I think my point about social media is more to do with how journalists use it. Or people who write opinion pieces for a range of right-wing publications. Social media storms and Twitter storms and pile-ones didn’t exist last time Labour were in office. The media landscape was different. Was the door between Google and the Conservatives, the top level of government, open as fluidly as it is now for example? That control of information, the control of the narrative. The right have weaponised technology and used it to drag things to the right, which has seen journalists go with them for various reasons,
There was also no GB News and the like back then. UKIP were a fringe group. I think Facebook was still quite new in 2008. I don’t think older people were on it then, it was more young people posting photos and personal information and messages and writing on walls. And then they gravitated towards Instagram a bit further down the line, when parents started posting on Facebook.
My point is sort of this - no Labour leader has governed in a truly social media age. The right own the newspapers and the social media platforms. A big chunk of the battleground going into elections now, and when in office, is online. You notice this when you log off for a while. You think the stuff you read on Twitter is what everyone is talking about but it isn’t really. How many people are actually bashing stuff out on Twitter all day? Compare that to how many journalists are on there, as a percentage. That’s the world they live in, all the blue ticks talking to each other and liking their own posts.
Those journalists and opinion writers live no more in the real world than the politicians and business owners and property owners that govern us, hence when things move to the right they are going along with it because they only talk to each other or their kids’ friends’ parents in posh supermarkets. They are actually responsible for quite a lot of this damage IMO. This wreckage we have to sift through every day.
They’ve spent over a decade trashing anyone who holds a different opinion. The politicians and the news media have become absolutely relentless in crushing ALL opposition and dissent, to the point where now we’re watching the leaders of the two main parties arguing about the practicalities of adopting a flagship BNP policy.
I think it was the SNP who called it out for what it is yesterday lunchtime, no others did as far as I’ve read. It’s another reason why Lineker is headline news. Those writing for newspapers and presenting current affairs shows can quote Lineker and pontificate about whether what he says was right, because it means they don’t have to give their opinion. “Wow, Lineker said the 1930s!” Well, yes. He’s right to. But we don’t have that. We don’t start from a place of fact. But these people shape opinions and shape the public consciousness.
Another ramble, sorry. But I do think this stuff matters. What has happened this week is a nadir. It’s a cesspit. It tells us a lot about what’s happened over the past 10-15 years. The world is insanely different now to what it was when Blair first won, and in 2008.
And still, nobody is talking about 13 years of brutal, ideological austerity.
Yeah, I know what you mean, and I agree, I was just providing additional points etc.
I just mean more that when social media really took off for all age groups, and even up to the brexit vote, everyone was still largely using only facebook, from what I can remember. The rise of Instagram, tik tok, and whatever else have diluted the effect the right can have on other users. Same with Whatsapp too, it's took people away from messenger (which requires a facebook login). Nearly everyone I know who first moved from myspace to facebook, or who just started on facebook as a mid 20's-30's has since almost ditched it. Some of the right have ditched it too, but gone to more "underground" platforms, full of conspiracy nuts, which most will never see (which is good, they can stay there).
Journalists do use SM, but now the media options are more varied/ less limited, and people are less likely to be almost forced into looking at media they don't really like etc. It's not like the old days where most news was print news, which was heavily biased, it's just as easy to get news from a source similar to how you think, or you can use twitter etc to tailor that (to a degree).
I'm not fussed about GB news, the centre and left don't watch it, and neither do the right really, only the far right. It's good that they watch that, it stops them from going mad on other news sources. The way I see it is they're just moving to narrower and narrower sources, which are sources that 90% of people will give zero credit to.
In 2005/6 nearly every person mid 20's was on facebook (most migrated from myspace), and by 2008 that had moved on to 30's and 40's. By 2010 it was everyone, from what I can remember. You're right about the news sharing mind, that wasn't happening much in 2005-2008, but all facebook is now is ads, news pages and people sharing crap, it's not really an app where people post what they're doing day to day, like they used to. This is why I don't bother with it now, used to post nearly every day, now post something maybe 5 times a year.
I don't think JC/ Labour knew what to do about SM, they seemed a bit out of touch with it, but the Tories really knew what to do with it, and especially vote leave in 2015. They specifically used it to nail the voters who they could turn, as they were the only voters worth spending budget on (a lot more bang for buck). It was clever from vote leave to be honest, I'll give them that. I think Labour and other parties have since learned from this, they seem more in touch, and more modernised, and they have to be.
I think things are changing in a way, where before people were kind of forced into seeing far-right crap all the time, where as now, you only need to see a lot of that if you actually want to (or if you want to go and fight it), and you can effectively fill your news with things more in line with how you think.
People aren't mentioning Austerity now, as they've done even worse since the main brunt of that in 2010-15. I can sort of get reigning the budget in from 2010-2015 etc, and Labour would have had to cut back also, but they way the Tories did that was poor of course. What they've done since Cameron (or even May I suppose) went though is an absolute joke, even by their low standards, and I think the vast majority of people have had enough of it.
If (when) Labour absolutely batter the Tories in the election, the Tories will have to soften up a hell of a lot to get votes back (Sunak knows this), and I think this will soften the right media up too. They tried the far right thing, thinking brexit was a rise of the far right, but it isn't, it's just made most realise the far right are just a small, and vocal minority, who are full of ****.
