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

Subcultures

A youth subculture is a youth-based subculture with distinct styles, behaviors, and interests. Youth subcultures offer participants an identity outside of that ascribed by social institutions such as family, work, home and school......Youth subcultures are often distinguished by elements such as fashion, beliefs, slang, dialects or behaviours. Vehicles — such as cars, motorcycles, scooters or skateboards — have played central roles in certain youth subcultures. In the United Kingdom in the 1960s, mods were associated with scooters while rockers were associated with motorcycles. Specific music genres are associated with many youth subcultures, such as punks, ravers, metalheads and goths. The study of subcultures often consists of the study of the symbolism attached to clothing, music, other visible affections by members of the subculture, and also the ways in which these same symbols are interpreted by members of the dominant culture. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_subculture)

"Everything we do not have to do"

Just into week two of the module. It seems like it's going to be very interesting and i'm looking forward to the topics we will be covering in the following weeks. There are lots of enthralling definitions and writings based around the concept of culture but at the end of the day we have to try and strive to find one distinctive meaning to describe it. So what is CULTURE?

In class culture was defined as "Everything we do not have to do." When you think of it this description of culture is the simpliest and most accurate way to illustrate it. Culture is based around the choices we make, how we choose to express ourselves, our ideas, our morals and our tastes. And when we take a collectively look at culture on a mass scale is when things really start to get interesting. This will take us to the next section- Subcultures.

Here it goes again :)

In conjunction with my Culture,Society and Creative Media module this year I will be reviving my old blog from first year... So here it goes again!