the power of social media:Egypt and Facebook

Facebook has become one of the primary tools for activists to co-ordinate protests,communicate and share information. It successful helped in bringing down the Mubarak regime and continues to be used in this manner by people in countries that feel that it is time for a change.


"Dictators are toppled by people, not by media platforms. But Egyptian activists, especially the young, clearly harnessed the power and potential of social media, leading to the mass mobilizations in Tahrir Square and throughout Egypt. The Mubarak regime recognized early on that social media could loosen its grip on power. The government began disrupting Facebook and Twitter as protesters hit the streets on Jan. 25 before shutting down the Internet two days later."


(http://omdsource.com/news/social-media-plays-role-in-egypt-some-expected-in-iran/)

Many interesting things have come about from this use of Facebook. There are two notable things, the degree in which Facebook has been attributed to the revolution being one.

When asked,Ghonim, a 30-year-old Google executive who became a symbol of the country’s democratic uprising , told CNN's Wolf Blitzer ..“This revolution started online...This revolution started on Facebook.”

Even an Egyptian father Jamal Ibrahim has reportedly named his newborn daughter "Facebook" to honor the social media site's role in Egypt's revolution. He wanted to express "his gratitude about the victories the youth of 25th of January have achieved and chose" and chose this form.

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/21/baby-named-facebook-egypt_n_825934.html)

The second notable point is how Facebook is downplaying its role in the uprising.

"The reasons? It doesn't want to be viewed as a political football, for one thing, and for another, there are business concerns. A report in The New York Times says that Facebook:

... finds itself under countervailing pressures after the uprisings in the Middle East. While it has become one of the primary tools for activists to mobilize protests and share information, Facebook does not want to be seen as picking sides for fear that some countries — like Syria, where it just gained a foothold — would impose restrictions on its use or more closely monitor users, according to some company executives who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal business."

It seems however way anyone wants to play it, the cogs have been set in motion and Facebook is set to be utilised as a tool for change in the foreseeable future with other revolts already brewing in Libya,Tunisia and Yemen.

Technopanic!

In my research about moral panics and social media I came across numerous articles that use the term "Technopanic." This is the term used to describe the panic around contemporary technology. In the 2008 essay by Alice Marwick entitled The MySpace Moral Panic, she states the characteristics of Technopanics:

"First, they focus on new media forms, which currently take the form of computer–mediated technologies. Second, technopanics generally pathologize young people’s use of this media, like hacking, file-sharing, or playing violent video games. Third, this cultural anxiety manifests itself in an attempt to modify or regulate young people’s behavior, either by controlling young people or the creators or producers of media products."



I would now like to discuss the panic over Myspace. This panic was based around online predators."The technopanic over “online predators” is remarkably similar to the cyberporn panic; both are fueled by media coverage, both rely on the idea of harm to children as the justification for Internet content restriction, and both have resulted in carefully crafted legislation to circumvent First Amendment concerns."(http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2152/1966)

MySpace was said to be a site that made it easy for "online predators" to make contact with minors. It was also argued that social network sites "generally lower cultural expectations around privacy, encouraging children to expose more of their lives online."

"This panic brought about the The Delete Online Predators Act (DOPA). This act would involve schools and libraries banning children from accessing social networking sites. The act was passed in July 2006 by the U.S. House of Representatives.
The bill, if enacted, would amend the Communications Act of 1934, requiring schools and libraries that receive E-rate funding to protect minors from online predators in the absence of parental supervision when using "Commercial Social Networking Websites" and "Chat Rooms". The bill would prohibit schools and libraries from providing access to these types of websites to minors or create restrictions to use of these type of sites. The bill also would require the institutions to be capable of disabling the restrictions for "use by an adult or by minors with adult supervision to enable access for educational purposes."

The bill is considered controversial because according to its critics the bill could limit access to a wide range of websites, including many with harmless and educational material. Arguments for the bill focus on the fear of adults contacting children on MySpace and similar websites. Many Internet websites, however (ranging from Yahoo to Slashdot to Amazon.com), allow user accounts, public profiles, and user forums, in accord with the bill's definition of "social networking". The bill places the onus upon the Federal Communications Commission to provide clarification."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deleting_Online_Predators_Act_of_2006)

As of 2007 this act seems to be dead legislation. It seems that like all other panics they reach a point where they begin to decrease or pass.

