Twitter and those distracting journalists

In case you didn't know, last year I took my time to finish my degree. I started studying Computer Science, then I left, then I had a chance to finish it and I did. My tutor suggested a project based on social networking that was theoretically about a big media group that wanted to retrieve information from viewers, and it turned little by little in a recommender system. It was hard, as most projects, as it started like a thing without any aim and the objectives of what I was doing were clear only when my project was really advanced... meaning that I really didn't know that I was doing a recommender system, or what a recommender system was, until later, much later. Anyway, I took that topic as social networking is something I've always been fascinated with, and why not, to learn about some other languages, protocols... stuff.

Aaand I realized that there are some things about social networking that are, let's say, problematic. Or, better said, about the perception of social networks. I'm going to tell, informally, what it was about.

First things first: every social network has its uses, or at least the successful social networks. Obvious, but also more subtle that it seems. At first sight, Twitter is for short messages (and short term memory), Facebook for a wide approach of social network, Last.fm is for music connections, and Flickr about fans of photography. You take a deeper look at the contents, however, and find other things: Twitter is about opinions and journalism, Flickr is about geography mostly, Last.fm social networking works best when it's about live shows, and Facebook is a collection of preferences and hobbies. This, of course, means that Facebook is a great tool to gather interests for a recommender system. Actually, I took the "likes" from users as the reliable information, and it mostly worked.

More subtleties arise. A user behaves in a different manner depending on the social network, and by user I mean, you, me, your friend, or that famous DJ. Twitter is for shouting what you think people must read (via yourself, via your links, via retweet), Facebook is for carefully building your personality highlighting things (links, pictures) and giving your opinions, Flickr is to reflect your pure view of the world (in a manner that is both geographical and artistic information) and Tumblr, well, Tumblr is for porn. Just to name a few.

Also, I had the feeling that some social networks are, let's say, overcovered by the media. It is - or it was - the next big thing, the repository of global information, a mine of pure data, cheap, even a survey substitute. But, as the great concept of "Circles" that Google+ left, we only have information of our circles in social networks. This, again, is something obvious but forgotten many times: from your facebook account with hundreds of friends, or from your Twitter account with your thousands of followers, you only see one part of the world. As a social profile owner, you made the first filter and unlike family and "real life" relations, one usually joins similar people on those networks, with similar tastes, similar thoughts, or at least similar way of seeing the world - leftist or rightist, pop lover or drum n bass lover. This has happened before in the previous versions of social networks, that is, mail lists and forum boards, where a kind of humor arises and become part of that small community, but with those Twitter, Facebook accounts that seem more open and less restrictive it happens the same way. What is my point? Journalists distort reality through their Twitter account and usually share opinions based on only what they see, thinking that what they see is the most accurate reality. And journalism is the main source of opinion about social networking and such: what is a trend and what is not, what is more used and what is not, etc.

Twitter, of all the social networks, is the one I find most fascinating. Not only for what it meant in international revolts like the egyptian ones, but as its potential use as a manipulative tool and how frustrating is for so many companies to try to use this for their own means and not being able to. This sounds like a conspiration theory of big companies, but funny enough, this is not my vision, but of the "experts", let's say; they don't believe that it's possible that some trends are created freely, without any outside interaction, without any giant company teamed up with a political force gracely disguising their touch. The answer is that not exactly freewill, but a kind of "law of the tribe" exists in Twitter. Firstly, this is an incredibly democractic social network: every user has the same (potential) importance and can talk with any other unique user, famous or not, director or actor or friend, but of course some users are more read than others. Who are more read? Of course famous people, but there is a subtle difference between the ammount of readers and the ammount of traffic (i.e.: influence) a twitter account could make: a football player mostly tweets about "we are on the bus", "we are celebrating", "what a game!" and so on. An influencial twitter account is wittier, more intelligent, able to blend a funny remark and a critical opinion in 140 characters, and influencial people form influencial groups which are fed by themselves and by the people who want to be popular and influential too.

This is great, because, for once, money hasn't anything to do with it, and intelligence does, but journalists sometimes misunderstand the consequences. For example, the egyptian revolts were mostly organized by twitter, which is something they couldn't understand. And the 15-M protests were too, and this is when Twitter became a news story itself, with internet based newspapers having a section talking about the latest trending topic. But then, Twitter potential influence is restricted to Twitter users, and among them all, users who understand the Twitter quick currents of information. I feel like I'm being Captain Obvious here, but going at what I wrote before, a user only sees what the user wants to see, and this isn't the whole... and journalism sometimes forget this: tech writers that gather opinions from their circle of known people and go to quick conclussions about The Future Of Things To Come, political analysts that believe that a cold reception in Twitter means something, and gossip magazines that... ok, gossip magazines are in their territory after all. But what is the use of having Twitter related news of the trending topic? It's like the news of a gentlemen club most people are not allowed in: Twitter is difficult to understand and easy to feel alienated by it. It's wishful thinking to say that people all around the world of all classes are conected by the news on Twitter, and it's naive to say that you can recognize the world's problems in this social network, and a journalist not only should know that, but must avoid analyzing news via his own world: among all the jobs, a journalist should be the one worried about having the most diverese vision of things. Again, I repeat myself: a social network does not have it.

