Twitter, Trump and the distortion of the public sphere

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: Mon, Dec 4, 2017 at 7:31 AM
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Twitter, Trump and the distortion of the public
sphere
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>


Twitter, Trump and the distortion of the public sphere
The president’s social media meddling remind us of how a good furore can
turn an insignificant political party into a global concern overnight
By John Naughton
Dec 3 2017
<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/03/john-naughton-the-networker-trump-twitter-distortion-public-sphere-britain-first
>

In the 1930s, a maverick young journalist named Claud Cockburn resigned
from the Times and, with £40 borrowed from an Oxford friend, bought a
mimeograph machine (a low-cost duplicating machine that worked by forcing
ink though a stencil on to paper). With it he set up the Week, a weekly
newsletter available by subscription in which Cockburn printed news and
gossip that came to him from his diverse group of contacts in both the
British and German establishments.

From the beginning the Week printed stuff that the mainstream newspapers
wouldn’t touch because of fears of running foul of the Official Secrets
Act, the libel laws or the political establishment. Cockburn, having few
assets and a rackety lifestyle, proceeded as if none of this applied to
him. But people in the know – the third secretaries of foreign embassies,
for example, or City bankers – quickly recognised the value of the Week
(for the same reasons as they now read Private Eye). Nevertheless the
circulation of Cockburn’s scandal sheet remained confined to this small
elite circle – and its finances were correspondingly dodgy.

And then one day everything changed. In July 1933 the British government,
with Ramsay MacDonald as prime minister, hosted the London Economic
Conference to discuss ways of lifting the world out of the great
depression. The conference was a dead loss, but the official spin put on
its dismal performance was that “useful spadework” was being done.

Cockburn produced a special edition of the Week devoted to the conference,
reporting what was being said sotto voce by the delegates. The only
spadework being done at the event, he opined, was that of gravediggers. On
the day this appeared, the prime minister, white with fury, convened a
special press conference. He railed at the plotting and conspiracies that
were undermining the important work of the conference and held up a copy of
the Week as an example of the kind of filth he had in mind. From that
moment onwards, the financial troubles of the Week were over. Suddenly,
everyone wanted to become a subscriber.

What brought this to mind was the Twitter-induced disruption in the
“special relationship” between Theresa May and Donald Trump, the unexpected
beneficiary of which was one Jayda Fransen and her Britain First
organisation. Until the other day, few had ever heard of her. But then
Trump retweeted links to three anti-Muslim videos that she had posted to
YouTube and – bingo! – she and her little group were world famous. Trump,
after all, has 44 million followers. “GOD BLESS YOU TRUMP!” she tweeted.

So suddenly Britain First is a big deal? Er, no. One sourceestimates its
membership at around a thousand. Ms Fransen was arrested last month for
alleged public order offences she committed at a rally in Belfast in
August, where she addressed an estimated audience of 50 people. When she
stood for parliament for Rochester and Strood in 2014 she received
precisely 56 votes. When her colleague Paul Golding stood for mayor of
London, he received 1.2% of the vote, compared to Sadiq Khan’s 44%. And
Britain First seems to be a bureaucratically challenged organisation. It
was deregistered by the Electoral Commission recently for failing to
confirm that its registered details were correct and neglecting to pay a
routine fee of £25 – which means that it cannot now put candidates on
ballot papers under the name Britain First.

In the real, physical, world, therefore, Britain First looks like pretty
small beer. In the realm of electoral politics it’s clearly a minority
player. On Twitter, however, it has 27,200 followers – which sounds like a
lot until you realise that the Women’s Institute has 33,500, the Church of
England has 74,000 and the National Trust has 772,000.

[snip]

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