newspaper, Morgunbladid. Ownership status at the time: the paper's mother company, Posthusid Arvakri, was technically broke, the editor was among several employees who hadn't received their December salary and they were in talks to find new owners.

Then, it was straight on to Frettabladid, who had been in talks to merge with Posthusid Arvakri, but a reporter told me Baugur's Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson had paid off a big debt for the paper (also previously controlled by a Bagur-led consortium) and now probably owned it. I was asked to verify the situation with the editor-in-chief, Jón Kaldal, who said he was uncertain about the actual ownership structure and could I please check with his boss Ari Edwald (clarified here).

Editor-in-chief Reynir Traustason of DV, a tabloid, was also rather unclear on the specifics of the ownership issue, but said the paper was working to cut all its connections to Baugur.

"Our sugar daddies are dead"
"In Iceland we are a split nation," the DV-editor explained: "there are those who follow David Oddson [head of the central bank] and those who are against him. Same for Baugur's Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson. We have our own word for those who follow Jón Ásgeir: Baugsmidlar.

Incidentally, the taxi driver who recommended I get in touch with Traustason in the first place, claimed Iceland was controlled by Baugur - due to its dominant role in Icelandic media.

"You know, the sugar daddy behind DV and Fréttablaðið was Baugur, but the sugar daddy behind Morgunbladid was Björgólfur Guðmundsson? Every media here has its problem. We had Jon Asgeir, they have Björgólfur, said the tabloid editor:

Like alcoholics on detox
"Cross-ownership has been a big problem in the media here. Now everyone is on his or her own because our sugar daddies are dead. Every company which gets money out of the blue gets sick, so Icelandic media was very sick. Now we have to stand on our own feet. We are like alcoholics on detox," he asserted.

Some would of course argue that is descriptive of the state the entire country is in, due to easy and high-risk credit (such as foreign currency loans), but my mind also jumped to a similar sentiment by Clay Shirky, from this interview:

A lot of working journalists, and especially print journalists, are in the position of being sort of kept women. They don’t really understand where the money comes from but, you know, their particular sugar daddy seems pretty flush, so they just never gave it much thought. And then one day the market crashes and they suddenly discover, “Wait a minute, we were a business? And our revenues had to exceed our expenses every year? Why wasn’t I informed?"

In DV's case, Traustason explained that with its sugar daddies dead, the tabloid had to downsize from 48 to 24 pages and cut about ten journalists. "Now we can probably live," he said, adding that 40 per cent of the paper's revenues came from advertisement, and it was hard to get as companies were collapsing, falling over, all around them.

Who's to blame?
Also, like all over the Westerns world, the Icleandic are asking why the media didn't spot the storm brewing - except, with the country in such a mess, much more so than in other countries. "Only in May, we covered the government's report on the good health of the economy," said Kaldal, who admitted media was guilty, but said; "We are guilty of believing hype, but that's a guilt the whole society should shoulder. The state is the one who really failed."

Still, it is perhaps no wonder the country's population increasingly turning to social media such as political blogs and Facebook to inform each other and vent their frustrations, as I describe in this article (I also  reported on the story in Norwegian here before Christmas, but this blog post contains additional thoughts and previously unused material)

Postludium:
It must be said that everyone I met and talked to on Iceland were very helpful and accomodating: both to see me on very short notice and to give me so much of their time.

After I got back to Oslo and my story was published, a journalist I'd been in touch with emailed me to tell me about a new development:

He: "You might be interested to know that editor xx have come under fire since you were here. A reporter came forward and told the public how he had buried his story regarding a former manager of Landsbanki, the bank responsible for the Icesave debacle. At first he denied this but the reporter played a recording of a conversation where the editor tries to explain that if they run the story the newspaper will be 'killed'."

Me: "Interesting. Thanks for the tip. Seems the cross-ownerships /cross-interests of Icelandic media makes for the most fascinating intrigues, twists and turns."

He: "That´s true. Somtimes it feels like a bad soap opera."

On the Icelandic government's collapse

Today Iceland's coalition government collapsed under the strain of an escalating economic crisis, finally some would say (thanks to @lauraoliver for alerting me to this story)

I was in Reykjavik to do story in December, on media of course, and it was a surreal experience. The sense of doom and gloom was not helped by Iceland's barren "moon landscape", nor by these weird sculptures along the road from Keflavik airport to Reykjavik (this photo was taken from behind a dirty bus window, click on the pictures to see them in full size):

"Welcome to the sinking Iceland," wrote Andri Snær Magnason, the author of «Dreamland: Self-help for a frightened nation»," when I contacted him by email (photo below snapped from the airplane when taking off.)

