New.Journalism.Review

Tory right-wing MP, Dominic Raab, has had a busy summer emailing out Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.

Raab’s most recent target has been the police, or to be precise, the Police Federation. Raab believes the body, which was founded in 1919 by the government, spends too much money representing its members rather than fighting crime. So Raab sent out a few FOI requests to prove his theory.

The result? This article in the Daily Mail:

“Police have claimed they will be left with 16,000 fewer officers because of a shortage of funding. Yet according to Freedom of Information requests by Tory MP Dominic Raab, they are forking out £4,801,817 on paying for union activities. There are at least 99 police working full-time for organisations such as the Police Federation, which has crossed swords repeatedly with ministers in recent months.”

But there is one problem – the Police Federation isn’t a union and the police can’t go on strike. Part way through the Mail’s article we discover, “The Police Federation, which is technically classified as a federation rather than a union”…(the clue was in the name!) So what’s this about ‘union’ activity?  The Federation is no radical left-wing RMT, yet someone seems to be trading on confusion.

Raab is wondering if ‘union’ work is a good use of police time? And a good use of an MPs time is bombarding police forces with FOI requests, right? Raab has to remember he is an MP and not a journalist for the Daily Mail. In fact some of his constituents would prefer that he spends more time representing their concerns rather than promoting his own Thatcherite views in the press and undermining hard-working police men and women.

Raab hates unions though…just try getting him to say the words “European Union” and, as any TV cop would say, he has ‘form’ in this area. He tried exactly the same trick in a bid to ‘expose’ union activity at Revenue and Customs back in July, which received massive publicity in the Express. Perhaps someone from Surrey Police will kindly arrest Raab for wasting all our time.

Read more:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2028679/Hundreds-police-paid-7-million-union-work-instead-keeping-streets-safe.html#ixzz1VyGmUDdN

Police Federation highlight Raab’s errors

In November [2010] the Telegraph website ran the following:  Universities spending millions on websites which students rate as inadequate.

The intro  says it all:

‘Universities are spending millions on redesigns and maintenance of websites which students say are inadequate and lack basic services, the Telegraph can disclose.’

The report relies heavily on a comparison of data from responses of universities to FOI requests. Data returned was put into a spreadsheet and this was  followed by output into a neat data visualization. All standard stuff.

Pretty Maps

The interactive map is pretty cool and worth checking out.  I discovered that Bournemouth University spends £3.32 per student on its website – now, that’s a little fact to use down the pub. But look at Exeter  -  according to the Telegraph it spends £23.38 per student. Is that a lot? The Telegraph seems to think so…

Is it now time to be outraged by how much universities spend on their websites, at a time when tuition fees are rising? Or do we accept that a well-maintained university websites is pretty essential in the modern, market-driven, world of HE?

The villain in this story is University of Hertfordshire. It spent ‘£278,094 on a redesign by Precedent Communications and Straker UK, completed in May 2008” and is the  most expensive university website.

Other ‘expensive’ sites include those from:  Exeter University, Cranfield and  Robert Gordon.

All these universities were contacted to explain themselves. In fact, alarm bells should have been ringing at the Telegraph newsroom because all the explanations seem perfectly reasonable and some raised questions about the validity of the comparisons that were made.

University accounting structures differ a lot.  In some cases, website work is highly centralised (in other cases, costs are dispersed through different faculties and schools), some figures include staffing costs (s0me don’t), some figures include cost of hardware (some don’t) etc.

Data from the Telegraph appears to suggest all the money quoted is spent on public-facing sites, but most universities also have internal intranets for staff and VLEs for students. I’m not saying this data is wrong, but I wouldn’t want to be the journalist to check all of this on deadline day.

Apple+ Apple + Banana + Apple + Pear + Apple = ?

