Blogging

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Blogging
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What is blogging?

• Definition  an online diary a personal
  chronological log of thoughts published on a Web
  page also called Weblog, Web log
• In 1999 the number of blogs was estimated at
  under fifty
• Blogpulse had identified 35,305,644, and
  43,259,622 by April 2007

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Some examples

• Silly bloggers

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Ian Dale (Tory)
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Peter Tatchell
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Bristols finest..
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Academic version of a good blog..
The advent of easy to use blogging tools is
increasing the number of bloggers leading to more
diversity in the quality blogspace. The blog
search technologies that help users to find
good blogs are thus more and more important.
This paper proposes a new algorithm called
EigenRumor that scores each blog entry by
weighting the hub and authority scores of the
bloggers based on eigenvector calculations. This
algorithm enables a higher score to be assigned
to the blog entries submitted by a good blogger
but not yet linked to by any other blogs based on
acceptance of the blogger's prior work.
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Harris Poll from 2005 (in US)

• over two-fifths (44 per cent) of respondents have
  read a political blog
• more than a quarter (27 per cent) indicated that
  they read them once a month or more
• just seven per cent of adults who are online have
  ever posted a comment on a blog site
• more than half (53 per cent) say they spend less
  than 15 minutes in a typical reading session

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So what makes a good blog?

• Number of hits/references
• Honesty/reliability
• Tagging/pictures
• Insight/something to add/something
  different/research
• Interesting/amusing
• Sparks a debate/ no of comments
• Probably not one about local politics

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Yeah, but who has the time to do all of that?.

• Elected, and paid to be a councillor, not a
  blogger
• Lots of meetings, case work, usual thing.
• Job
• Set up blog because it seemed a good idea at the
  time
• Most councillors wont have time to do a proper
  blog-job

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So about me.

• Green Party councillor
• The only one!
• Started blog after election 18 months ago
• Not an expert, merely a practitioner

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Benefits of a blog to me

• Cheap propaganda
• Opportunity to put a point of view
• Opportunity to reflect your personality
• Opportunity to reach voters that other means will
  not reach
• News that wont otherwise get published
• In US - used to raise money!

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Who reads it!

• Fellow councillors/ local politicos
• Other Greens
• Senior council officers
• Local media
• And a few local residents
• 98th on Jim Jepp's list of 100 best UK Green
  Bloggers

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Things to watch out for

• Legal stuff (not libelling people)?
• Chattering classes?
• One account of blogs in the New York Times
  concluded, Never have so many people written so
  much to be read by so few.
• Being pompous
• Already obselete?

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Issues Forums

• The Greater Bedminster Community Forum

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Issues forum key facts

• Greater Bedminster or Bemmy forum started March
  2007
• Set up to feed in to Greater Bedminster Community
  Partnership
• Started with programme of topics
• South Bristol pool
• Speeding
• Parking
• Bins
• Police
• 95 registered members so far

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Issues forum hot topics

• Speeding/safer streets
• South Street Park (including dog mess)
• Democracy
• Smoking ban
• Residents parking
• Planning issues (including planning gain)
• Phone masts

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Feedback so far (on noise issue)

• Without the Forum I wouldn't have known how to
  approach the issue of the pub, probably wouldn't
  have taken action (or not so quickly) and
  wouldn't have found out that others round here
  feel the same. I also wouldn't have had the
  offer from Alice to help get going with a street
  party / residents group. So, there's at least
  one success for one resident out of the Forum!

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Feedback from users

• There is some good public interest broadcasting,
  Charles Bolton quoting the planning list for this
  patch only is an excellent editorial service, and
  obviously isn't intended to get a response, just
  a weekly update

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Benefits to me as councillor

• Find out what people think
• Discuss things
• Pass on information
• Only partially successful