And this is a rant I wanted to write about a while ago.

Home politics

This weekend has been a rollercoaster for the Government in Spain: the Popular Party has been accused of being not-very-legally financed and while the President has denied any accusation, the minister of health, Ana Mato, has been discovered to have used huge sums of money for parties or "confetti". The confetti has been a nice ironic image of the corruption: it inspires clowns, wasted money and Flaming Lips shows. But this has been, for many of the people that live abroad, a bit of a shame.

The problem is that PP thinks that their best idea is to be a rock, indiferent to outside influences, a kind of mafia where whatever is threatened is protected by the party. And this negates any kind of intelligent reaction they could have with these scandals, because, let's suppose that some of these are false allegations. Why did it take so much time for Rajoy to appear? Why doesn't he face the journalists? Why does he protect unbelievable attitudes like Ana Mato being ignorant of the huge ammount of money she handled? I try to get opinions from international press of what is happening in Spain, and what I think is that they cannot understand it. Or that they can't believe that there is corruption and no intention to stop it.

Today most of the national newspapers have articles about how corruption is broadly accepted in this country, as it was part of what we were, part of our education, or worse, part of a victimism: "we steal money because it's so difficult to earn it legally". Or because it is impossible to survive legally. Seriously: I can't relate to that, and I know many spaniards don't either. This classic excuse of "everyone does it so why can't we" has been a placard carried by most politics discussions since Democracy sat down in Spain (somewhat). Journalists, then, write about how spaniards voters accept corruption and even encourage it every time one of this accusations arise, which is unfair and not very true.

What happens with spanish politics is that it's not that important that your ideas win, but that the other ideas loose. Ideas, or teams. A supporter of Real Madrid watches the Barcelona football matches positioning with the other team, and celebrating when Barça loses, and politics work exactly the same: whatever the Popular Party does, their voters can be angered at them, or dissapointed, but will do anything to keep any other party from accessing the Government. It's a variation of Roosevelt's " it's our bastard" that can be applied to voters from the two biggest political parties in this country: voters can be terribly dissapointed, or even harmed by their voted politics, but as the parties are closed, they vote a party to keep the other from coming, as after all, the voted party represent themselves. It's complicated, I know.

And it's difficult to put both parties, PP and PSOE, as having the same kind of voters, as the days when PSOE was unbeatable are forgotten... and it is very difficult to remember that the same kind of attitudes and arrogant replies were typical of PSOE back in the 90s, just the same kind. It's an absolute fear of leaving the power (one polititian said "power burns out, but not having it burns out even more") and suddenly facing change. There's nearly a religious simile with it, as if it "the other" would bring whatever will collapse the moral values you were taught. In the case of PP there is not even a simile, as there are very clear connections with the ecclesiastical high hierarchy, and in the case of the forgotten PSOE beliefs, there was the fear of a party that will get rid of pensions, health and public schools. Oh, the irony.

So now it's difficult to go back at the first elections when there were more than two main parties trying to get more votes. And it's difficult to get back to the times when voters didn't inmediately know that the political party they were voting wouldn't inmediately betray them and they had to live with that, as if that party was a spoiled son. As the candidate list for the parties are closed, politicians work for their party, rule for their party and hope that their voters vote them just because they are too afraid that the others will win. I remember one PP mayor where I lived that left the rich zones unnatended, so the roads deteriorated quickly and vegetation become more than annoying: he knew that, whatever he did, rich would still vote him. And they did.

That is what Rajoy hopes for, and that is why he just denies any accusation and, well, any proof. He knows that PP voters will still vote PP, as betrayed as they are, despite the warnings to vote any other party (in this case, UPyD, a small center-right wing party that is sloooowly gathering more votes with each election), and he believes that voters will see the party as a whole, though it is very cracked on the inside. However, no more cracked than PSOE, that will still keep its share of votes. The resulting situation is less people going to vote, but the same rotating results. And the problem with this situation is that non voters are beginning to doubt democracy, and want a revolution.

I'm a bit scared of the state of my country. It's like a very large network of corruption keeps political parties, religion, media and other companies together, both by beliefs and convenience (cousin of a Minister has a contract as a TV show moderator, brother-in-law of another Minister is in another electrical company...) and citizens can only watch it from very far and has nearly no influence. Whatever we do, even if we vote, there is no solution. This is when radical groups could appear, and that is what many of us are afraid of.

Let's hope that justice... no, to be honest, I don't have any hope, apart from "let's hope we can get out of this as unharmed as possible".

New Blog

Funny that maybe this blog will be the most personal of whatever I've written on in the last years. Anyway, this is a blog, in the most 00's classical way of blogging, that will tell what I think about things. Fascinating.