The outcome of political careers and even campaigns is increasingly dependent on the successful mastery of new communication tools including social media. Many MPs and members of Congress are embracing the use of social networking tools to keep in touch with their constituents, whilst Facebook, YouTube and even Twitter have potentially changed the nature of [...]

Journals and peer-reviewed publications are still the most widely used channels through which research is disseminated within the scientific community and to a broader audience. However, social media is increasingly challenging the supremacy of editors, reviewers and science communicators. Blogging about science has become a new way of engaging “the public” directly with researchers whilst [...]

Theorists such as Yochai Benkler have suggested that the accessibility and inherently social nature of Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, social networking and wikis mean that we might expect them to enhance our democratic freedoms through the opening of new channels for debate and collaboration. Academic research suggests that such new opportunities have not [...]

Among the traditional media, blogs and other contributions to citizen journalism have for a long time been regarded as posing a significant threat to ‘quality’ news reporting, whilst the global recession has shown that the threatened failure of high quality local and regional media outlets was not a groundless fear. Whilst some of the most [...]

Twitter could not buy this publicity! Current events in Iran show how widely the use of social media tools, such as Twitter, Facebook, Blogs & Co, have revolutionised politics and indeed political dissent. Unquestionably, corporations, newspapers and even governments are increasingly embracing blogs and Twitter feeds as key-elements in their communication strategies. Yet, research shows [...]