29 Jul 11 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
The potent reaction from both Chinese netizens and mainstream media in response to Sunday’s deadly train crash in Wenzhou has shown how the state’s propaganda machine is being increasingly challenged. The majority of Chinese media (including state-owned organs) this week ignored directives issued by the Central Propaganda Ministry not to report on the causes of the crash. Meanwhile, netizens’ use of social media, both to chronicle the disaster and to express their fury at the government’s handling of the situation, has led outspoken paper Southern Metropolis Daily to claim “no one, not even someone with the lowest IQ, would choose to challenge the public at this particular point in time.”
15 Jun 11 | Uncategorized
The case of Joanne Fraill, who faces jail for breaching jury rules by contacting a defendant through Facebook, is a reminder of the seriousness of the challenge to the British justice system posed by the internet. There is more at stake here than Tweeting about the private lives of celebrities. (more…)
16 Mar 11 | Index Index, minipost
New York City Ballet bosses have taken the decision to censor their dancers’ tweets. This move was announced after Devin Alberda ridiculed a major donor and wrote disparaging remarks about the director’s arrest for drink-driving. He has allegedly been “silently booing” benefactor David Hoch, who has donated $100 million to the company to fund the Lincoln Center theatre.
07 Feb 11 | Americas, Mexico
In Mexico, politicians have began using social media to campaign. But they seem baffled as to how to deal with angry voters.
State Governor Enrique Peña Nieto, potentially the next presidential candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), stopped using Twitter when voters got cranky. “Twitter demands more horizontal communication and more dialogue, more exposure to criticism,” says one blog that reviewed how Peña Nieto’s handlers chose Facebook, where a clique of fans is more acceptable.
But the one politician who has forged ahead on Twitter is Manuel Lopez Obrador, the 2012 presidential candidate for the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party. According to Rendon who measured both candidates use of Twitter, Lopez Obrador, is prolific in this medium. To date he has almost 56,000 followers.
If you’re measuring the number of followers, the winner is President Felipe Calderon, with 400,000 followers. But on Twitter, power and influence is measured by the amount of retweets and the winner in this category — despite having only 17,000 — followers is Gerardo Fernandez Noroña, a congressman for the leftist Workers Party PT. Fernandez Noroña’s appeal is that he argues with his followers; those who dare to contradict him are targeted with colorful language.
In the last two years, Twitter has become a big hit in Mexico. When it was launched few in Mexico thought it would take off. But in 2009, it had 32,000 accounts. By January 2010, this had grown to 146,000 accounts. By June 2010, the number had jumped to 1,835,372 accounts.
As media analyst and academic Maria Elena Meneses says, 2012, the year of the next presidential election, will be the year of Twitter in Mexico.
