Overview: Social Web

recent UK election was a quarrel about the character of politics...Labour Party argued that it can be used for good... Conservative Party claimed that politics is bad... promised to... ‘get Brexit done’, so that we can all forget about it ...wage war on the political process, on trust, and on truth. Ensure the whole experience is miserable, bewild…

despite this being an election defined by Brexit, there is no substantive discussion of Brexit...Labour have failed to fill out what their ‘sensible Brexit’ would look like... the Conservatives have said little beyond their ‘get Brexit done’ slogan...the real and difficult choices ... Johnson would immediately face over Brexit... from one of the c…

The most powerful engine of elitism is the European Union... Founding Fathers of Europe deliberately removed a great deal of decision-making from the hands of the (nation-bounded and short-sighted) public... Confronted with popular revolts against the rule of experts they have simply dug in their heels... For the EU, technocratic decision-making …

Cambridge Analytica conducted data research for one of the leading Brexit campaign groups and then misled the public and MPs over the work ... the work with Leave.EU involved analysis of data provided by Ukip... Nix has repeatedly denied there was any involvement... "We have not undertaken any paid or unpaid work for them, OK?”... Leave.EU did no…

Wylie ... the gay Canadian vegan who somehow ended up creating “Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare mindfuck tool”.... In 2014 Steve Bannon ... was Wylie’s boss. And Robert Mercer... Republican donor, was Cambridge Analytica’s investor... to bring big data and social media to an established military methodology – “information operations” – then t…

‘Vote Leave Take Control’ and ‘Make America Great Again’... future-focused, inspirational and told a sufficiently broad story for enough people to see a reflected image of themselves and their country that they could feel good about... get out of rebuttal mode, ditch the anaemic, snore-inducing, negative messages ... and go all in with a muscular…

Fighting people with facts only makes them cling to their beliefs more strongly, further polarising our damaged societies. Different tactics are needed, and they start closer to home than you think.

An MP blaming his own failings ... on evil Russians ... without a slither of evidence. Post-truth much? ... Remainers cannot accept that a majority of people are simply rationally opposed, to ... the EU.... he’s so stunned that there are people out there who think differently to him that the only way he can make sense of it is by imagining thes…

foolish to assume that “experience” is an unalloyed asset ... In this age of rage against anything or anyone that can be depicted as “the establishment” ... a handicap to be an “insider” and a great advantage to be an “outsider”... calling them dangerous did not amount to an answer to the grievances driving substantial numbers of voters ... tell…

THE PARALLELS BETWEEN the U.K.’s shocking approval of the Brexit referendum in June and the U.S.’ even more shocking election of Donald Trump as president last night are overwhelming.... both Brexit and Trumpism are the very, very wrong answers to legitimate questions that urban elites have refused to ask for 30 years.

voters feel let down by the BBC’s coverage being hampered by impartiality rules... we are entering, as the Americans seem to have entered, an era of identity politics where the politicians, the campaigners, are seeking by a process of nods and winks to let you know: ‘Hey, this is where you belong. Your people are here.’”

You may not care about social media now, but if you read a newspaper, listen to the radio or watch TV, then it’s shaping your world already... The real game is hardening your own support in ways dramatic enough to be picked up by the mass media ... the easiest way of doing that is to pick a rollicking fight... Lacking an established political mac…

Brexit, as experienced by a British-Australian comms guy in Brussels.

it's fair to question whether the average Brexit supporter is grounded in reality.... This mass separation from reality also represents a parallel to what is going on with our strange, sad election in the United States... Trump... has ridden a wave of distaste for the more buttoned-up masters of the universe... the leave campaign has painted the…