On the plurality of blogging...

Written for the Irish Times.

It has been argued that blogging is both partial and subjective and that its many often-conflicting truths should be handled with extreme caution.

We've seen the debacle surrounding the reporting of Liam Lawlor's death in Moscow. There was also the entirely fictional Associated Press report of stranded citizens of New Orleans shooting at a US army helicopter.

Both demonstrate that the need to be certain of the truth is a major concern for journalists, too.

Of course, it is possible to blog badly, to misanalyse or to mislead, which many tens of thousands and perhaps millions of people routinely do. But they are largely unread. If bloggers are tough on lazy journalism, they are ruthless with fraudulent blogging.

The comeback for an established blogger on pushing a blatantly false line is likely to be immediate, and disastrous. Ergo, good bloggers rise to the top and must work hard to stay there.

So what is "blogging"? Simply put, it is a technology that allows anyone to publish their work online, with little effort and, initially at least, little cost.

Of course, the quality of the "blogging" is as variable as the number of blogs. And the numbers are impressive. In April 2002 there were an estimated 500,000 blogs in existence. At the time of writing there are 21.4 million. The number doubles every six months.

Above all, blogging is about readers who write, who talk, who gossip, and who often expose new, otherwise hidden contexts from under the grand narratives that grow around public events.

Online, bloggers can pick a story clean from the moment it appears. They can track reactions from the early stages of a story through to the analysis stage a week, a month or even years later; often when the mainstream media have presumed the issue is dead.

This capacity to disrupt the normal news cycle is exciting for both the blogger and his audience. Of course, speed is dangerous. But then again, the blogger is not compelled by deadlines to tell the whole story at once.

Rather like a reporter's notebook, the truth is always emergent, contingent on someone producing another fact or story or challenging the veracity of those already presented.

Since its invention the internet has transformed old hierarchical pyramids of knowledge into flatter knowledge networks. Blogging has accelerated this process by multiplying the number of writers in relation to the number of readers.

At its very least, it gives individuals the means to disaggregate news bundles and the space to think aloud and share those thoughts with others. Personally, I'm more likely to blog to discover what I think of a given subject than to push or propagandise a certain line of thinking.

Through the network of the web bloggers get instant reactions to their pieces from dedicated readers and other bloggers. They are not in control of these reactions, but it does draw them into a community setting. Other bloggers compete to provide authoritative accounts of the context of social, political and economic events.

This collective enterprise creates the capacity to embrace and express complexity in an increasingly multipolar world.

In the US the conversation has moved on. Bloggers have become part of the mainstream, with the largest of them, the left-liberal Daily Kos attracting some 800,000 visitors a day.

California-based Mickey Kaus was taken in house to Slate magazine, owned by the Washington Post, several years ago and, in the biggest deal to date, pioneer blogger Andrew Sullivan has signed a deal with Time Warner to bring his blog inside its own corporate brand.

Significantly, it is on blogger's terms. "I won't be running my posts past any editor before they appear. I will continue to write simply what I believe or think, however misguided I may be. I will continue to correct any errors in the full light of day and change my mind if new events demand it or new facts compel it," Sullivan says.

Analyst David Steven believes this raises important questions about how the news market will develop as it adapts to the very different conditions of the internet. "I think we're going to see a pronounced shift towards the brand of the writer. Media outlets may find themselves in the position of football clubs, forced to pay higher and higher premiums if they want to keep their stars," he says.

As Marshall McLuhan once said of television, the medium remains the message. For their part, the mainstream media cannot remain aloof from a medium that speaks directly to its readership, and listens to it. Collectively, the blogging network possesses enormous positive capacity to expand and multiply that readership. And, in the US at least, it has shown considerable negative power to disrupt and destroy big media reputations.

Blogging can be an interactive form of reliable journalism. It will continue to entertain, inform, enthral and offend. And, just as surely, it will continue to encroach on the media mainstream. But like that mainstream, it should never dispense with the absolute necessity to deal in truth, however fractured, contradictory or various it may appear in the ever quickening time of the Internet.

First published in the Irish Times on Saturday 31st December 2005.

Britain and Ireland: cultural lives

The second edition of Britain and Ireland has just gone live.

- Conor Brady narrates the media race between Britain and Ireland to reach the bottom.

- Edna Longley argues the need to embrace complex identity.

