Undercurrent

Evgeny Morozov’s Net Effect blog has quickly become one of my favourites, but I don’t think he is right about this effect of the Pirate Bay verdict:

All in all, thanks to today’s verdict – which I do hope would be overturned in higher courts – we should expect piracy to emerge as a full-fledged political issue, at least in Europe. This is no longer a debate about entertainment. As of today, it’s a debate about digital liberties. I think that the record industry does not fully grasp the level of political resistance it’s going to face from the young people in Europe and elsewhere. They remain ignorant at their peril.

I don’t see the resistance to and anger over the verdict turning into meaningful political action. Those defending “digital liberties” are unorganized, a very loose coalition without practical political experience. Of course, I hope I’m wrong…

Virginia Heffernan identifies a surprising effect of digital media on political rhetoric and style:

We tend to assume that the proliferation of digital media must be coarsening American speech and behavior. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. The threat posed by video parodists appears to have turned public figures watchful and cautious, like people who affect polite reserve in crowds for fear of being mocked or mugged. In the midst of so much digital chicanery, celebrity comportment may grow steadily more formal.

Hence, Barack Obama’s team floods the web with perfectly produced videos that are hard to parody. But is it really so devastating to be remixed? Does it matter that much?

For Americans aged 18-29, the internet and TV are now just as important as main sources for national and international news, a Pew survey finds. 59 percent of respondents chose these alternatives, while 28 percent cited newspapers as most important news source. In Sept 2007, 34 percent chose the internet (tip: Spiegel Online).

Among all age groups, the internet has overtaken newspapers for the first time (see chart).

The rise of the Net is of course the big tendency here, but newspapers holding their own or even gaining since September 2007 is also interesting to note. See the full report (pdf).

Related: A study of German web habits.

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Also new from Pew: A future of the internet study among internet leaders, activists and analysts.

This job opening might be interesting for some Undercurrent readers. I just received it via email, and thought it relevant to post it in its entirety here (extended entry). The Crimes of War book and website is an indispensable resource and deserves more attention. The writer/editor could be based in the UK or US and will be responsible for the day-to-day work on the website.

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The BBC is on to something very important with the season of programmes and debates called “White – is white working class Britain becoming invisible?”. Not only because of the topic, clearly important and controversial, and hence exactly the kind of material that public broadcasters should be concerned with. But also in the way it is done, as a series of originally produced documentaries on TV complemented with debate programmes also on TV and on the web, a website rich in material and also programmes from the archive on radio and TV. Using all the guns at its disposal simultaneously, a broadcaster can have an impact on society — dominate the public sphere, as it were — in a way that’s otherwise almost impossible in today’s fragmented society. Of course, that kind of power places a heavy responsibility on the producers. Here’s how they present “White”.

Accompanying the series is a fancy flash presentation of the debate. You have to click on the banner at the starting page to see it. Not sure if this really works in the context, but it looks good (tip: mymarkup.)