Thinking less in terms of everyday people you may encounter, even people you may encounter on online discussion forums, and instead thinking about actual politicians, what do you think about the choice between giving them a "Hard Pass" or "Ignore", effectively shunning them anyway that you can, as opposed to "engaging" or "discussing" with them?
I was talking to someone lately about this, they where talking about the old idea of "dont vote, it only encourages them" simply was not sufficient to communicate to politicians any longer, in the hypermedia if you dont vote for a politician but DO follow their social media accounts, TV interviews, media appearances, news columns etc. etc. then you are giving them exactly what they want, your attention, your time and this translates into network bookings, interviews, air time etc.
The individual I was speaking to was talking about how, to them at least (and I am more than half convinced they had a point) politics had descended to a kind of "attention whoring", following patterns in online behaviour or a TV show which had "jumped the shark", just one long string of stunts and amusements as part of a "public management" function. They thought that the drawn out negotiations of post-brexit trading terms with the EU is one example of this attempt to "manufacture" a narrative, agreeing the deal for Christmas day? Seriously? Its like the old "spin doctoring" or "media strategies" of Clinton-Blair on absolute steroids, although in part, possibly the greater part, because of the needs or wishes of the politicians themselves rather than an engineering strategy, if that makes sense.
As a result the idea of an increasingly large body of people who very deliberately choose to "tune them out" could make sense.
On the other hand, I wonder if this could turn out to be a missed opportunity, I do think social media and online media can turn toxic very quickly but its pretty much unprecedented the amount of actual access or contact it could be possible to have with elected representatives these days.
It is sometimes obvious from interviews that the politicians use consultants, teams of subordinates, editors or others, the media accounts are not them, just as a lot of those of supposed "celebrities" or "stars" are not those people themselves either. I'm not naive about that. What do you think? And would you, as I do, draw a line between "regular people" or "average individual" and those involved in politics as a career?
I was talking to someone lately about this, they where talking about the old idea of "dont vote, it only encourages them" simply was not sufficient to communicate to politicians any longer, in the hypermedia if you dont vote for a politician but DO follow their social media accounts, TV interviews, media appearances, news columns etc. etc. then you are giving them exactly what they want, your attention, your time and this translates into network bookings, interviews, air time etc.
The individual I was speaking to was talking about how, to them at least (and I am more than half convinced they had a point) politics had descended to a kind of "attention whoring", following patterns in online behaviour or a TV show which had "jumped the shark", just one long string of stunts and amusements as part of a "public management" function. They thought that the drawn out negotiations of post-brexit trading terms with the EU is one example of this attempt to "manufacture" a narrative, agreeing the deal for Christmas day? Seriously? Its like the old "spin doctoring" or "media strategies" of Clinton-Blair on absolute steroids, although in part, possibly the greater part, because of the needs or wishes of the politicians themselves rather than an engineering strategy, if that makes sense.
As a result the idea of an increasingly large body of people who very deliberately choose to "tune them out" could make sense.
On the other hand, I wonder if this could turn out to be a missed opportunity, I do think social media and online media can turn toxic very quickly but its pretty much unprecedented the amount of actual access or contact it could be possible to have with elected representatives these days.
It is sometimes obvious from interviews that the politicians use consultants, teams of subordinates, editors or others, the media accounts are not them, just as a lot of those of supposed "celebrities" or "stars" are not those people themselves either. I'm not naive about that. What do you think? And would you, as I do, draw a line between "regular people" or "average individual" and those involved in politics as a career?