- Simon Partridge on Terry Wogan, the Queen and the old cultural loophole that brought them together.

- And the photo essay is on Ulster Scots, with an educational twist.

George Best: united in mourning

Written for The Guardian comment and analyisis section.

The Irish do death better than most. And worse than many. George Best's funeral was an example of the former. On a cold, wet and inhospitable December morning, thousands of men, women and children turned out to pay their last respects in what was a very private public funeral.

Despite the thousands present, it was an intensely quiet experience; Best was carried into Stormont's Great Hall by family, friends and former colleagues. By Saturday night in Northern Ireland there was a pride in the dignified send-off given to a man capable of uniting, in death at least, its divided people. The Protestant minister was forthright and direct, making few compromises for the immense presence of the media. His congregation came from all over the city and from many religions.

Such displays of unity are not uncommon. My father was a Catholic barman in a largely Protestant town, and his funeral attracted people from all parts of the community we lived in. Such an event must have been repeated thousands of times throughout the Troubles. However, in the uncompromising sectarian geography of working-class Belfast, people are split like oil and water. That separation has proved as rigid for the dead as it has for the living. Only last September, a group of people protesting against a blessing ceremony threatened to dig up Catholic graves if one drop of the holy water were to touch a Protestant grave.

Such division in death is nothing new. In the City Cemetery on the staunchly nationalist Falls Road, the Catholic church insisted that the wall dividing Catholic graves from Protestant ones should be extended by a full 9ft under the ground, presumably to guard against any unwarranted fraternisation with religious rivals in the afterlife.

The Protestant graves are largely abandoned and falling into disrepair from neglect. For many years relatives have been afraid to travel into the heart of what were the IRA's operations. Some of them - policemen and part-time soldiers - may even have been considered "legitimate targets".

More disturbingly, the historic Jewish cemetery shows signs of systematic vandalism. The newer Jewish graveyard on the northerly edge of the city is kept under lock and key. In Derry, where once all the city's citizens were buried in the same ground, the Protestants now keep strictly to the east bank of the river Foyle. A large and forbidding stone paramilitary figure stands guard over the old burial ground.

What the Best funeral touched on was a flickering sense of unity that was lost in the advent of the Troubles. In the 70s, Northern Ireland fans chanted "Ireland" when their team played, and their shirts were an uncompromising green. The annual games against England seemed to cement a shared sense of purpose that was in extremely short supply in other parts of life.

Pat Jennings, a Catholic who played Gaelic football before becoming a professional footballer, made his international debut on the same day as Best. He was a hero to the Windsor Park kop for 20 years. Somehow, it didn't seem strange.

But just three years ago, a small but vocal section of the Northern Ireland fans turned against their captain when he joined Glasgow Celtic, culminating in a death threat. Even Best himself had to be missed out of the Northern Ireland international squad in 1971, after similar threats from the IRA.

These days, Northern Ireland's Protestants rarely get to be the heroes in anyone's story, least of all their own. For more than 30 years Catholics have had all the best lines. But last Saturday the tables turned in a most unexpected way. This former junior Orangeman was mourned as helplessly on the Falls Road as he was in the heart of Protestant Shankill.

For all the talk of a shared future, in the death of George Best the people of Northern Ireland have had a fleeting moment to remember the fading fragments of a shared past. As the cortege left for a private ceremony in a public cemetery in the Castlereagh Hills, a fellow mourner remembered an old saying of her mother's: "The rain only falls on a happy corpse."

First published in the Guardian on Saturday 10th December 2005.

Britain and Ireland magazine

Mick has just been appointed as editor of a new online magazine that will explore cultural relations between the UK and Ireland. The site launches in October 2005.

Electoral Commission Keynote

I was asked to give the keynote presentation for the Electoral Commission at their post Election seminar at Queens. It focused on the main issues going into the election and a broad brush picture of how each of the performances and outcomes for the four major NI parties. Acted as rapportuer for the media breakout group.

Cause for Christmas celebration

Fay and my daughter Eve Mary in the office just week after her early arrival on the 15th December.

Associateship at Queens University

As of the 1st of December, I've been made a visiting research associate of the Institute of Governance at Queens University in Belfast. The post will stretch over the next two and a half years, and I hope to produce two papers on political communities online and the future of Republicanism in Ireland.