"I'm not so sure Bjørgólfur Guðmundsson, or anyone else in Landsbanki were criminal: they could drive in 250 km/hrs and they did," said DV's editor-in-chief Reynir Traustasson, with reference to the Icesave scandal. But if Traustasson did not think the bank directors and others criminal, a large portion of the population certainly do, with signs comparing prime minister, Geir Haarde, and the head of the central bank, David Oddson, to bin Laden and worse flourishing at the weekly demonstrations.

I truly felt like a stranger in a strange world while I was on Iceland, and if we think we're having a bad time here due to the struggling economy it's nothing compared to the situation there. However, I was told one upside for journalists, who're facing massive job cuts, is the fact that the financial woes of the island has attracted so much interest from international press that some journalists have been able to compensate for loosing their Icelandic jobs by working as stringers for international agencies such as Reuters and AP (by the way, these photos are all my own haphazard shots, but I worked with a great photographer, Haraldur Jónasson - highly recommened: very professional, flexible, knowledgeable and fun to work with - while there)

Bonus link (added 27/1-09 8pm CET): Is this the most hated man in Iceland? (via Andrisig on Twitter)

Social currency anno 2008

"Newspapers have already lost one of their key selling points: Social currency. In 2008, all meaningful political discourse — the essential element of social currency — takes place on the Web."

Dan at Xark in "10 reasons why newspapers won't reinvent news", via Mindy McAdams, who on this particular point says: "If you think he’s exaggerating, then I think you are — sorry to break it to you — one of those people who still hasn’t figured out online. It’s getting a bit late for that now"

The Credit Crunch Song, and how to tell you're in a recession

As a blogger and journalist I must admit, as I've mentioned before, I fluctuate between Attention Deficit Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Order (to use Arianna Huffington's brilliant description of the two), and the scat... butterfly mind of the latter can't quite pinpoint when I started waiting for the recession to kick in.

Certainly, the slide in media shares - first fairly gentle at the backend of last year, then quite dramatic at the start of this - property and job markets contracting one by one (US, Spain, Denmark - to name some markets I follow) had something to do with it.

In short: I thought I'd see the footprints of the ghost of recession in the financial reports of media companies much sooner than I did - bearing in mind the cyclical nature of our trade.

And now that the financial markets really are in turmoil, I guess the good news is that we're not in a recession yet, or at least we have to whiz out our crystal balls to justify saying that we are.

As Daniel said the other day (and I can't say how delighted I am that he is back blogging - I mean, he could have given up on his life ambitions, given in, gone mad, explanations are plentiful and frightening when someone just goes quiet - that's not bearish of me to think so, is it? ) there are a few basic rules journalists do need to adhere to in today's market (which, despite all the doom and gloom, is a bull market for financial news), one of the most fundamental being keeping in mind the very definition of a recession.

Speaking of which, Charles Arthur's Ten signs you're in a recession is another recommended read which goes to show we're not quite there yet, it could be - and many will probably inject "will get" here - worse (If you check out that post, don't miss the comments, many of them superb).

Which, after 300 or so words, brings me back to the inspiration for writing this post, The Credit Crunch Song (via Loise Bolotin on twitter):

Downcast in Davos

With the recent market gloom, it's no surprise to hear that the mood in Davos was a bit sombre this year. But no, Adrian, I can't imagine that the modesty of Davos is a coincidence, after all it's Switzerland: remember Calvin? I hear his thoughts on frugality and capitalism has had quite a major impact on Swiss mentality ... in fact, it's not so dissimilar to what you find in Norway (at least with the older guard), or any country where protestantism has had a major foothold....

Picture by Jean-Bernard Sieber (via Sambrook)

Blog buzz revealed election results

Want to know the results of next year's US election? Follow the blog buzz. At least if this Norwegian experiment is anything to go by:

A blog measuring the blog buzz around Norway's political parties and key political issues proved to be quite accurate when it came to predicting the winners and losers in yesterday's local election.

I must admit that I was very sceptical, and remain sceptical, to whether measuring the frequency of keywords, or correlations of keywords, in the blogosphere, is a reliable way to predict election outcomes.

Still, just as political scientist Dag P. Svendsen predicted on his blog, the election winners were indeed The Labour Party (AP), The Progess Party (Frp) and The Conservative Party (H), although the differences between their gains from the last local election were marginal (currently 2,1pc, 1,2pc and 1pc). As for the losers, Svendsen's predictions were correct for The Socialist Party (SV), but incorrect for The Liberal Party (V) and the Christian People's Party (Krf).