The Telegraph does its bit for journalistic transparency by publishing the full spreadsheet of data. But there is a warning here. I love reading a good ‘top ten’ in a newspaper.  It’s great to produce a table of data that ‘proves’ a political point – in this case that the public sector spends too much on web white elephants. But journalists must ensure they are comparing like with like.  And guess what? Sometimes this is impossible and you have to kill a story.

It’s fine to send out hundreds of FOI requests to public sector institutions (that’s the easy bit).  But the figures you get back need careful handling, cleaning and authenticating or else they risk becoming HIGHLY  misleading.  Ensuring that you are comparing ‘apples with apples’ is not easy. You don’t want any phallic-shaped bananas getting stuck in Excel.

The Hansard Society is an important organisation which promotes political participation.

It states: ‘Civic society is most effective when its citizens are connected with the institutions and individuals who represent them in the democratic process… There has never been more urgency for Parliament to engage with the public.’

It is clear that blogs, Twitter and Facebook can be used to enhance political participation and civic engagement. And there are plenty of ‘honourable’ examples of MPs (see what I did there) who have created blogs that are not only popular, but are important tools in allowing citizens to communicate and engage in politics.

Comments, yes please…

Regular blogger Lynne Featherstone, a Lib Dem who recently voted to triple tuition fees, has been provoking a lot of comments online. She produces a ‘popular’ blog (if being ‘popular’ is defined as being hated by a large section of your constituency) and some of her posts have well over 100 comments beneath. But fair play to her, even the most critical comments (and there are a lot) appear quickly on the site, once they have been moderated.

Lynne comes in at respectable no.8  in the Total Politics Top 30 MPs Blogs.

Another example of good blogging is that carried out by Labour MP, Tom Watson. Described as:  ‘A politician who has acquired far more prominence as a blogger and tweeter than he did as a minister.’ (Steve Richards, The Independent, 16th Dec).

Shhh! Don’t disturb the ‘Quiet Man’ of blogging

Unfortunately, there are those who get it completely wrong – such as Conservative MP, Dominic Raab. Who? That’s Dominic Raab, MP for Esher and Walton. This MP has as much prominence in the blogesphere as he does on the backbench in Westminster (almost zero). Yes, we know how many times you speak-up in Parliament. They Work For You.com tells us!

This right-winger gives IDS a run for his money when it comes to the title of ‘Quiet Man’ of politics. The silence on Raab’s blog is deafening.

It seems Raab doesn’t want any of his constituents commenting on his blog at all. Oddly, he states his policy ‘is to publish all comments, unless abusive or anonymous’. So why haven’t more people posted comments? Are they all abusive? Almost none appear… just contrast Raab’s blog with Featherstone’s.

Forgive me for speculating, but perhaps it is because he filters out those comments that he just doesn’t like. Just a thought. (We’ve… ahem…done a few tests!).

Should we be surprised? Probably not.  In August, Quiet Man  told the political site, 38 Degrees, – a site that embodies the principles of the Hansard Society – to REMOVE  his contact details from its very useful ‘Contact Your MP’ system.

Apparently,Quiet Man Raab was being awoken with messages from his constituents about REALLY IMPORTANT ISSUES THAT THEY ARE CONCERNED ABOUT! However, Raab had to come clean when it was revealed that  he was getting an average of just TWO emails a day through  ‘Contact Your MP’.

Social media is becoming an increasingly important marketing tool for universities. Most young people are heavy users of Web 2.0 sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. It would seem logical that these sites could prove fertile for the recruitment of new students.

The purchasing of banner advertising spots on sites such as YouTube is becoming particularly important for the post-92 university sector (the former Polytechnics) who cannot rely on research reputation alone to bring in the punters. But whilst conducting an old-style, ‘one-way’,  banner advertising campaign during Clearing is relatively low risk, this is not enough.

Social media = risk

It is expected that universities fully engage in the community aspects of social media and understand that online communication is a ‘conversation’ rather than a lecture.

But going deeper and fully engaging with social media sites is not without its risks. The potential ‘damage to brand’ caused by a negative comment posted online can paralyse university marketing departments. The carefully constructed image that universities portray in a glossy prospectus can easily be undermined with a careless post or foolish Tweet.