I found many interesting points in the essay posted on facebook,
Techno-Panic Cycles (and How the Latest Privacy Scare Fits In):

Why Do Techno-Panics Pass?

To be clear, there are no clear boundaries with techno-panics. They do not just suddenly begin and end, and it is impossible to gauge their relative severity since no metric or yardstick exists to measure them against. Nonetheless, these techno-panics certainly seem to have peaks and valleys in terms of public / political / media attention.

Just a few years ago, for example, the online predator panic reached a fever pitch and “stranger danger” reports were all over the media. As a result, legislation banning social networking sites in publicly funded schools and libraries was introduced, and state attorneys general proposed mandatory online age verification schemes for the Internet to segregate adults and children online. And then, it seems, the fever passed. I couldn’t tell you exactly what week or month it happened — and in many ways some of those fears still exist out there — but it’s clear that the panic about online predation has subsided greatly. I’d like to think that education and awareness helped debunk some of the myths that were fueling that particular panic, just as I’d like to believe that education and awareness helped deflate the fear bubbles that surrounded previous panics.

While I don’t want to entirely discount that possibility, I’m convinced another more cynical explanation may exist: New techno-panics simply crowd-out old techno-panics. There may be several explanations for this:

• Perhaps there is only so much fear-mongering our minds can handle at any given time.
• Perhaps it is becuase the media gets myopically focused on one panic and then hammers it till all the fear has been squeezed out of it such that they have to move on.
• Perhaps it is because a new technology comes along that spooks politicians and the media even more than the previous one they were demonizing.
• Or perhaps all of those factors combine to limit the duration of panics.

Regardless, it seems evident that moral panics and techno-panics have always been with us and will always be with us. From the waltz to rock and roll to rap music, from movies to comic books to video games, from radio and television to the Internet and social networking websites — every new media format or technology spawns a fresh debate about the potential negative effects it might have on society or our kids in particular. An excellent recent report by the U.K. government entitled Safer Children in a Digital World noted that “New media are often met by public concern about their impact on society and anxiety and polarisation of the debate can lead to emotive calls for action.” Indeed, each of the media technologies or communications platforms mentioned above was either regulated or threatened with regulation at some point in its history.

(http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150095472156218&comments)

Other interesting links:

A Fifteenth Century Technopanic About The Horrors Of The Printing Press

http://www.danah.org/papers/MySpaceDOPA.html

Catfish

"It felt [too perfect] to us also, as we were making it. We're very lucky. We look back at our experience and everything leads to [the moment we discovered things were not what they seemed]. As filmmakers we were ready; we felt like we spent our lives preparing to be ready, and it just happened to be me who shares the office with my brother and my producing partner."
-Ariel Schulman.


This film left me with some doubts about it's authenticity. Although it is claimed by the makers to be 100% real, the timing and sheer coincindences seem to be too vast. But as it is clear from the quote above that even those invovled at the time felt that it was "too perfect" ,then just maybe it really was a mix of good timing and luck. Either way it is a very intriguing piece of film making and demonstrates the power the internet gives us to "be" whoever or whatever we wish to be.

This power allows us to do and say things without the same risks or consequences that we would otherwise experience in real life. We can mould our identities to fit that of any gender,age or creed as seen in Catfish. We can use these identities to manipulate peoples opinions,feelings and relationships if we so wish. It is astonishing to realise that this level of reality distortion can be achieved with a few simple clicks of the mouse and some time spent creating a fake profile.

In the context of this film you feel sorry for the character Angela who has fabricated all these identities. Her motives appear to be driven by the desperate need for escapism from her own tough reality as opposed to a desire to manipulate and decieve others for the mere sake of it.

Overall I greatly enjoyed watching this documentary, be it real or fabricated. Maybe it is a good thing that we question it... After all wasn't its theme to highlight the need to question everything and to not blindly believe that what we are simply told; especially in these times when technologies supported by the internet can clearly serve as such a powerful mask for us to mould and then hide behind.


