Nick Robinson, BBC political editor and one of the first to venture into the melee of political blogging, says he has stopped reading most of the responses on his blog. If the presenter has decided to ignore the voice of his followers, should he still be considered a badge-wearing member of the blogosphere?
By the BBC’s own admission, social media is about engagement. Their blog moderation policy isn’t available online, but this is what they have to say about using social media:
Social Media strategy relies on the BBC engaging with users on the sites where they go .
In fact, it’s particularly specified that staff should participate online, rather than “broadcast”. Against such a clear distinction, Robinson’s decision to ignore his web audience seems a defiant contradiction. With blogs and other social media so obviously dependant on their interactivity to make best use of their function, he has ceased to be a blogger.
So, it would seem that the BBC blog network’s very mission statement, inviting its audience to participate and interact with a range of the corporation’s personalities , is a bit of a fib, in the case of Nick Robinson at least. Anyone hoping to bend the ear of our beloved broadcaster will find themselves typing into a void.
How, then, should the BBC reach its goal of offering the benefit of emerging communications technologies to the public? The decision to cast aside the feedback offered to an online writer is to discard the unique opportunities that a blog can offer. Not only can we learn of the effect of our writing upon an audience, but we also have the chance to benefit from a mass of feedback.
Making his comments during a panel discussion on whether 2010 would see the first social media election, Nick Robinson struck the tone of a generally sceptical panel. Chair and Today presenter Evan Davis clarified that a ‘social media election’ might be the combined efforts across Twitter, Facebook and blogs to campaign, deface Tory posters and destroy slogans to affect the outcome of the election on a major scale.
Though the majority of the audience had heard about the panel discussion itself through new media (and could therefore be taken to be new media evangelists), roughly 75% reckoned the new TV debates would swing voters over new media. A quick show of hands in the RMM office shows we agree.
So 2010 may not be the first new media election in terms of direct effect. But as we’ve already said, social media in its various forms is clearly an online vehicle for change in the real world, and is a useful tool to democratise elections this year.
It’s simply not true that – by refusing to engage w/ his audience – Nick Robinson has “ceased to be a blogger.” Several high-profile bloggers (Seth Godin, and John Gruber spring to mind) don’t even accept comments. And even Engadget has been known to shut off comments once in a while.
Bear in mind that the audience comments on the BBC are so inane that they’ve spawned their own fan club, and that some of the commenters are probably insane.
Just taking a look at the comments (301 at present) on his latest post, I find these gems:
etc.
I don’t disagree, Mat, that a refusal to respond to blog comments demands that one hand in their ‘blogger’ bus pass. However, what I think Shona has highlighted is the evolution of blogging: some bloggers have too big an audience and are not so much engaged in the conversation so much as they are either commentators on the conversation or are the ones beginning the conversation.
However, whether the author reads and responds to comments or not, I do think that if one is to genuinely consider what they do blogging then there should still exist a response mechanism, even if that response mechanism exists purely for the readers to discuss, debate and further the conversation.
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