Ruminative Rumblings

Category: Media and political communication

  • Some learnings from the gifting space

    Some learnings from the gifting space

    I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about language and communication lately, particularly the largely-unexamined assumptions about language that lurk in the background of my particular branch of democratic theory. I’ll write something longer about that shortly, but broadly speaking I think of language in rather anthropological terms as fluid systems of social meaning-making,…

  • Hiding behind transparency: the UK government online information strategy?

    Hiding behind transparency: the UK government online information strategy?

    In the last ten years, one of the great things about being an academic has been the explosion of public information available online. While I miss aspects of browsing through dusty archives and stacks, it’s been an awrful lot easier and an awful lot quicker to go to the relevant department or ministerial website and…

  • Miranda and the policing of politics

    The David Miranda case is causing outrage for all sorts of good reasons: interference in legitimate journalism, abuse of power, excessive powers being granted in the first place, detention without advice, etc etc. Underlying all this, however, is a set of issues that is not being talked about so much: the deliberate undermining of politics…

  • Cultural representations, identity and “come home” policy

    This week I have a question more than a view to peddle or a conviction to push. And the question is this: does anyone out there know of research into the relationship between a nation’s self-presentations, its peoples’ sense of identity, and policy on national diasporas? Let me explain a little more. I’m a New…

  • Paralympics, media, and the fear of saying the wrong thing

    In our house, it became a nightly game during the Olympics to count the number of times athlete interviews started with (or consisted entirely of) a variation of the following: “So, how delighted are you with your medal?” “Oh, absolutely delighted…” Really? Do tell. The contrast with the Paralympic Games has been striking. Interviews have ranged…

  • Keeping up with Jones et al.

    It’s not that long since I became a dedicated citizen of cyberspace. A bit like an apathetic voter, I’d dabbled for years because I thought I should, but I was always wary, partly due to privacy concerns, partly because I’m shockingly busy with work and family, and partly because I had no time for the…