Tag Archives: Stephen Collins


Unhappy and happy emojis; Stephen Collins, Irish Times’ former political editor and columnist

This morning.

Put a happy face on….

If Sinn Féin has the energy and the resources to dominate social media and disseminate its message there is nothing wrong with that.

Where it begins to get sinister is the way in which the party’s keyboard warriors seek to intimidate people propounding different views.

For instance the [Dublin City University] study found a marked difference between the emoji icons used to react to posts by the parties.

“Haha”, or “Angry” constituted 94 per cent of emoji reactions for posts by Fine Gael, and 90 per cent for Fianna Fáil, while they only accounted for 7 per cent of these reactions to posts by Sinn Féin.

….The study found that 91 per cent of the emoji reactions to Sinn Féin posts were “Love”.

What it suggests is that the Sinn Féin keyboard army was not just actively pushing its own message but attacking the messages being put out by its political opponents.

…. Whether it is down to poor organisation or fear of intimidation by the “Shinnerbots”, the two parties now negotiating a programme for government appear oblivious to the daily assault they suffer on social media, which is merely a harbinger of what awaits them when the next election comes around.

:(

Also: 😂

Stephen Collins: Big two must take fight to SF on social media (Irish Times)

Independent Alliance TD Shane Ross

Further to ongoing debates over Independent Alliance TD and Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport Shane Ross’ judicial appointments bill…

In today’s Irish Times, Stephen Collins writes:

Most members of the public are probably not too concerned about the proposed change in the judicial appointments system, which provides for an advisory appointments committee with a non-legal majority and a non-legal chair.

The bottom line, though, as articulated by former Supreme Court judge Catherine McGuinness, is that the removal of the Chief Justice from the chair of the committee represents “a deliberate kick in the teeth” not only to the incumbent Susan Denham but to the judiciary as a body.

For Ross and Sinn Féin the whole point of the Bill is to give the Chief Justice and her colleagues that deliberate kick in the teeth. While the system of appointing judges could certainly do with some improvement, the deliberate humiliation of a judiciary, which has broadly served the country well, is a dangerous path to go down.

Ross in his long career as a journalist and politician has engaged in one populist campaign after another. He is the nearest thing we have to an Irish Donald Trump and Fine Gael needs to think very carefully before betraying one of its core values to appease his grudge against the judiciary.

Yikes.

Fine Gael risks betraying its values by appeasing Ross (The Irish Times, Stephen Collings)

Sam Boal/Rollingnews

stephencollins

Stephen Collins

But not in a good way.

Concerning the Pat Carey resignation and a rush to print, Stephen Collins political editor of The Irish Times writes:

One of the features of Irish public life over the past few years has been the growth of a truculent anti-politician mood. There are many reasons for this and it is arguable that politicians have brought it on themselves by the behaviour of some of them as revealed in a variety of judicial tribunals.

Nonetheless, the health of our democracy requires some level of understanding by the public of the challenges and choices faced by politicians in the course of their everyday work. Constant denigration of everything they do has helped to promote a nihilistic public mood which could over time prove to be very dangerous.

Much of what passes for current affairs coverage in the media no longer involves serious exploration of the issues and the choices facing society and amounts to little more than politician-baiting.

Nihilists, dude.

Treatment of Pat Carey by the media shameful (Stephen Collins, Irish Times)

Previously: Resigning Matters

“The article [by Stephen Collins, above] contends that in the current political-economic crisis, ‘The traditional media, too, played a role in helping people to understand what had happened and what the solution might be – in sharp contrast to the abusive and fatalistic commentary that dominated on the web’.

The anxiety of the gatekeeper challenged by new forms of communication is telling. Romantic stories of the democratic potential of social media are as weak as Stephen Collins’s bleak generalisations.

However, there is room for a public debate as to how adequately “traditional media” have represented the impact of austerity measures, and how thoroughly they have investigated the causes of the crisis and the political options available.

Similarly, there is much to consider in how a wide political spectrum of blogs and activists have used networked communications to analyse economic data, develop assessments of the crisis, and organise political responses. For all its limitations, this sphere is profoundly democratic; patrician nostalgia for a recouping of media power is not.”

 

An Offline Vs Online Issue (Gavan Titley, Irish Times Letters]