Who decides what’s newsworthy?
When MEP for South East England Daniel Hannan delivered his attack on Gordon Brown on Wednesday in the European Parliament, the press didn’t pay much attention. But the public did. So it came that the video he posted on Youtube got the most hits in less time – 1,270,568 views until now and 8,752 comments so far, not just from English people.
The video spread like a virus through the Internet, with support of first Twitter, followed by links to several blogs.
The media didn’t feel that this speech was newsworthy obviously, but the public did.
That’s an obvious example of how the media turns into pull media. The whole communication process becomes people powered by people actively searching for the information they want to.
But that means for Public Relations as well as for the politicians to give up some control, as Don Tapscott, the author of Wikinomics states. And I guess that’s something what still scares some people. Understandably to a certain extend.
But democracy shouldn’t be about control anyway, rather than being about participation. And if politicians use these new tools attentive they can get a much closer look on what the people think, need and want, as through new media the thoughts, needs and beliefs of people are exactly reflected.
And then the “risk” of giving up control can be very rewarding in the end.
As Daniel Hannan states on his blog, it was really surprising for him how his speech hit the web. He posted videos like that since seven weeks, but they never got that much attention. And honestly, there are more entertaining videos on Youtube.
Maybe he just said what many people actually thought. Because I suppose people just get active, whether it is online or offline, when they see the need for a change.
