Just in time for the announcement of the September 7 Federal Election date, the ABC launched a local edition of Vote Compass to help people learn which of the parties’ policies sits closest to their own position on the most talked about political issues.
My place on the Compass was absolutely no surprise to me at all, how about you?
What news story/commentary/analysis has grabbed your attention lately?
As usual for media circus threads, please share your bouquets and brickbats for particular items in the mass media, or highlight cogent analysis or pointed twitterstorms etc in new media. Discuss any current sociopolitical issue (the theme of each edition is merely for discussion-starter purposes – all current news items are on topic!).
Categories: media, parties and factions
QOTD: on the blaming of progressive scolds/shamers for the rise of Trumpists 
Media Circus: 4chan meltdown has begun #electionday edition 
QOTD: @DigbyParton on who Americans trust less than politicians 
Media Circus: Parliament Resumes Edition 
Completely as expected, found it quite funny, actually đ
I couldnât believe this ârebrandingâ of the Sapphires DVD, although kudos to Chris OâDowd for his response:
Via the Age
Ah yes, weâve been discussing that on the Debora Mailman Friday Hoyden thread.
I found it an interesting exhibition of how OâDowd being engaged with the Twitterverse meant that he got a heads-up from fans long before it would have crossed his agent/managerâs radar, and he was able to read up on it and respond promptly to various tweeps long before a journalist got anywhere near the story, thus he was prepared for the journos when they called.
Brickbats to The Daily Telegraph, for running an anti-Labor opinion piece on their front page. Score no points for bias-free reporting, do not pass go, do not buy this paper. I mean, really?
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/election-2013/daily-telegraph-front-page-no-news-to-rudd/story-fn9qr68y-1226691275942
The Twitter boycott: will it be effective? Can Twitter be moderated?
Iâm in favour of the boycott: Iâm tired of hearing about women being barraged with ugly abuse and having no recourse. Iâm tired of hearing people justify abuse with âfreedom of speechâ and women being told to get a thicker skin. I just want to know will a âreportâ system work.
Iâm waiting to see how their new âReport Tweetâ button works once itâs rolled out the to web and Android platforms. Angus Johnston is cautiously optimistic that on the iPhone it looks like it will make reporting simple and specific (the specificity is important to make sure that it doesnât become a weapon FOR the abusers).
Why Most of the Proposed Twitter Abuse Policies Wonât Work, and Why the New âReport Tweetâ Button Just Might
The Vote Compass was down last night. I did it today. Apparently, the Labour party is a socially liberal party.
Ha!
That is a bitter laugh.
tigtog @ 5 â whilst it may have some effect on people with established accounts, it wonât have any effect on those who deliberately go out to troll people and just generate throw away accounts. And if twitter wants to remain useful for those who are in genuine fear of persecution, thereâs not much they can do about that.
I agree that making it simpler and specific to report abuse is a good step forward. Hopefully like spam reporting they will also make it automatically block the person as some people seem to either donât know they can block people or are unwilling to do so.
Perhaps one thing which might also help is to be able to specify that you only want to see tweets who are n-degrees or less connected to your account. So you can still see replies close to your network but donât immediately follow. It would also stop most of the problems with people creating throw away accounts to harass.
As for expecting Twitter to moderate communications? I donât think thatâs ever going to happen â it just doesnât scale and is very prone to error.
Some of the examples of harassing behaviour where I feel this reporting system will be of most use are with the sort of Twitter mischief which is going on with the skeptisphereâs Deep Rifts [TM], where some people on âone sideâ (who have careers/reputations within the community and some who are even speakers etc at cons themselves) are taking it upon themselves to flood conference hashtags with mockery where people on the âother sideâ are special guests, and who approvingly retweet parody accounts which use the names and avatars of people on the âother sideâ. At least it will likely lead to more timely suspension of the parody accounts which give the mockers a plausibly deniable distance from the harassment they hug themselves over, and some of them probably have sufficient sense of shame and self-preservation that they wouldnât want to start being as directly contemptible themselves as the parody accounts are.
I agree that moderation wonât scale â it would remove the immediacy that is Twitterâs most popular feature and also is most likely unaffordable. Adding a Linked-In or G+ style of connexions tracker might help give users more choice in whom they open themselves up to, without having to necessarily go fully private, which would be a good thing.
Third party solutions such as the Atheism+ Block Bot are a partial solution which other communities can adapt, since the creator made it Open Source. It wouldnât surprise me if a small market in custom Block Bot programs for other communities with a malicious mockery problem arises over the next year or so.
I wonder if it will. Accounts are quick and easy to create, and in practice its going to be hours before tweets are pulled down, by which time theyâve probably been retweeted (and when quoted probably wonât be removed).
Yep â I think about the only thing which will scale (and still have an open system that allows for anonymity) is to give people the tools to self moderate easily. Not to moderate what others can say, but better control over what they see.
I tried the Vote Compass today. I was surprised Labor and The Greens were so close together in the final chart.
I tried vote compass. My end results were surprising â Iâve always classified myself as a liberal who refuses to vote for the Liberals â in that it said ALP 60%, libs 51%, greens 48%. Whatâs the use of a tool that is so poor at discriminating? (Iâd like to see some SEM bars on those numbers, too).
One interesting thing about the positioning on the two axis graph is that it is close to collinear â that, although voter preferences are distributed across many axes, when viewed in these two, there is essentially only one dimension of difference.
(see http://ldp.org.au/quiz/graph.html?1212 for a similar example of plotting of main parties in Australia)
angharad @ 10 â me too. The vote compass also put me as sitting closer to the ALP rather than the Greens which surprised me a bit.
I tried the Vote Compass just now. I found it difficult to answer some of the questions accurately. For example, what do you ay when the question is ârebates for health insurance should be dependent on incomeâ, if you are a person who believes their should be no private health system, hence no rebate?
I ended up less left than the Greens on both axes.
Iâm a member of the Greens, and in real life find myself more to the economic and social left than my mates in meetings, and increasingly have become frustrated with the Greens commitment to mainstream appeasement. Odd.
I did Vote Compass, despite not being able to vote. I was 84% Green, 64% ALP and 37% L/NP. I was more âSocially Liberalâ that all the parties, but not quite as âEconomic Leftâ as the Greens, although my grey circle overlapped with them. Iâm not quite sure that is true, but like Keira I was stuck on some of the questions, like over the health rebate.
I came up 86% Green. I wonder if Iâm going more and more left because the âmainstreamâ is going further and further to the right.
In other news, politics just got classy (pardon while I chuck) : http://www.news.com.au/national-news/federal-election/palmer-united-party-candidate-to-host-election-party-where-you-might-get-8216lucky8217/story-fnho52ip-1226695675282 I wonder how the models feel about his assurances that partygoers âmight get luckyâ. Sounds like heâs serving them up on a platter of creepy.
Ermagerd â Tony Abbott: âNo one ⌠is the suppository of wisdom.â
I dunno, Tone, youâd count. You sure give me the shits.
I donât think it would matter where on Tony Abbott you put that suppository, I donât think any wisdom would come out.
I think heâs more in need of the worldâs biggest Mintec or Gastro-Stop or some such, to dry up that endless source.
I just think the comment shows where Tonyâs keeping his head most of the time.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/13/tony-abbott-candidate-sex-appeal
Tony Abbott â the candidate who appreciates women for everything they can do⌠bearing children, ironing shirts, and being eye candy.
Megpie â only most of the time?
Pity is, having it so firmly planted hasnât muffled his voice any.