27 Mar 2014 | News and features, Politics and Society, Religion and Culture, United Kingdom, Young Writers / Artists Programme
There are people out there who claim they can make things go viral. They are lying.
They are the digital version of economists, confidently asserting they can predict the behaviour of millions of barely-rational people, when nothing of the sort is possible. You can maximise the chances of something going viral but you can’t guarantee it, let alone predict it.
In the last few months, I’ve written about a dying man being deported by the Home Office, the decision to secretly restart removals to Somalia and a Home Office document which admits they have no idea whether their drug policy is working. They do fine, but you can often watch stories you spent time working on go out to the usual liberal minded folk, whirl around for a bit and then die a respectable death, with little to no impact on the wider world.
And then occasionally something explodes. A week and a half ago I saw Frances Cook, of the Howard League for Penal Reform, a brilliant but little-understood campaign group, tweeting about justice secretary Chris Grayling’s Incentives and Earned Privileges scheme, which was brought in last November.
It was part of his attempt to look tough on prisoners, the latest chapter in a seemingly endless cycle of tabloid coverage of supposedly cushy prisoner life, followed by a draconian clampdown by the secretary of state and stubbornly high reoffending rates.
Justice secretaries, like all ministers, are far more interested in the views of tabloids than academic researchers. If they valued the latter, they would build small prisons in the local community so inmates kept regular contact with their families, structure internal learning programmes to improve literacy levels and up-skill people so that they don’t rely on crime once they get out. But they don’t listen to researchers. They listen to tabloids, so they end up trying to flex their muscles, which in Grayling’s case is not an agreeable image.
The purpose of the scheme is to make prisoners earn spending money through discipline and participating in their rehabilitation programme. They can then use this (tiny) amount of money to buy things like toothpaste, underwear or, if they want, books.
Core to this project, Grayling says, is the idea that parcels from family and friends must be stopped. The justice secretary has many reasons for this. Perhaps it is to stop gifts making his earned privileges redundant. Perhaps it is because it is impossible to securely scan all the parcels. Perhaps it is because the parcels are sometimes used for contraband. It is hard to tell, because he is prone to using any number of these excuses as he goes.
But regardless of the reason, the Ministry of Justice banned prisoners receiving books or magazines by mail. Books were now considered a reward, not a tool for rehabilitation.
I asked Frances to write politics.co.uk a blog post on it, with a focus on the restrictions on books. But I was in no particular rush. I figured it would be one of those worthy pieces we publish, which get a bit of an airing and some decent traffic for a couple of days, then respectably fade away. I didn’t bother writing a news story about it, given the policy was actually four months old. When she asked what the deadline was, I was rather flippant. “Whenever really,” I told her. “It’s not very time sensitive.”
I published it late on Sunday morning and went off for lunch. The first sign that something had happened came when I went to the loo and checked Twitter (always a dangerous juggling act). Billy Bragg and Caitlin Moran were tweeting it. ‘That’ll get some traffic in,’ I thought.
By the time I went to bed it has been retweeted by the great, the good and everyone in between. A petition had been launched on Change.org.
I talked to Frances on the phone. For someone from her perspective, it is strange when this happens. Groups like the Howards League deal with stories about people being killed in prison and no-one gives a damn. The campaigners and prison officer groups I’ve talked to have been taken aback by the reaction to the piece, and often not a little frustrated. Perhaps people should be more concerned about the fact that inmates are being locked up two-to-a-cell, forcing them to go through the grim humiliation of going to the toilet in front of each other, one told me.
Their problem was mine too: Why do some issues, which might ultimately be more trivial than others, go viral?
In this case it is to do with the almost-mystical power of books in the middle class imagination.
There is a trivial side to this – the bourgeois pretention around books as idol-worship, typified by the stigma around marking your spot by turning the corner of the page. It is a fetishisation of the book, as if Waterstones were one of those Middle Aged tradesmen flogging you a strand of Jesus’ hair. It’s nonsense. Books are nothing but a machine, a tool to get information from brain A to brain B. They are beautiful, but it is a beauty which survives quite well when stuffed into the back pocket of a pair of jeans or covered in coffee stains.
The novel allows access to characters inner life in a way film never can. It is the most empathetic of art forms. Political books, from Paine to Orwell, weigh heavily in the battle of ideas in a way other mediums struggle to match. Even seemingly turgid course text books stand as a tribute to people’s capacity for self-improvement.
These are all vital functions of the book which inmates could benefit from. But for most of them, the importance of books is more sombre and rudimentary. Two-thirds of ex-offenders have the literacy and numeracy levels of an 11-year-old. What they need, more than anything, is young adult literature – appealing, simply written novels which can improve their core reading skills. Perhaps that sounds patronising. It is not meant to be. It is meant to be realistic.
