O’Conall Street

It is Irish News day on O’Conall Street. Article below.

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The internet can be bad for business and all too many companies and individuals are ignoring their online reputation. Here in the North many take the view that negative internet campaigns are a problem only big multinationals have to contend with yet all summer the mother of all online attacks on an individual’s reputation has been unfolding on the local web.

It has been very interesting to track the reaction to Iris Robinson MP, MLA’s comments on gay people. Whilst there is a small but well organised lesbian and gay lobby in the North of Ireland, reaction has far exceeded their standing and social and digital media has enabled this.

A decade ago it would have been very difficult to keep a debate going for this long as the traditional media would not have been able to accommodate the diversity of views or such a widespread response. The media traditionally favour representative groups over individual opinion because programmes or newspapers simply do not have the time or the space to allow a conversation to happen in an unstructured fashion. This is why organised lobby groups get a much greater share of voice. They provide the traditional media with a single spokesperson, tipping what we call the share of voice in favour of coordinated campaigns and organised groups at the expense of the individual.

What is so different today?

Firstly the media has changed. All over the world the broadcast media has become more audience driven. The Nolan Show is a case in point. Producers and editors are surrendering more control to the listener and allowing the conversation to continue off air via websites. The same is happening with the print press where a story is now more widely debated through online comment forums. Finally blogging and social networks allow individuals to act and campaign without having to secure airtime or even be quoted in a news story.

For example, just after Mrs Robinson’s first remarks two gay men, John O’Doherty and Andrew Muir used the traditional media to publicise actions they proposed taking to hold Mrs Robinson to account. Both are politically active and would have some experience of the media and the means to get themselves on air.

Others have been doing their own thing outside the traditional media to considerable effect.

Over the past six weeks two Facebook group have been created calling for Mrs Robinson’s censure and resignation. Between them they have recruited ten thousand members. A petition has been launched on the 10 Downing Street website asking the Prime Minister to reprimand Mrs Robinson and has collected over 12,600 signatures at the time of writing. A Google blog search shows over 1400 separate posts on the issue in the past two months and there are 15 YouTube videos condemning the Stanford MP. Given internet penetration is now at a very high level you can be sure more people have read the online material then listened to or read the local papers.

So despite the conservative nature of northern society it appears social and digital media is becoming increasingly popular and campaigns are spontaneously igniting when an issue captures the public imagination or triggers indignation.

It will be interesting to see if this influences the Assembly’s response over in the autumn. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 8:30 am and is filed under Business, Current Affairs, Politics, Public Affairs, Public Relations, The Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.