Before the election I said I had little faith in using quantitative analysis of blog buzz to predict election results or to measure how concerned people are about different political issues:

A quantative analysis doesn't look at what values people attribute to the party or issue, and is hampered with methodological problems such as the risk of measuring spurious connections, how the blogosphere may not be representative for the population at large etc.

However, in this case the blogosphere proved to be an excellent mirror of the country's population. Now, THAT is interesting. So for all those out there who thought the blogosphere was the exclusive domain of nutters, crakpots and losers: at least in Norway, bloggers seem to be quite representative of the population's overall voting pattern.

I have also said I think blogs are comparable to digital versions of the conversations people have over a cup of coffee or a pint of beer, and as such the blogosphere can be a great resource for politicians who want to know more about what issues people are concerned about; how the political parties and the way they deal with these issues are perceived etc.

In other words, the blogosphere is an interesting place to keep an eye on both for forward thinking politicians and companies, but they will need to apply some sort of qualitative analysis in order to get the most valuable input.

Not to mention how the blogosphere offers fabulous opportunities for politicians to engage directly with their potential and existing voters, unmediated – especially in a local election in such a small country such as Norway, I might have added.

Sadly, I didn't see one top politician grasping this opportunity. Yes, quite a few of them had blogs at this election, put out some videos on YouTube even, but it bore every hallmark of being something they'd been told they should do – yet, with the exception of one or two youth politicians, didn't have a clue how to.

Two interesting tools for filtering the US political blogosphere in a meaningful way here (via Poynter's E-media tidbits).

How bloggers beat the big broadcasters to UK Election News

A follow-up post from Mike Rouse on my post about UK bloggers vs broadcasters:

As one of those trawling the blogs I can assure you that we were indeed ahead because of the priceless information posted on blogs very quickly. Some bloggers had contacts within counts, others posted from mobile devices while it seems others used their crystal balls. Either way, it meant we got the news quickly. I was using feed readers and live bookmarks to keep up-to-date and made use of the Firefox extension that automatically refreshes pages for you (full post here).

As BBC Parliament is showing the entire 1997 election night, when Blair came to power, today, Mike also recounts his whereabouts on that particular night: "Without trying to make any dear readers feel old, I was but 13 turning 14 when Blair came to power in 1997."

Nah, that just makes me feel ancient. I was some eight months past 19 (going-on-90) on that night, when I found myself in a Scottish-Independence-supporter stronghold in Queensferry with Scottish sci-fi writers, Ken MacLeod, Ian Banks, a poet, whose name I can't remember, and my friend Solan (whom, like me, I suspect wasn't too impressed with either political alternative).

What I remember best from that night was fighting a desperate battle to stay awake, since some drunken football hooligans had kept me awake on the night coach from Brighton to Edinburgh (!) the previous night (what I wouldn't suffer for brilliant conversations and company in those days, even eleven hours on a coach – it was worth it though). So when they announced that mudslide victory for Labour I was just delighted by the prospect of finally getting some sleep...

Prosecutor calls for journalist to be fined for logging onto intranet of political party

The 'hackers' in Sweden's most recent 'Watergate', which saw several Liberal Party activists, and a journalist, unlawfully log onto the intranet of the country's governing party in the run-up to last year's election, went on trial this week:

At the end of the trial, the public prosecutor called for two of its central figures - Liberal Party press officer Niki Westerberg and Per Jodenius, former press secretary for the party's youth wing (LUF) - to be given suspended sentences. Comparing their actions to industrial espionage, the prosecutor said that it was particularly grave in the lead up to a general election and represented a threat to the entire democratic system... The actions of each of the three other defendants - Niklas Svensson, LUF's regional chairman Nicklas Lagerlöf, and young Social Democrat Niklas Sörman - were not considered as serious. The prosecutor has called for each of them to be fined... "My source told me that I had been given the details to dig up scandals, or news, about the Social Democrats," said Niklas Svensson (via The Local).

He added that he never used any information from the Social Democrat's intranet for a story, and, in general, never took instructions from his sources. Since the scandal Svensson has reinvented himself as a blogger-commentator-journalist, and he and fellow blogger Daniel Alsén blogged about the trial on Politikerbloggen (in Swedish).

The court is expected to announce its verdict on 27 April.