Yaniv Schulman: [First lines] If this is your documentary, you're doing a bad job.
Ariel Schulman: Why?
Yaniv Schulman: Because you're catching me when I don't want to talk about things.
Ariel Schulman: How should we do it?
Yaniv Schulman: Set it up, organise a time with me, put together some materials, emails, we'll get the Facebook conversations printed out and we'll really talk about it.

What is community?

"A group of people who form relationships over time by interacting regularly around shared experiences, which are of interest to all of them for varying individual reasons."

“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. quotes (American Writer, b.1922)

In biological terms, a community is a group of interacting organisms sharing a populated environment. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.

In sociology, the concept of community has led to significant debate, and sociologists are yet to reach agreement on a definition of the term. There were ninety-four discrete definitions of the term by the mid-1950s.^[1] Traditionally a "community" has been defined as a group of interacting people living in a common location. The word is often used to refer to a group that is organized around common values and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household. The word can also refer to the national community or international community.

The word "community" is derived from the Old French communité which is derived from the Latin communitas (cum, "with/together" + munus, "gift"), a broad term for fellowship or organized society.^[2]

Since the advent of the Internet, the concept of community no longer has geographical limitations, as people can now virtually gather in an online community and share common interests regardless of physical location.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community)

Below is a very interesting site that I came across when I was researching the idea of community from a social perspective.

WHAT IS COMMUNITY LINK

(An excerpt from http://www.scn.org/cmp/whatcom.htm)

The Social Perspective of Human Settlements:

A human settlement, or community, is not merely a collection of houses. It is a human (social and cultural) organization. (The houses, which are cultural products of humanity, belong to one of the six dimensions of society or culture, the technological dimension, as explained below).

Also, it is not just a collection of human individuals; it is a socio-cultural system; it is socially organized. This means that you need to know some things about society ─ things learned in sociology.

The community has a life of its own which goes beyond the sum of all the lives of all its residents. As a social organization, a community is cultural. See Culture. That means it is a system of systems, and that it is composed of things that are learned rather than transmitted by genes and chromosomes. All the social or cultural elements of a community, from its technology to its shared beliefs, are transmitted and stored by symbols.

VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES

Why Do People Join and Build Virtual Communities?

People have been using online spaces since the beginning of the Internet to communicate. That includes prior to the World Wide Web, when BBS, or electronic bulletin boards and email loops connected folks across time and space. (For a good short history of the Internet, see http://www.dsv.su.se/internet/documents/internet-history.html). Many found that they began to form bonds of one sort of another. Today, the online forum tracking service, ForumOne (http://www.forumone.com) had more than 270,000 distinct communities and forums registered at their site in 1999. (The site no longer lists total numbers.) And many more remain unlisted.

Here are some of the types of activities people have enjoyed through these online connections.

• Socialize - meeting people, playing around, sharing jokes, stories and just taking interest in each other. Communities like this often focus around bulletin boards and chat rooms. An example of such a community is Electric Minds at http://www.electricminds.org
• Work together (business) - Distributed work groups within companies and between companies use online community to build their team, keep in touch and even work on projects together. A very detailed description of how online work groups work can be found at http://www.awaken.com and http://www.bigbangworkshops.com .
• Work together (community - geographic) - Freenets (see the Freenet Directory) have offered local communities ways to communicate and work together. Some have even combined this with ISP service. Community groups such as soccer teams, school groups and others have used online community to provide forums for information and discussion, helping bring groups together.
• Work together (issues) - Virtual communities have been very important to people who share interests in issues and causes. Support groups for people dealing with certain diseases, causes such as politics or the environment, or people studying together, all can form a nucleus for an online community.
• Have topical conversations - Online salons and discussion forums such as the Well (http://www.well.com), Salon's TableTalk (as of mid 2001 a paid subscription model) (http://www.salon.com), Cafe Utne (http://www.utne.com) and others have formed communities of people who enjoy conversations about topics and shared interests. ForumOne noted in 1999 that the top ten topics for forums registered at their site are around the topics of (in order): relationships (16%), "mega sites (diverse topics, aggregations of smaller conferences - 11%), business and finance (8%), health (5%), hobbies (4%), religion (3%), music (3%), international (3%). It would be interesting to revisit those stats at the start of 2002.

