Last night's debate on political blogging in the Senedd proved to be as informative and entertaining as we had hoped. Speeches by Peter Black, Eleanor Burnham and Betsan Powys were very hard acts to follow, provoking laughs as well as making serious points, yet Matt Wardman and Annabelle Harle both managed to do so well, hitting the mark with some interesting persepctives. The questions from the floor were also entertaining and challenging.
Where to see more
You can read some quotable quotes on The Beating Heart of It, see some video clips on Bethan Jenkins' blog, and view comments - although she wasn't there - on Valleys Mam.
An outbreak of agreement
There actually wasn't any real disagreement amongst the panellists - I think everyone agreed that blogging was a useful means of communicating and provided a platform for people who were marginalised from the media (especially given the lack of diversity in Welsh media) to have a voice. Where they differed was in how important they thought blogging was as a tool, and on the question whether abusive comments and unattributed posts bring blogging as a whole into disrepute.
And so, we'll carry on and hope that this blog provides readers with a useful source of information about social justice in Wales as well as a platform for discussion.
And thanks to ...
all the panellists and to Positif Politics and to all who contributed to a good evening.
E-mails from Kurdistan
6 hours ago
Posts
9 comments:
Thank you for your contribution to the event, and happy blogging!
Oh please Victoria .. were the people who were there (and indeed most of the blogsphere) really those "marginalised by the media" and representing Wales' diversity .. come on, at the end of the day isn't it really a very small group of self referential and self reverential anoraks!
I may well have been there, how would you have known!
>Oh please Victoria .. were the people who were there (and indeed most of the blogsphere) really those "marginalised by the media" and representing Wales' diversity
You're comment is dead right - the event was inside the political (and blogging) bubble.
But it is not (or shouldn't be) mainly about the people who were "there". The same criticism could be made of a committee meeting by any grant-making charity - but it would not invalidate what they were doing.
There were those there, however, who can (and do) help get the perspectives of those "marginalised by the media" across.
Here's one example of such a project:
Stories behind the stats.
Here's another one that I'm involved in:
SPCK News Blog.
Here's one written by someone at the sharp end:
Benefit Scrounging Scum
And here's one by somebody writing about changes in a tiny area in Belfast that I had never heard of:
Holylands Warzone.
And here's one that sourced the photograph that Gordon Brown used to convince the G8 to take more action on Zimbabwe:
Sokwanele.
Here is their Election Violence map, and their Flick-R photo feed.
And here is an article about Homosexuality in Lebanon.
The main stream media is just not fine-grained enough to do this stuff, or in some cases (e.g., Iranian media on homosexuality) just won't cover it so - yes they are marginalised by the media. The point about using a blog platform is that it is easy and allows self-publishing with no cost.
I'd suggest that the "anoraks massaging each others' egos" label doesn't really stick any more.
There's always more that can be done, but you can't just dismiss "most of the blogosphere". Try "getting out a bit more" :) .
Rgds and thanks for making the comment.
Matt Wardman
Well Mam, Mother is always right and your own blog says 'but I am out of Wales at the moment'. I can only believe what you way.
Thank you Matt - you have responded as I would have done except much better of course. I think the problem is that there IS a clique of self-referential bloggers on political gossip in Wales, but there is much much more out there.
Better on some things, perhaps - but I keep out of detail about Wales.
Touche Victoria lol and well remembered. I am sorry to have missed the event, but I did enkoy the clips that Bethan put up on her blog.
I am also glad that you will continue this blog. Sometimes its not the comments that you get that are important , but the issues that are raised.
I will be back on homeground soon ,but the wonder of the internet means I can still keep an eye on the Valleys.
Keep up the fight
>There actually wasn't any real disagreement amongst the panellists.
Bah! I say that statement proves we won!
And if you reply it will also prove that we won !
Heh.
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