Jun 26 2003

Weblogging MPs

Published by matt at 21:34 under


5:17 PM, Mt. Vernon, OH


Given that my country of residence for the next few years is England, I found this story about a real politician with a real weblog (via Scripting News, via Lance Knobel on the BloggerCon 2003 weblog) rather interesting.


It turns out Tom Watson, Labour MP, has had a weblog for a while–since mid 2001, actually. Now, I haven’t read through it in any extensive way, but it seems like A) he actually maintains it (and not a poliflunky), and B) you could actually, directly or indirectly, infer a lot about him as a politician from his weblog.


It’s coming up on time for dinner, so like too many of my posts, too much of my reflection will have to wait for later. However, I wonder what we (educational/research webloggers) can learn from weblogging in the political sphere, and visa versa? Each clearly exists for different purposes at some levels, but on others their purposes are the same: to communicate information.


I’m looking forward to seeing more politicians taking this jump, and particularly interested in UK politicos. Politicians in the US have, for so long, been pandered to by the media, I suspect they will not feel driven to the WWW as a place to get their message out. That, coupled with the fact that so many Americans get their information through Murdoch’s FOX Evening NewsTM, the value in investing in the format will be… hm. I don’t know. I can see a weblog format as being much more personal in nature, implying a “fireside chat” of sorts that can soften even the most disgusting and eggregious of NEWS RELEASE regarding the next civil liberty being knocked over by a member of the House or Senate… that, and your typical Senator has at least one liberal arts graduate who can reshape all their releases into an MT weblog…


Call me a pessimist… I only see propaganda coming via daily posts on US politico weblogs. US politics and their interaction with the media just turns my stomach of late. The whole point was to point out a relatively interesting, positive weblog from a politician who has been doing it before it was “fashionable.”


Right. Dinner. I’m always irritable right before dinner.

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