Comments on: Sunday Tribune features FG website rip-off

By: Christopher Mehigan

Christopher Mehigan — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:51:15 +0000

Really this comes down to the fact that we are all of us crying out for a proper engagement strategy to be run by a political party in Ireland. All of them have so far failed to use their online presence effectively and this is another example of a political party getting it wrong, which is just so disappointing.
At the end of the day you are not going to change the country by having a good online presence, but it will absolutely help you broadcast your message, engage with the public and strengthen your brand. It just seems that political parties in Ireland are ticking the boxes beside the website requirements and moving on, failing utterly to realise the potential value there.
On a side note FG did themselves absolutely no favours with how they reacted to this story. They were caught with their pants down and have tried instead to justify their position going immediately on the defensive. Had they been a bit more savvy about it they would have realised they had a great PR opportunity on their hands, admit the got it wrong and invited people like Stephanie to come meet with them to advise them on what they should be doing online and what their website should look like. That would have shown real engagement with the community and Irish business and would have been a story in itself that would have set them apart from the rest of the gang.

Instead … they dropped the ball. Again.

At some stage, hopefully soon, one of these parties will come to realise the opportunities for proper online engagement.

By: steve white

steve white — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:44:28 +0000

metioned that it was going to be discussed on phantom in a while

By: Dawn

Dawn — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:59:12 +0000

Steph, you officially are my hero! Yeah, myself and Andrea picked up the Sunday Tribune to commemorate the event… but as someone who wrote a sociology FYP on social networking sites and has had lecturers ask me ‘why would you bother studying the Internet’, I’m not too surprised about the fact that bloggers are just seen as unimportant in Irish media.

I think that many people do not understand the social nature of the Internet and that social norms, values and relations are reproduced throughout the Internet; and therefore they should apply the same logic to the Internet in terms of behaviours, sources and ethics as they would in so-called ‘real life’.

This essential understanding has been violated in two ways in this affair. One, the plagiarism of the BBC code is intellectual property theft and just because it’s on the Internet does not lessen the gravity of this breach of ethics. Were a Fine Gael TD to copy a speech made by another politician, s/he would be called out on it straight away. Two, as far as I am concerned you are a source of information and a political commentator on this affair. Again in ‘real life’ if you were to call media attention to some mishandling of FG affairs, you would be a whistleblower, a political commentator, a credible source but because you are a blogger, you are a troublemaker creating a moral panic.

This essentially is the problem with how the Internet is viewed- a dichotomy. It’s either ‘real life’ or the Internet, rather than a complementary interaction. If you are a journalist writing about this topic, you’re credible; if you are a blogger, you are a trouble-maker.

By: James Gallagher

James Gallagher — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:32:48 +0000

@Robert
Despite being 32 I’ve never voted in an election here in Ireland, due to being out of the country whenever the opportunity arose. So I’ve been keen to find a party that I could get behind. FG always get the votes in our house (parents and siblings) and I figured that’s where I’d go. However, more and more I’m turned off parties and their candidates. That FG are obviously identical to FF in matters of integrity and respect for the country and her people genuinely despairs me.

By: Steph

Steph — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:59:44 +0000

@Rick: Yeah I was thrilled to see that FG got approached for comments while I being but just some ‘online blogger’, I obviously had nothing further to say.

By: Rick

Rick — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:26:56 +0000

I saw it too Steph and was disappointed that he referred to “online bloggers” (are there any other kind? I know I wrote a post once with a typewriter, but…) and how there was no link of any kind here…

We’ll take your story, print it, but proper credit?

Nah…

By: Robert Synnott

Robert Synnott — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:21:19 +0000

“The whole response from them has really dented my belief in the integrity of FG, I’m sad to say.” – Well, let that be a lesson, then. Belief in the integrity of a POLITICAL PARTY, indeed…

I like to think of FG as the FF with the more terrifying leader.

By: James Gallagher

James Gallagher — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:16:00 +0000

In fairness, they’ve finally changed the styles.css to rename the classes they stole from the BBC’s Barlesque. That makes it all better then I guess.

The whole response from them has really dented my belief in the integrity of FG, I’m sad to say. Mind you, it’s not that different from the deny-deny-deny handling of their last plagiarism incident (http://news.myhome.ie/newspaper/ireland/2008/0221/1203471498401.html)