Tag: internet
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Do Not Feed The Bots
An edited version of this article first appeared in Village magazine, November 2017 edition One in four twitter followers of Philip Boucher Hayes are fake accounts, the RTÉ broadcaster announced on his twitter feed recently. Around the end of August, Boucher-Hayes had noticed an uptick in new followers on Twitter, which he had monitored since.…
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The Oireachtas Librarians
An edited version of this article first appeared in Village magazine, October 2017 edition Imagine the government built a research library, and over the years, it built up a valuable archive. No one much uses the library, though if you pay attention, you’ll notice a slow but steady trickle of journalists and policy analysts calling…
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TheLiberal.ie: Copyright infringements and Sock Puppets
This article first appeared in Village magazine, April 2017 edition Ardee District Court was delayed. The courtroom was packed, as it often is on a Monday morning after a busy weekend, with fresh arrests to be processed. Solicitors shuffled papers, Guards gathered in twos and threes in quiet conversations, and towards the back, concerned families…
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Real News: You Get What You Pay For
This article first appeared in Village magazine, February 2017 edition “Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.” That quote is usually attributed to Albert Einstein. But being a journalist, I decided to check it out. It turns out it has also been linked at various times…
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The bottom half of the internet
An edited version of this article first appeared in Village magazine Not too quietly, but without a great deal of fuss, NPR (National Public Radio), the American public radio network, killed commenting on its website in mid-August. In a statement announcing the change on 17 August, the network explained that an analysis had revealed that…
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Proposed new internet surveillance laws flawed
An edited version of this article appeared in Village magazine, July 2016 edition Justice minister Frances Fitzgerald’s proposal to expand Irish surveillance and interception laws to include social media and email accounts, coming only weeks after a row over interception of journalists’ communications by GSOC, is ill-advised and unlikely to achieve its stated aims, a…
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MoJoCon: Journalism by mobile
An edited version of this article appeared in Village magazine, March 2016 edition MoJoCon – the Mobile Journalism Conference which debuted in Dublin last year – has its roots almost a decade ago, when Glen Mulcahy, then working with RTE Nuacht, began experimenting with the camera on his Nokia N93 smartphone. “Video quality was atrociously…
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Ad Blocking: The next threat to Irish newspapers
An edited version of this article appeared in Village magazine, December 2015 edition A few years ago, as print media watched their subscription and circulation plummet, digital advocates were fond of reciting Clay Shirky’s adage that “no medium can survive the indifference of 25 year olds.” The advocates had a simple solution. Readers didn’t care…
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Ireland’s online media market: Sophisticated but will not pay
An edited version of this article appeared in Village magazine, July 2015 edition The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2015 for Ireland gives an effective overview of who learns what where for the country, or at least who the major players are. In summing up itself, the report describes Ireland as “a broadly engaged audience…
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Radio is for old people
An edited version of this article appeared in Village magazine, May 2015 edition The internet is coming, and it’s eating radio audiences. Newspapers have grown used to the idea that they face an existential threat from the digital world – even if they haven’t quite figured out what to do about it – but for…