Politicians Not Welcome

It's tough being a politician in Second Life. Despite the allure of a fabulous new and PR-friendly marketing platform, it's not quite the controlled environment they are used to, where policemen and security guards swiftly can be called in to deal with 'undesired elements'. Hell, it's unlike any other environment most politicians are used to, and many have found that 'interacting with digitial users' didn't take on quite the form they had bargained for:

At the start of this week, The Guardian reported how 'Italians seeking respite in cyberspace from the surreal world of Italian politics were fighting plans by a minister to build a campaign headquarters in there.' A more unpleasant surprise awaited US Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards at the start of last week, when his Second Life HQ was vandalized by Republican Second Lifers and haunted by a feces spewing obscenity. Then of course there's was Le Pen's brand new HQ in the virtual world that was bombarded with flying pigs a while back (still, it must have compared quite favourably to Le Pen's frequent experiences of being bombarded with rotten eggs in real life).

John Edwards' Second Life HQ vandalized

"This is the modern-day equivalent of hippies freaking out the squares. You see countless news stories about this, over and over again: the gray humourless drones of political parties or corporations rushing to establish a presence in Second Life because it's the thing to do, only to find themselves staring directly into the collective Goatse.cx of the Internet's soul," wrote John Brownlee in Wired's Table of Malcontents, but one of his readers put it more bluntly in the comments:

"The way I look at it is that political idiots entered a realm that they do not and care not to understand. This would be like jumping in to World of Warcraft and expecting people to care about your political agenda... we just don't care."

Of course, politicians are neither the only ones, nor the first, who have met with 'violet' protests in this virtual world. CNET takes a closer look at Second Life 'grassroot activism' here.

The British Fredrik Reinfeldt meets, well... Fredrik Reinfeldt

What are they talking about? After comments like this, it was of course only a question of time as to when UK Conservative leader David Cameron would seize the chance to pick up a secret or two from the new Conservative Swedish prime minister, who came to power on a 'light blue Labour' ticket last autumn. I'm not sure if the picture was snapped during this week's visit to the 'daddy group' or the truck factory, but the discussion seemed to have centred on how to achieve a more 'balanced position', or huddling up as close as possible to the median voter as some would describe it: Reinfeldt administering advice and Cameron admitting to the UK Conservative Party's many failures, while the Press were spooked by the similarities between the two.

Reinfeldt's advice that Cameron should 'focus on finding solutions to voter's day-to-day problems' certainly brings many interesting discussion topics to mind (captions, anyone?) The meeting was of course widely reported, complete with grand mission statements and the usual gobblydygook, but I rather liked The Local's down-to-earth take on it...

Le Pen's new virtual HQ bombarded with exploding pigs

It was only a matter of time ...with the corporate world flocking to virtual worlds to evangelise about its products, and big media following close on the heels, the politicos were bound to arrive at some point. "Violent clashes have erupted" after Le Pen's National Front set up shop in Second Life, The Guardian reports today. Of course, this is not the first time Second Life citizens stage violent protests, as the story of virtual property magnate Anshe Chung illustrates.

So is Second Life the next big arena marketers and politicians need to conquer in order to stay on top of their game? The actual number of visitors and residents have been subject to some debate, and it's not an easy world to manoeuvre in, it takes a lot of time to adjust - time being a very limited commodity for some of us. It is, however, a great place for lectures, seminars and global education, just don't expect the virtual world to be a freehaven for all sorts of political persuasions - after all, Second Life citizens don't differ much from their real life counterparts.

Birdsong in Space

Fabulous headline from Svenska Dagbladet (in Swedish):
I'm not sure if the word pun is intended, but the surname of Swedish astronaut Christer Fulgesang does indeed mean birdsong.
Mr Birdsong is the first Swede in space, a fact heralded by The Local as "one giant step for Swedenkind." While he journeys to the International Space station, Mr Birdsong will treat his fellow space travellers to the 'space version' of traditional Swedish delicacies like dried elk meat, crispbread and gingerbread biscuits. "Funnily enough, our food list now includes a type of yoghurt developed in Sweden – a space yoghurt," the astronaut told The Local a month ago.

Only in Sweden

Where else can you read these two headlines on the same day: "One in four Swedes think astrology is a science" and "Drunken elk terrorises schoolkids"... it has to be Sweden of course. That lovely, but slightly wacky place across the border from my current whereabouts.

That Swedes are stupid, are hardly news to Norwegians, who have suspected that for a good many years, but I guess it's worth mentioning that the survey, which found such a large percentage of Swedes subscribing to the 'science' of how planets rule their lives, is based on a rather limited sample (1,000).