Community Examples

The communities noted above and others across the Internet represent a wide range of interests and motivations. We asked a few community owners why they set up their communities and how it has turned out for them. Here are their stories.

· Case History: A Community of Purpose - John Aravosis

· Case Study: the IBM/Electric Minds'Kasparov v. Deep Blue

· Nancy Rhine and Women's Wire

· An anonymous parent at the neurology web is concerned that the anti-oxidant vitamins have too much copper for her 60 lb child with Tourette's Syndrome. Bonnie responds - "Copper increases the action of tryptophan 2,3 dioxygenase, thus breaking down tryptophan to kynurenine. In TS some studies have shown an already reduced level of tryptophan and increased level of kynurenine in the blood. Some copper is needed for the antioxidant action of superoxide dismutase and one of the cytoshromes, but the normal diet should provide enough copper without supplementing it further. Copper water pipes alone provide plenty (and sometimes too much if they are new) of copper."
- From Neurology Web, Tourette Syndrome forum, http://neuro-www.mgh.harvard.edu/forum/TouretteSyndromeF/2.19.994.55PMQuestiontoBo.html

· Jen CA9-Sunset19 worries about the leafless Butterfly Bush in her yard "I haven't under- or over-watered, etc. I planted it last fall. I guess I'll have to wait til spring really arrives (TRUE spring, not our pseudo/spring-wannabe winter) to see if it starts to come back. I know I could just get another one but I really don't want to have to do that." Within a day, she has four responses - Wanda's butterfly bush is in full bloom, Denise's is limping along. Gardening Gal and Kelli think it may be too cold. - From the GardenWeb, California Gardens (formerly at http://www.gardenweb.com/forums/load/calif/msg0210504717260.html?5)

· Over in the Rock Hall of Fame forum, Robert Wilcox is hopping mad that AC/DC still hasn't been inducted into the hall of fame. "Let us not forget that the often forgotten AC/DC has sold more albums than the Stones. Yet for some reason, millions line up in droves to see the glorified British bar band perform the same antiquated riffs that Eddie Van Halen could play with his feet and a carboard pick." He falls into a dispute with Pay Attention, who insists that AC/DC is already an inductee.- From Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 500 Songs Forum, http://forums.rockhall.com/forums/get/songs/504.html

(Taken from the following site of interest -http://www.fullcirc.com/community/communitywhatwhy.htm)

FANDOM- Live long and prosper

So just what is Fandom? According to wikipedia it is
"is a term used to refer to a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of sympathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest. Fans typically are interested in even minor details of the object(s) of their fandom and spend a significant portion of their time and energy involved with their interest, often as a part of a social network with particular practices (a fandom); this is what differentiates "fannish" (fandom-affiliated) fans from those with only a casual interest.

A fandom can grow up centered around any area of human interest or activity. The subject of fan interest can be narrowly defined, focused on something like an individual celebrity, or more widely defined, encompassing entire hobbies, genres or fashions. While it is now used to apply to groups of people fascinated with any subject, the term has its roots in those with an enthusiastic appreciation for sports. Merriam-Webster's dictionary traces the usage of the term back as far as 1903.^[1]

Fandom as a term can also be used in a broad sense to refer to an interconnected social network of individual fandoms, many of which overlap."

In this case I wish to explore the fan culture based around the popular sci-fi television show Star Trek. This is mainly due to having being brought up in a home that also houses an avid "Trekkie"- my mother. Although my mother does not have the time or resources to get as deeply involved within the Star Trek fan community, I have no doubt that she would if she could. It is interesting to note the different levels of involvement and commitment based around fandom. From researching it is intriging to see just how far fans will take their interests in comparision to others.

I myself am not a die hard fan but I wish to explore futher and greater understand its fan culture and the involvment it has in its participants daily lives, social interaction and gratification.


As it has been stated that Star Trek fans are likely the most analyzed fan communities in popular culture over the past several years, there are a lot of very interested articles. One of which is Lincoln Geraghty's piece "A Network of Support: Coping with Trauma Through Star Trek Fan Letters," who uses these fan letters to try and understand the way fans believe membership in some idea of a fan community has "helped them in daily life." Geraghty writes that he intends to try and understand "how far one might regard the Star Trek fanbase as a collective network of support.

