Last night was Kim Dotcom’s “moment of truth”. I will leave it up to others to others to assess the content of the evening. But I want to talk about how the Internet Party, and others, covered it on social media. There was the typical promotion before hand, with their graphics and tweets and Facebook posts of the live stream link:
It was during the event that I was surprised at how the social media was run. I was surprised to see that there was only one graphic that was released during the event:
This contained quotes from Edward Snowden’s presentation. Well I assume it was from last night, and not from the 15th of June like the caption says, as I don’t recall any comments about New Zealand from Edward back that far. UPDATE: I have been pointed to where the quote comes from, and the Internet Party have got the date wrong.
The rest of the night was made up of the Internet Party account live tweeting the event. What I want to know is why were there not pre-prepard graphics of things like the slides that Glenn Greenwald talked about? Would these not have been useful to have on social media so people could a) look at them up close, as opposed to on the live stream? b) so that people could share them around? Some will say they needed to keep things under their hat before the event. But from what I have seen in the coverage there is no indication that Glenn talked about, or released, anything that wasn’t included in his, and Edward’s, articles on The Intercept. So why was there nothing prepared? Is it to do with the question of electoral expenses, and what, if anything, from the event has to be counted towards the parties election expenses?
After the event, the Internet Party, and some of its candidates, were not happy with how the media was covering the event. This resulted in them having a go at the media Twitter:
The thing is, the Internet Party/Kim Dotcom/Whoever else organised it, set themselves up for the situation. KDC had been talking up the event, how he had proof positive that the PM knew about him before he says he did, and then hours before the event the Herald get hold of the email and its veracity was called into question. So of course the media are going to ask questions about that. But using social media to attack the media because they are asking questions about something you brought into the public is not a good look. The sense I got from following things on Twitter last night was that for many there was a sense of being let down. Yes there are questions to be answered, but what was talked up before the event was not delivered, and the Internet Party’s online response since seems to suggest that they know this is the case and they are trying to place blame on the media for focusing on one aspect and not the other. As the Speaker would say, if you ask a two part primary, you can’t complain when the minister answers just one part.
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