Still... only the day before these headlines ticked out of what was once Scandinavia's only empire, we could read about a Swedish astronaut serving up elk in space, a story later picked up by Wired Blogs (an American based friend tells me that Scandinavian stories on elks, or moose as they call them, are quite vouge among her American friends). The Wired story did however fail to mention that the surname of the innovative astronaut who has decided to treat his fellow space travellers to dried elk meat, crispbread and gingerbread means 'Birdsong' (just to add to the stereotypes here). That said, I wonder what kind of image foreigners who read Aftenposten in English have of Norwegians... the site tends to feature an awful lot of stories on elks, polar bears and royals...

Second Life learning

Imagine a world where you could get your Harvard education via your computer in Timbuktu, or vote and propose new amendments in the virtual city hall, without ever having to leave your armchair. Those were the key sentiments I took away from this talk (picture below) on how virtual worlds may impact on real life. I was particularly taken by these lines: "...by involving the citizens in cyberdemocracy they learn more about the system, building both consent and legitimacy for decisions they have taken a more active role in. The gains made in efficiency from adopting information technology are secondary to this benefit."

Off to Second Life

Virtual worlds are not normally something I'd have the time or inclination to play around with, but tonight I'm attending a seminar about The New Virtual Frontier in Second Life. The place has received a lot of media coverage recently, especially after Reuters set up shop there, and some of it has caused angry rebuttals from long-time Second Life residents, so I'll be a bit careful with how I phrase this: Swedish think tank Eudoxa claims to hold the first public policy institute seminar in the virtual world Second Life tonight at 7pm Central Europe time. That sounds like a bit of an adventure to me, and since I love adventures and am always curious about the new and untested, I couldn't pass up on this opportunity, even though I have two of my favourite people staying with me this weekend (which probably means I'm turning into a bit of a geek):

Okay, landed on the wrong side of the island where the lecture is held due to a bug of some sort, so one of the main organisers told me. Managed to walk to conference hall, but this life/avatar is all new to me so can't even walk straight and have absolutely no clue as to how to make my avatar sit down, ah... that's how to do it...

At this point I realise that my internet connection is simply not good enough to attend a lecture in Second Life and blog it at the same time. Besides, how do I turn on the sound, that is, not the background music, but the lecture? I did make one previous research trip to the lecture hall to make sure I would find my way there when the lecture was on, but there are many more obstacles for a newbie in this world to deal with than I had anticipated. For one, at times when I stand up, my avatar appears to scratch what would have been its groin, had it been a man, without me touching anything on the keyboard. Rather embarrassing that, perhaps a sign that the software was developed by men...

Still the quality of the software is pretty impressive, and though you do feel a bit like you are entering an alien world where the gravitation is such that you have to relearn how to do even the most basic things, like walking, it sure beats having to get on an airplane to catch an interesting lecture.

I expect I might be back for similar events in the future, but as my friends whisk me away for a rare weekend off work, I doubt very much I'd ever find the time to do more than attend the odd lecture in Second Life (notes on the lecture will follow later).

Update: a few impressions, and picture, from the event here

Skeletons falling out of the closet

The new Swedish government may have presented its first budget yesterday, but it is goverment members dodging the TV-licence and using black market services that is attracting the biggest media headlines.

Three Swedish government ministers have been hauled over the coals for not paying their TV-licences. Cecila Stegö Chiló, the culture minister, was forced to resign over this yesterday. Maria Borelius, the trade minister who resigned on Saturday, failed to pay her licence for a short span of time, but was largely brought down by revelations about her personal economy, such as paying a nanny cash-in-hand. Tobias Billström, the integration minister, who is on sick leave, has cited ideological reasons for not paying his TV-licence and said that he "dislikes the programs".

Today Anders Borg, the finance minister, admitted to paying his cleaner cash-in-hand as well, which led a commentator in Svenska Dagbladet to chant "It's raining ministers" (in Swedish) and Dagbladet (link via Vampus) to write "Government massacre continues" (in Norwegian).

However, in Dagens Industri today Johan Norberg points out that: "in a government that represents the people, at least 8 of the 22 ministers should buy services informally. Because almost 4 out of 10 Swedes say that it´s ok - when they are interviewed over the phone by a stranger from a polling firm. So if the two resigning ministers are the only ones who did it, this government has distanced itself from normal people - but for the opposite reason than the one the commentators talk about."