Particularly, Geraghty examines ways in which the Star Trek is used as a way to deal with personal devastations, such as deaths in the family, and how the fan community can help cope with such tragedy. He writes about ways in which the Star Trek text and fellow fans are used as a form of encouragement or a way of recovery.

As with any fan culture they use there chosen interest and its outlets in an attempt to connect both intellectually and emotionally.

One fan attributes his creation of scifispace to Star Trek.

"Star Trek has had a long history - which I�ll write about here! For me, it�s a very personal thing as I got hooked on science fiction when I first saw the original Star Trek series when I was 12 (in re-runs - I�m not that old!). So you could say if it wasn�t for Star Trek, there wouldn�t be a Scifispace.com website!"

http://www.scifispace.com/html/sthistory.php

He goes on to detail a lot about Star Trek in the beginning, the lack of information and what it was like to be a fan before the invention of the internet. His writings give a very good insight into an example of fan culture, and just how in this particular case it began. The site displays in my opinon just how fan culture can be used to connect, share intellect and gain emotional satisfaction and support.

In researching about fan culture I found an interesting article which I would like to include.

In Convergence Culture Jenkins writes that fandom, as displayed within convergence
culture, is characterized by these five things:

  1. Appropriation; A person appropriates in their own life a
particular text, work, and practice relating to their fan object. Often these
objects are reinterpreted in their own life.
  2. Participation ; There is an openness for people to participate
at all levels within the community. They are so inspired by it they write music,
create events, etc.
  3. Emotional Investment – People become really invested in this
this object, topics, etc. It is something they are really into and something they
want to talk about.
  4. Collective Intelligence (rather than the expert paradigm;
There is room for everyone to have something to say and contribute to the collective
understanding of the group. Collective intelligence
doesn’t need credentials, degrees, etc., experiences and insights are
beneficial to the community and conversation.
  5. Virtual Community; These are communities that
are not necessarily built around face to face meetings. Some of these people know
each other and some are unknown, but more often than not these groups will have
times to meet face to face.

As well as this I discovered a very interesting book based around fan culture, star trek and women.

http://www.amazon.com/Enterprising-Women-Television-Contemporary-Ethnography/dp/0812213793#reader_0812213793.

WHAT'S THE PANIC?

