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Unfollowing

admin / June 5, 2013 / Other gubbins / Permalink

The received wisdom is that unfollowing someone on Twitter is of no great significance. It can be done with breezy indifference. And it will be treated in the same way by the person being unfollowed. They probably won’t even notice.

It’s not like unfriending someone on Facebook. That’s a weapon. It can be interpreted as a serious slight or a declaration of war.

A couple of years ago when talking to someone new to Twitter I said “Just do your own thing. If people like it they’ll stay, if they don’t they’ll go. It doesn’t matter too much”. And just because they follow you you aren’t obliged to follow back.

But is that right? Continue Reading →

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admin / May 26, 2013 / Other gubbins / Permalink

The perversity of the politics of housing
Selling justice by the pound
The enemies of liberty
Shared ownership and changing reality of middle income Britain
Boris the Eurorealist?
On inconsistencies in policy thinking

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Keeping up with the Bristol Bloggerati

admin / May 7, 2013 / Bristol, Other gubbins / Permalink

Bristol has a lively bunch of bloggers. Keeping up with what’s being posted can be a bit of a struggle.

We now have a new resource in the form of www.bristolblogs.com. Bristol Blogs brings together more than 80 different feeds from bloggers in and around Bristol, blogging about life and events in the city and about a huge range of other topics. The site is already up and running. It is currently carrying over 3,500 posts.

My posts appear under the academia and politics headings. But you know where to find me already. Why not visit the site and find out what everyone else is talking about?

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Will your autotweeting twin be a turbo-troll?

admin / March 6, 2013 / Other gubbins / Permalink

Today’s Independent carries a piece on LivesOn, a piece of software currently under development. LivesOn aims to analyse your tweets and then tweet on your behalf in your style on the topics you tweet about. So you can live on online, even after your demise IRL.

The idea of post-death tweeting would appear to be a bit of a gimmick to attract attention. It clearly worked.

Perhaps the most interesting comment in the article came towards the end. Dave Bedwood, a creative working at an ad agency heavily involved in social media, commented:

Artificial intelligence is the holy grail of computer science but what we want at first is to create a really useful tool for people living now. It would be your twin, posting the sorts of things you’re interested in so you can go off and use your time more wisely.

That got me thinking. How much do you automate online? Continue Reading →

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Going solo or joining someone else’s show

admin / February 18, 2013 / Other gubbins / Permalink

[First posted at LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog, 18/02/13]

It’s pretty difficult to miss the message that the engaged academic should be reaching beyond the academy to communicate with broader publics. And blogging and tweeting have attracted plenty of attention as powerful social media through which to foster public engagement.

You’ve heard the message. You’re willing to give it a go. But Twitter appears be a whole different world to the one you’re used to. How on earth can you say anything meaningful in 140 characters, when you’re used to laying out an argument meticulously over several thousand words? You have colleagues who are very positive about the possibilities of Twitter, but it feels like a step too far at the moment. Blogging, on the other hand, doesn’t sound too bad. At least you’ve got a bit of space to say something sensible. So what happens next? You’re faced with two choices: You can go solo or you can get involved with someone else’s show.

Continue Reading →

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Travels through Coalitionland: Notes of disquiet and dissent

admin / February 12, 2013 / Other gubbins, Politics, Travels through Coalitionland / Permalink

The formation of a coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats was probably the only viable outcome of the General Election in May 2010. A coalition between two unnatural bedfellows in the public interest looked like the only plausible way forward.

Coalition was always going to be a journey that carried risks. It is rarely kind to the junior partner. The history of Tory-Liberal coalitions in Westminster is not an entirely happy one, especially for the Liberals.

The nature of the Coalition’s political agenda became apparent fairly soon after it was formed. Criticism and protest swiftly developed in response. My response was to engage with the agenda online. I have been blogging about political developments under the Coalition since 2010. Continue Reading →

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Name a book that changed your life

admin / February 4, 2013 / Economics, Other gubbins / Permalink

Earlier this evening Umair Haque tweeted:

Name a book that changed your life.

— umair haque (@umairh) February 4, 2013

My response was:

Michael Stewart’s “Keynes and after” > RT @umairh: Name a book that changed your life.

— Alex Marsh (@ShodanAlexM) February 4, 2013

If anyone ever asks me a question like this I always respond with Stewart’s book, even though I can hardly remember what it says anymore.

Having tweeted, it all went a bit Proustian. Memories of the book, when and where I read it, came flooding back. And I considered whether I could really say it changed my life. Continue Reading →

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The boundaries of academic blogging Mk II

admin / January 28, 2013 / Other gubbins / Permalink

An edited version of last weekend’s post on the boundaries of academic blogging has been published today on the LSE Impact of the Social Sciences blog.

You can find it here.

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The boundaries of academic blogging

admin / January 20, 2013 / Other gubbins / Permalink

We live in a world of impact and engagement. Academics are encouraged to embrace social media and communicate in new and different ways to broader audiences. More academics should be getting acquainted with WordPress or Blogger, Typepad, Posterous or Tumblr. The world needs to know what’s happening within the academy. We’ve got interesting ideas and findings to share. And if the world is going to grasp what’s happening then our writing needs to be clear and digestible.

The spin-off benefits that this can have for one’s own teaching and research have been admirably summarised by Simon Wren-Lewis on his excellent blog Mainly Macro.

I have to confess that I am not quite as comfortable with this whole idea as I might be. Not with the idea of academics getting involved in blogging. That’s fine by me. My issue is more with the idea of “academic blogging”. Where does it begin and end?

I am an academic. Have been for many years. Can’t deny it. In that world I am Professor of Public Policy. I’m the head of one of the five Schools in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law at one of Britain’s leading universities.

And I am a blogger. I have been for a few years now. In this world I write this blog on politics and policy-related issues. I occasionally contribute to political blogs elsewhere. This blog is currently ranked in the top 100 UK politics blogs by ebuzzing.

Many people arrive and depart this blog without knowing that I’m an academic. I don’t hide the fact. It’s there on the About page. But I don’t give it any particular prominence. Similarly, I don’t mention it on my Twitter biog.

Of course, these two identities – academic and blogger – overlap considerably. But they aren’t entirely congruent. And that can set up tensions. Continue Reading →

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