"Electronic graffiti" - the emporor has no clothes

The days of broadcast TV and hard copy newspapers are dieing fast. I can't remember tha last time I sat and watched the evening corporate bullshit news on the telly. All my news I encounter is through this interactive plastic brain contraption I have here in front of me now. In fact going back to watching the 6pm news would be like getting a lobotomy. Gone are the days of Murdoch's power to brainwash the masses.  

It's astonishing in the extreme that Captain Call Abbott sees social media as electronic graffiti. Any politician today who ignores the internet and it's power to instantly share information, to fact check, to interact, is signing their own political death warrant. The information revolution is here, and they better get used to the extra scrutiny it provides.

Abbott has gotten away with being a lying conniving prick throughout his parliamentary career. Most of that however was before the advent of the internet as we know it today. His stupidity as PM is now there for all to see in all it's internet glory. Yet he doesn't realise, is in blissful ignorance, as he takes no notice of the internet and social media.

Abbott prances around, wondering why people think badly of him. We laugh and sneer, vomit and gasp at his incapacity, whilst he raves on talking about a year of solid performance and achievement. We ridicule him and he doesn't get why. We see through his shallow facade but he thinks he's a political master and we can't. He stands naked before us, his veneer a joke.

Indeed. The emperor has no clothes.  

Last year, Tony Abbott's election eve pledge not to cut health or education and not to change pensions or cut the ABC or SBS was seen by about 110,000 people on SBS's evening news bulletin. Its significance as a patent promise for which the Prime Minister would be judged in office was only revealed after that piece of footage had another 140,000 views on YouTube, thousands more on SBS online with literally millions of mentions on social media and the web editions of newspapers. It's much harder to break a promise with hundreds of thousands of citizen journalists recording and retweeting your every word. 

To make matters even more tricky for the Government, according to America's Pew Research Centre, 71 per cent of people under 29 consume most of their news online while just 22 per cent read a hard copy newspaper. The figures are just as disruptive when it comes to those aged 30-49 (63 per cent v 18 per cent). 

You can't be a successful leader in the 21st century without understanding young people and how they use the web. They're the ones with the time to track every promise and conduct instant fact checks. Through the likes of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, young people today have found their voice. They're also more demanding and less likely to vote or buy the same products as their parents or grandparents did. Brand loyalty is fading fast. 

In his book, The Menzies Era: The Years that Shaped Modern Australia, John Howard noted that Australians have become less tribal. There was once an expectation that 40 per cent of the electorate always voted Liberal and 40 per cent always voted Labor while 20 per cent swung between the two. These days, he's convinced that the middle ground both sides are fighting for has swelled to 40 per cent. more