Moral panic is an interesting social phenomenon that can have tragic results. The term is used todescribe a state of panic induced in a large group of people, who feel that a societal norm or an aspect governing the safety of people is being seriously threatened. The term is the creation of sociologist Stanley Cohen, who examined the way that Mods and Rock and Roll fans were perceived as a threat to society in the 1960s and early 1970s. Moral panic clearly existed prior to Cohen creating the term. Virtually every dance style introduced in the 20th century created such panic; even the waltz was condemned much earlier as a sure path to sin because the couples embraced each other. Most new music styles, and the fans of such styles, have induced — at least in small scale — moral panic. From ministers condemning the evils of rock and roll to significant news coverage of the hippie culture and from Kurt Cobain’s death to the Goth movement, people may become significantly afraid that a corruptible influence is likely to cause harm to their children and their way of life. These concerns are often inflated by excessive coverage in the media of a few events that would indicate all children who picked up a Nirvana album would commit suicide, or all children who donned black eye shadow would decide to worship vampires. Moral panics often result over activities which, before their suggested link to juvenile delinquency, have received little or no media coverage. They become a part of youth culture, freely adopted by a community willing to try new things. The new form of entertainment remains foreign to the older generation, who was brought up without it. It is this older generation who panics and who also controls the news media. If youth culture was represented from a youth perspective in day-to-day journalistic media, moral panics might not be so apt to occur. (Excerpt from the following- http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-moral-panic.htm) The media plays a vital role in creating this moral panic. It tends to isolate and sensationalize certain events, groups and behaviours, creating links between them and negative moral standings that then pose to threaten the very fabric of society and normalcy. This ultimately creates a moral panic within the public. One such example can be seen in the moral panic around youth and video gaming culture. In our contemporary world video games are blamed for youth violence, much like comic books were previously accused of causing youth aggression and crime. "Comic books had been seen as a waste of children's time. The appearance of crime comics in an industry a decade old contributed to the suggestion that comics could be linked to juvenile delinquency." To outsiders gaming appeared to highlight crime, horror, monsters, and killing which threatened social values. One of the most notable cases around video games and the creation of a moral panic can be seen in the reportings and events after the tragic Columbine Shootings. "On April 20th, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, two students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, went on a shooting rampage, armed with shotguns, assault rifles, grenades, and pipe bombs. After killing twelve students and a teacher, Klebold and Harris turned their weapons on themselves, leaving the nation with no answers to their many questions. What could have caused two adolescents to do so much harm? The media's answer: video games." (http://www.gamebits.net/other/mqp/#30) The media portrayed a natural cause-and-effect scenario involving youth and video games, similar to a natural disaster or a disease. Lt. Colonel Grossman, in his book Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill, described the effect video games have on kids as "Acquired Violence Immune Deficiency Syndrome", or AVIDS. The media supported this theory and omitted facts about Harris and Klebold which may have suggested a predisposition to violence. Instead quotes were seen like this one in the Denver Post,April,2001 stating this of video gaming, "It is guaranteed that more monsters will be created and more school killings will occur" After Columbine, President Clinton requested a report from the Surgeon General on the effects of media violence on children. When the press received word in January 2001 that the report was nearly finished, The Charlotte Observer (19 Jan. 2001) ran a story with the headline "Surgeon General to Declare Violent Media Harmful to Children". The article goes on to say the report would fuel the side of politicians and parent groups pushing for legislation against video games, calling them as much a health hazard as cigarettes. The Los Angeles Times predicted the report would find that "repeated exposure to violent entertainment during early childhood causes more aggressive behavior throughout the child's life." The actual report, released a few days later, was contradictory to these advance news reports. According to the report, media violence plays only a minor role in the violence of pre-adolescents, and almost no role in older children. The report ranked video games as the tenth most significant risk factor, placing poor upbringing and violent parents, poverty, substance abuse, and natural aggressive tendencies as more likely factors. Though the results of the report were often predicted in the media, the actual results were omitted from wide coverage. "The representation of video games in both the media and, consequently, in the minds of concerned parents fits all the characteristics of a moral panic, as defined by Cohen and other authors. Facts about youth culture have been omitted and exaggerated and the situation has been likened to a natural disaster. Other explanations of how youth culture affects children have been ignored, as have the questions of if the entertainment form affect children at all, or if children affect and use their culture to suit their own needs and desires. The panic preceded any actual research or evidence to either confirm or deny society's fears about what youth culture was doing to the youth. What society didn't need evidence for was to know that the activity in which their children were engaging symbolized something their parents found threatening and frightening." Links of interest: http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html

Candidate.ie ASSIGNMENT

Candidate.ie is an experimental research project which aims to track social media activity in the forthcoming Irish General Election campaign. It’s a pretty straightforward idea – collect links to every candidate’s profile on social networking sites and present them along with their rivals in each constituency. In that way, visitors to the site can easily find links to their local candidate’s profiles.


For this assignment we have to pick a politician who will be running for the 2011 Irish general election and follow their use of the internet during their campaign.

I chose to follow the politician Pearse Doherty in the run up to the election.


About my chosen TD

Pearse Doherty, from Gweedore, is the Sinn Féin TD for Donegal South West and a member of the party's Ard Chomhairle.

Pearse Doherty TD is the Oireachtas party spokesperson on Finance.

A civil engineer by profession, Pearse is a strong supporter of the Irish Language and an avid GAA supporter. A member of Sinn Féin since 1994 he has served on the national executive of Ógra Shinn Féin.

He is an outspoken critic of the failure of successive governments to invest in the infrastructure of Donegal, something which is leading to job losses. He is involved in many campaigns to end the marginalisation of Donegal and to bring forward innovative proposals to develop the North West as a whole.

Tá Piaras, atá cáilithe mar innealtóir sibhialta, ina bhall de Sinn Féin ó 1994. Bhí sé ar dhuine de chomhbhunaitheoirí Ógra Shinn Féin, áit a raibh freagrachtaí aige mar oifigeach feachtais agus slógaidh ar an Choiste Feidhmiúcháin ó 1998 go 2001.