Supporters of the Grayling policy in government told me I was kicking up a fuss so that some mugger could get his hands on a Harry Potter book. I accepted that proposition proudly. It is important that he does. It will do nothing to encourage him mugging someone and might just have a small role in discouraging it.
Anything that stands in the way of a prisoner reading anything is a lunatic act. It costs them more and it costs us more.
This article was posted on March 27, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
25 Mar 2014 | Digital Freedom, Events
(Image: Shutterstock)
Index on Censorship, in association with Doughty Street Chambers, invites you to attend our high-level panel discussion asking who runs the internet?
At a moment when the revelations on NSA and GCHQ mass surveillance are opening up a wide debate about our digital freedoms, our panel will discuss how free the net is today, and the main challenges that lie ahead. In the next couple of years, major international summits will debate new rules on internet governance, and whether to adopt a top-down approach as favoured by China and Russia, or maintain a more open, multistakeholder networked approach. Meanwhile, from the EU to Brazil, reactions to the Snowden’s revelations of mass snooping suggest there is a growing risk of fragmentation of the internet, with calls for forced local hosting of data.
We are delighted to be hosting speakers:
Bill Echikson – Head of Free Expression EMEA, Google
Richard Allan – Head of Europe, Middle East and Africa, Facebook
Tusha Mittal – formerly a correspondent for Tehelka and currently a Fellow at the Reuters Institute, Oxford University
Kirsty Hughes – CEO, Index on Censorship
The panel will make short introductory remarks ensuring plenty of time for a lively Q&A session.
The event will be held at Doughty Street Chambers (53-54 Doughty St, London WC1N 2LS) on Wednesday 2nd April 6-7.30pm, followed by a drinks reception. To RSVP please fill in your details here. If you have any questions please contact Fiona Bradley ([email protected]).
25 Mar 2014 | Americas, Europe and Central Asia, Events, United Kingdom, United States
Over a year after the Leveson report came out, regulation of the British press is still a question of intense debate. Meanwhile, the NSA/Snowden revelations – and the related detention of David Miranda (supported recently by British courts) – open up core questions of how investigative and public interest journalism can function in a world of mass surveillance. In the US, while Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger rightly praises the first amendments, Obama himself has a growing reputation as a president who has pursued sources and journalists through the courts.
Join us on a Google Hangout with Guardian Digital journalist, James Ball (now based in New York) and LA Times London correspondent, Henry Chu, hosted by our Editor, Online and News, Sean Gallagher for a lively debate around the media freedom on either side of the Atlantic.
The recording will be broadcast live via Index’s Google+ and YouTube accounts from 10am (EST)/ 2pm (GMT) on Wednesday 26th March. Get involved in the discussion on our Twitter feed and website. Visit the Google+ page here and the YouTube page here.
26 Feb 2014 | Academic Freedom, Comment, Guest Post, Religion and Culture, United Kingdom
Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines song has been banned in at least 20 student unions after it was released in March 2013. (Image: George Weinstein/Demotix)
I consider myself to be privileged to have the job that I have-I am a university lecturer who teaches Popular Music Culture to undergraduates and post-graduates. This is a subject that is popular among students because the majority of them like music and have an opinion on it. What I love most about my job is the range of interesting conversations my students and I have around popular music and its impact on culture, politics and society.
Music is ubiquitous and it touches people of all cultures, classes and creeds in a multitude of ways. What comes out of the discussions I have highlights both the joy and the anger it can evoke. Some of those discussions can bring forward some sensitive, awkward and challenging opinions and issues but what they do succeed in doing is highlighting issues that we as adults can explore, discuss, argue, rationalise and at time agree to differ on-but in a mature and accepting way, appreciating that we are all different.
So during my lecture on popular music and gender back in November 2013 I opened up a discussion around Robin Thicke’s summer release “Blurred Lines”. I feel no real need to go into any great detail about the fastest selling digital song in history and biggest single hit of 2013. Why? Because the controversy surrounding this song, such as misogynistic positioning with “rapey” lyrics that excuse rape and promote non-consensual sex and, among many other accusations, the promotion of “lad culture”, is abundant on the internet.
My students’ views on this song, and accompanying video mixed with both females and males defending the song and Thicke’s counter argument of it – promoting feminism, it being tongue in cheek and a disposable pop song – to those who, again both male and female, just wanted to castrate him for putting women’s rights and equality back into the dark ages.
Now the scene in the lecture theatre had been set I wanted to garner from them views on what I considered to be equally, if not more important – the issue that over 20 university student unions in the UK had banned the song from being played in their student union bars and union promoted events. This includes the prevention of in-house and visiting DJs playing it on student union premises and ,in some cases, the song not being aired on student union radio and TV stations’ playlists. In their defence the majority of these universities decided to ban after complaints from some of their students, but I am yet to determine whether all these universities reached this decision after an open and democratic process of consensus through voting or otherwise.