Even though universities may not engage fully with social media sites, it is clear that their university students post to these sites. On the downside, students are encouraged to see themselves as ‘consumers’ of education. When a student feels that they are not getting ‘value’ (whatever that means!) it’s common to vent anger on social networking sites. This should be expected, although certain lines must not be crossed when it comes to posting potentially libelous comments about individuals. This is becoming a serious problem in all sectors of education. One hopes that universities have a clear policy and encourage responsible attitudes.

‘Authentic voices’ required

Whilst it’s very easy to focus on the huge number of risks presented by social media, there are numerous opportunities. I have seen examples where students have posted videos on YouTube showing funny clips of life in halls of residence and positive ‘reviews’ of university trips abroad. These act to  give a very positive view of life at individual universities and useful online ‘buzz’. Communication is conducted in a language that fellow students understand and it is totally authentic. Any attempt to replicate these types of videos by marketing departments will appear contrived and are sure to end in disaster.

So increasingly it appears that media-savvy students naturally seek out ‘authentic views’ as they search for potential places to study. The Times Higher (Deciphering Code, 19-25 August) states that universities spend huge amounts of money designing slick official websites which present a carefully controlled image of the ‘student experience’.

But the report suggests what prospective students REALLY want to know is what current students think about their courses .Universities have known this for years, but these days it’s not good enough to just include the positive views of a few carefully selected photogenic students.

Universities getting it right

THE praised Bangor, Cambridge, Edinburgh College of Art, Exeter and Falmouth for engaging with social media. These sites often made links to Facebook pages where a ‘warts and all’ view of the university experience could be found.

A separate article in the same issue of Times Higher (All About Me, Dot Com 9th-25 August), suggests that universities are not encouraging academics to blog or create their own sites.

Mike Thelwall of the University of Wolverhampton examined academics’ websites. He told THE:

“One of the biggest trends [in the last five years] has been the move by university marketing departments to insist on standardisation for departmental and personal homepages.”

There appears to be an online battle to control the public image.  Where academics are  ‘allowed’ to blog it is often insisted that they use a strict template with a consistent university branding and use a specific CMS.

This tends to discourage technically-minded academics from blogging, although in many cases academics would rather keep their blogs separate from their official work. Those academics without the technical skills need support, but this is often not something that is encouraged.

Whilst universities will continue to invest in online advertising, marketing departments at universities can be very conservative – only adopting social media once it has been proven effective and with only limited risk.

More ‘trust’, less ‘control’

Clearly, it is important that universities understand  that it is the ‘authentic voice’ and real experiences of existing students and academics on social media and blog sites which are surely the most powerful marketing tool. They should be trusted and encouraged to experiment with online tools and universities need to relinquish a bit of control of access to media. Alternatively, we have a situation where fears of  ‘loss of control of the message’ prevent effective marketing to potential students.

I’ve co-authored the Top 50 Blog Techniques feature which appears in Issue 171 of Web Designer magazine (available now in all good newsagents in the UK  and in other countries). It contains 50 (count ‘em!) tried and tested tips to help you use: WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal and Squarespace.

Joomla! isn’t the most intuitive CMS, so many of my tips are to do with speeding up the process of adding content, locating module positions and creating sections / categories. etc. Four authors wrote the feature and each are experts in the individual CMSs, so it’s a really strong feature.  We didn’t get our bylines on it, which was slightly annoying. Apparently this is being corrected when the feature eventually appears online.

I just wouldn’t recommend this particular feature for absolute CMS beginners. To get the most out of it you’ll need to know the basics of how they work. If you want a quick intro to setting up a Joomla! site, order yourself a copy of Issue 165 instead. You’ll find  a feature that I wrote which takes you through setting up a reasonably decent-looking Joomla! based news site from scratch  and at almost zero cost – it’s so easy once you know how!