The following link is to his official wordpress blog:

http://www.pearsedoherty.ie/wordpress/






Interesting Article about P.Doherty:
IS PEARSE DOHERTY THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN IRELAND?


Most recent Tweet:
"Just left Dept of Finance. Lab & FG agreed to facilitate Finance Bill in a grubby little deal. Dail to be dissolved between Sat & Tue."

UPSTART SUBMISSION

So in the end I went back to the drawing board for the poster. I just wasn't happy with the first or second draft so I stripped it all back down to the core message and opted for a more minimalist approach. Just sent it off to Upstart via my new Sendit account.

UPSTART

Here is a poster i created for the UPSTART.ie campaign. Their goal is to promote the importance of creativity in Ireland. The main graphical elements of the poster are created from a photograph I took of my sister, which I then photoshopped and added typographical elements to. The writing on the form says,
"Use your creative voice, live,be,free,create,express yourself,time is precious, dream."

Hippie Subculture

It was a countercultural movement that rejected the mores of mainstream American life. The movement originated on college campuses in the United States, although it spread to other countries, including Canada and Britain. The name derived from “hip,” a term applied to the Beats of the 1950s, such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, who were generally considered to be the precursors of hippies. Although the movement arose in part as opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War (1955–75), hippies were often not directly engaged in politics, as opposed to their activist counterparts known as “Yippies” (Youth International Party).

Hippies felt alienated from middle-class society, which they saw as dominated by materialism and repression, and they developed their own distinctive lifestyle. They favoured long hair and casual, often unconventional, dress, sometimes in “psychedelic” colours. Many males grew beards, and both men and women wore sandals and beads. Long, flowing granny dresses were popular with women, and rimless granny glasses with both men and women. Hippies commonly took up communal or cooperative living arrangements, and they often adopted vegetarian diets based on unprocessed foods and practiced holistic medicine. For many The Whole Earth Catalog, which first appeared in 1968, became a source for the necessities of life. Hippies tended to be dropouts from society, forgoing regular jobs and careers, although some developed small businesses that catered to other hippies.

Hippies advocated nonviolence and love, a popular phrase being “Make love, not war,” for which they were sometimes called “flower children.” They promoted openness and tolerance as alternatives to the restrictions and regimentation they saw in middle-class society. Hippies often practiced open sexual relationships and lived in various types of family groups. They commonly sought spiritual guidance from sources outside the Judeo-Christian tradition, particularly Buddhism and other Eastern religions, and sometimes in various combinations. Astrology was popular, and the period was often referred to as the Age of Aquarius. Hippies promoted the recreational use of hallucinogenic drugs, particularly marijuana and LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), in so-called head trips, justifying the practice as a way of expanding consciousness.

Both folk and rock music were an integral part of hippie culture. Singers such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and groups such as the Beatles, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Rolling Stones were among those most closely identified with the movement. The musical Hair, a celebration of the hippie lifestyle, opened on Broadway in 1968, and the film Easy Rider, which reflected hippie values and aesthetics, appeared in 1969. The novelist Ken Kesey was one of the best-known literary spokesmen for the movement, but he became equally famous for the bus tours he made with a group called the Merry Pranksters.

Public gatherings—part music festivals, sometimes protests, often simply excuses for celebrations of life—were an important part of the hippie movement. The first “be-in,” called the Gathering of the Tribes, was held in San Francisco in 1967. A three-day music festival known as Woodstock, held in rural New York state in 1969, drew an estimated 400,000–500,000 people and became virtually synonymous with the movement. Hippies participated in a number of teach-ins at colleges and universities in which opposition to the Vietnam War was explained, and they took part in antiwar protests and marches. They joined other protestors in the “moratorium”—a nationwide demonstration—against the war in 1969. They were involved in the development of the environmental movement. The first Earth Day was held in 1970.

By the mid-1970s the movement had waned, and by the 1980s hippies had given way to a new generation of young people who were intent on making careers for themselves in business and who came to be known as yuppies (young urban professionals). Nonetheless, hippies continued to have an influence on the wider culture, seen, for example, in more relaxed attitudes toward sex, in the new concern for the environment, and in a widespread lessening of formality.