What I did find interesting among the many statements from presidents and vice-presidents of the student unions was one given to the New Musical Express, in November 2013, by Kirsty Haigh, the vice president of Edinburgh University Student Association.
The decision to ban ‘Blurred Lines’ from our venues has been taken as it promotes an unhealthy attitude towards sex and consent. EUSA has a policy on zero tolerance towards sexual harassment, a policy to end lad culture on campus and a safe space policy-all of which this song violates”.
However what Haigh does not go on to explain is exactly how this song does that. I am also intrigued by the comment about a policy to end ”lad culture” as Haigh does not allude to a clearly defined set of parameters specifying what counts as ”lad culture/banter”. One might ask if identifying a specific gender (lad) is this not targeting and discriminating against that gender?
I am struggling to find what constitutes ”lad culture” as opinions differ, however the National Union of Students’ That’s What She Said report published in March 2013 defines it as: “a group or ‘pack’ mentality residing in activities such as sport and heavy alcohol consumption and ‘banter’ which was often sexist, misogynistic, or homophobic”. But does lad culture equate to sexual harassment-is there a connection or is this creating guilt by association? Some critics claim that ”lad culture” was a postmodern transformation of masculinity, an ironic response to ”girl power” that had developed during the noughties.
Allie Renison’s article Blurred lines: Why can’t women dance provocatively and still be empowered?, published in The Telegraph in July 2013, states that “Teenage girls and grown women spend countless hours confiding in each other about the finer details of physical intimacy, and I can safely say that even without a sex-obsessed pop culture this would still be the case.”
This has to some degree been confirmed by one of my students who is a member of the university girls’ hockey team and girls’ football team. She says that they go out as a group, taking part in activities such as sport and heavy alcohol consumption and banter which is often sexist and misandry and involves intimate commentary on the male anatomy and men’s sexual prowess.
So would that then constitute “ladette” culture or “girl power” culture? Do EUSA have a policy to end ladette culture on their campus?
But this isn’t really the core issue here; the issue is around censorship on campus, what constitutes a fair and balanced approach to these issues and where you draw the lines. Thirty years ago student unions were complaining about, and rallying against, censorship-now they are the ones doing the censoring. So where does this leave the issue of censorship?
Starting with music, has Blurred Lines been singled out or do those twenty university student unions have a clear policy on banning songs that might include Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up, Jimi Hendrix’s Hey Joe (condoning the shooting of women who cheat on their men), Robert Palmer’s Addicted To Love (the lyrics could be seen to suggest date rape), Rolling Stones’ Under My Thumb, or Britney Spear’s Hit Me Baby One More Time? The list could go on and on, including songs that incite violence, racism or revolution. Do student unions around the country have concise and definitive lists of songs that should be banned or censored or is it a matter for a small group of elected people? And when you leave a group of people to act as moral arbiters then how do you control their decision making power?
Did we not collectively settle this matter in the 90s? Didn’t we conclude that outrage over pop music is a music marketer’s dream and inevitably increases sales for the artist? Aren’t popular music lyrics supposed to be challenging, full of danger and ambiguity? And do we only stop at popular music?
It could be argued that Mozart’s Don Giovanni revels in the actions of a rapist as does Britten’s Rape of Lucretia, and what of literature, do we ban Nabokov’s Lolita, Oscar Wilde’s Salome? Shouldn’t student unions be picketing concert halls, storming the libraries and art collections of universities and start demanding the removal of offensive material or at worst the burning of books and paintings in homage to a misguided Ray Bradbury envisioned cultural pogrom? If you are going to start banning or censoring cultural artefacts then please at least have some sort of consistency otherwise you leave yourself open to criticism.
So is this censorship? I would argue it is. If policy prevents a visiting DJ from playing a particular song at a student union bar, because some people do not approve of it, then that is censorship. I myself do not disagree with the criticism of the lyrical content of Blurred Lines, or condone them, though one could argue about their potential polysemic interpretation. What this highlights is perhaps an inconsistency in the processes of censorship by the student union.
Working in a university, I strongly believe that one of the core purposes of the academy is to create a space to allow young adults, on their journey of personal development, to explore their own opinions and prejudices, while considering those of others. A space where they can hear a multitude of views and draw their own conclusions from them; engage in constructive debate, work these issues through. Universities, of all places, should foster a culture of free speech and free expression wherever reasonably expected. Yes, there are always going to be challenges to what is appropriate and acceptable, whatever those challenges are the banning or censoring of material always has to be done within the law. That is how we develop as individuals and a society.
This article was published on February 26, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
