Keyboard democracy
| 19:00 UK time, Friday, 10 December 2010
In the interests of transparency i should say that Bill worked in various roles in Â鶹Éç News from 1973 to 2008, including and was once my boss at 5 Live. Here's his piece...
Worried....
This is not a thesis, a forecast or a warning - more of an anxiety.
Sitting at a computer screen in the UK this week, there are threads emerging from the way "social media" is being used that worry me.
The "old" politicians are still trying to get to grips with these new forms of communication, after Barack Obama's embracing of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in his presidential campaign. He still has 6m followers, though nowadays the tweets have the feel of a White House machine, rather than the genuine Obama fingers.
What I'm worried about is an increasing sense that online campaigns and individuals outside our parliamentary system feel they have now a "democratic" position above and beyond the paper processes that produce elected governments and their trappings.
And I suspect the Obama administration is worried about how to square a wish for transparency with an urge to stem the flow of WikiLeaks as quickly as possible.
The entangled threads of the past week have seen WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange taken into custody in London; the WikiLeaks site apparently forced off various servers; Mastercard and Visa blocking online payments to Wikileaks "pending further investigation into the nature of its business"; and then web-co-ordinated attacks on the two credit card giants hitting their transactions worldwide.
This was followed by concerted action, by who-knows-how-many people, to tie up websites for PayPal and Sarah Palin.
In all this, it would seem only one Judge has been involved - Judge Howard Riddle, the British judge who denied Assange bail.
There are, as yet, no charges pending against Assange in the States, though Sarah Palin believes there should be.
On 29 November, she posted on Facebook thus: "He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?".
In the new world of social media "democracy", 9,580 people "liked" the post. 2.5m "like" Sarah Palin.
In the UK, we're in the middle of an annual period of television "instant democracy".
Telephone votes have seen Essex singer/mother Stacey Solomon crowned Queen of the Jungle in the mock-survival-reality show I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here; Ann Widdecombe, former Conservative minister and Privy Counsellor has (finally) been voted off the ballroom contest for non-professional dancers, Strictly Come Dancing; and the nation awaits a decision on the winner of the pop singer talent show The X-Factor, in a series which always produces allegations that the telephone voting is somehow manipulated - allegations that are always vehemently denied. I wonder if you've ever voted in any shows like this?
In more important decisions, Members of Parliament voted on the Coalition's Government's plan to let English universities charge up to £9,000 a year to students, effectively removing most direct government subsidies from the system, and trebling the size of loan many students will have to repay.
The vote was not electronic - the tradition is that the Speaker first calls for support or opposition to a motion to be indicated by shouts of Aye or No.
Then comes the order to "clear the lobbies", and a "division" takes place, with MPs physically leaving the debating chamber through "Aye" or "No" lobbies to be counted by clerks and tellers.
This process must seem more than bizarre to a generation growing up with smart phones, online games consoles, phone and text votes, who are accustomed to expressing their opinions or endorsing others' at the touch of a keypad, sometimes on an hourly basis. In the end, the Government's core proposal was approved by a majority of just 21.
But whose opinion matters most on this issue?
Is it David Cameron, returned as an MP by 33,973 voters in Witney at the General Election in 2010; elected as Conservative leader by 134,446 postal votes from party members; and emerging as Prime Minister only after persuading Nick Clegg and 56 other Libdem MPs to join the Coalition?
Or is it Sarah Brown, wife of former Prime Minister Gordon, who tweeted her husband's thoughts to 1.2m followers thus on Tuesday "I'm in favour of the widest possible access to university, not because I'm against excellence but because I'm in favour of it. Gordon Brown"?
Or is it actor and comedian Alan Davies, followed by 190,000, who on Thursday wrote "I'm watching a riot live on TV...articulate middle class students who have been bashed up by plod telling the tale. Top protesting".
Or is it former Daily Mirror Editor Piers Morgan, the man set to replace Larry King at CNN in the New Year, who tweeted "Remember every Lib Dem who now breaks their election promise not to increase student fees, and kick them out out at next election" to 73,000 followers?
Or perhaps it's the National Union of Students, liked on Facebook by more than 10,000, organisers of Lobby 2010, which saw fires burning in Parliament Square as MPs voted?
On the other side of the coin, the Conservatives can still point to a popular vote of 10.7m in the General Election - not an "official" mandate, but one which trumps most social media stats.
And, in the UK, active use of social media is mainly the province of youth and and what we used to call the chattering classes - thus probably carrying an inherent left-wing bias.
The continuing WikiLeaks saga has the old political establishment very worried about an open web; some equate it with anarchy, and one senses more politicians than Sarah Palin are muttering "something must be done".
However, governments also like the savings in costs that can be made by having citizens online and connected via the web. It's easier and cheaper to collect (and change) taxes, sort out benefits, and much more.
In Europe, they're vying with each other to drive new levels of broadband penetration in international league tables.
The risk inherent in this drive is to the democracies we currently value. We may be someway from online elections, but we are very few clicks away from having online electorates - electorates that might not always like their opinions and views being mediated by elected representatives, chosen on paper every few years.
And citizens that can be led into taking action online, in ways that make me worried there'll be no time for reasoned discussion and debate - until it's too late