(http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/266600/hippie)

Woodstock 1969: A Retrospective

Watch Hippies Documentary

Hippie Photo slideshow video

http://www.last.fm/music/Jefferson+Airplane

Punk Subculture

The punk subculture emerged in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia in the mid-1970s. Exactly which region originated punk has long been a major controversy within the movement.

Early punk had an abundance of antecedents and influences, and Jon Savage has described the subculture as a "bricolage" of almost every previous youth culture that existed in the West since the Second World War "stuck together with safety pins".Various philosophical, political, and artistic movements influenced the subculture. In particular, punk drew inspiration from several strains of modern art. Various writers, books, and literary movements were important to the formation of the punk aesthetic. Punk rock has a variety of musical origins both within the rock and roll genre and beyond.


IDEOLOGY: Although punks are frequently categorized as having left-wing or progressive views, punk politics cover the entire political spectrum. Punk-related ideologies are mostly concerned with individual freedom and anti-establishment views. Common punk viewpoints include anti-authoritarianism, a DIY ethic, non-conformity, direct action and not selling out. Other notable trends in punk politics include nihilism, anarchism, socialism, anti-militarism, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-nationalism, anti-homophobia, environmentalism, vegetarianism, veganism and animal rights.


FASHION:

Punks seek to outrage others with the highly theatrical use of clothing, hairstyles, cosmetics, tattoos, jewelry and body modification. Early punk fashion adapted everyday objects for aesthetic effect: ripped clothing was held together by safety pins or wrapped with tape; ordinary clothing was customized by embellishing it with marker or adorning it with paint; a black bin liner became a dress, shirt or skirt; safety pins and razor blades were used as jewelry. Also popular have been leather, rubber, and vinyl clothing that the general public associates with transgressive sexual practices like bondage and S&M.

Punk fashion in the early 1980s

Some punks wear tight "drainpipe" jeans, plaid/tartan trousers, kilts or skirts, T-shirts, leather jackets (which are often decorated with painted band logos, pins and buttons, and metal studs or spikes), and footwear such as Converse sneakers, skate shoes, brothel creepers, or Dr. Martens boots. Some early punks occasionally wore clothes displaying a Nazi swastika for shock-value, but most contemporary punks are staunchly anti-racist and are more likely to wear a crossed-out swastika symbol. Some punks cut their hair into Mohawks or other dramatic shapes, style it to stand in spikes, and color it with vibrant, unnatural hues.

Some punks are anti-fashion, arguing that punk should be defined by music or ideology. This is most common in the post-1980s US hardcore punk scene, where members of the subculture often dressed in plain T-shirts and jeans, rather than the more elaborate outfits and spiked, dyed hair of their British counterparts.

MUSIC: The punk subculture is centered around listening to recordings or live concerts of a loud, aggressive genre of rock music called punk rock, usually shortened to punk. While most punk rock uses the distorted guitars and noisy drumming that is derived from 1960s garage rock and 1970s pub rock, some punk bands incorporate elements from other subgenres, such as metal (e.g., mid-1980s-era Discharge) or folk rock (Billy Bragg). Different punk subcultures often distinguish themselves by having a unique style of punk rock, although not every style of punk rock has its own associated subculture. Most punk rock songs are short, have simple and somewhat basic arrangements using relatively few chords, and they use lyrics that express punk values and ideologies ranging from the nihilism of the Sex Pistols' "No Future" to the anti-drug message of Minor Threat's "Straight Edge". Punk rock is usually played in small bands rather than by solo artists. Punk bands usually consist of a singer, one or two overdriven electric guitars, an electric bass player, and a drummer (the singer may be one of the musicians). In some bands, the band members may do backup vocals, but these typically consist of shouted slogans, choruses, or football(soccer)-style chants, rather than the arranged harmony vocals of pop bands.

WATCH PUNK DOCUMENTARY 1976

The above video link features largely around the punk rock music scene and contains

interesting interviews with the Sex Pistols.

“Undermine their pompous authority, reject their moral standards, make anarchy and disorder your trademarks. Cause as much chaos and disruption as possible but don’t let them take you ALIVE.”

Sid Vicious quote

http://www.last.fm/music/Sex+Pistols