I feel like I want to write something about this, because not only was it a pretty big deal in the big picture of British media and politics, it felt like a pretty big deal for me and my engagement shifting from interested and theoretical to faintly active (I mean, it’s not like twittering uses up many calories but it *is* still participating in a discourse). It was also a little sobering, because although I would normally count myself as pretty engaged in current affairs, I hadn’t heard anything about the incident in the Ivory Coast or about Trafigura (I mean, I might have seen a Trafigura logo on a board at a rugby match, but I hadn’t heard of them). Time to read more papers and watch more Newsnight, clearly.
Anyway, I first heard about the Guardian’s initial ‘This is all we can’t tell you about some stuff that we can’t tell you’ report late on Monday night – I can’t remember, but I suspect someone tweeted the link. My initial reactions were (a) that’s really weird, (b) how can it happen that a paper can be barred from reporting on parliament and, (c) that’s a very canny piece. But I didn’t quite realise how canny, and off I trotted to snoozeland. Only to wake up the next morning to find that #trafigura had exploded on twitter. And bang, my plan to spend my morning applying for JRFs disapparated in a cloud of retweeting and reading and participating. Sure it was head and finger business, but I actually really enjoyed the buzz of business after three years of sitting in libraries and offices slogging through books and thesis writing. It’s not that I don’t enjoy my academic-y-ness, it’s just that I really really like the bit where my academic interests hit the actual real world and has the potential to be functional in some way that I’m just beginning to try and work out. (On which subject, of interest and participation and new tech and its role in enabling participation, you should read Hannah Nicklin’s post about Louder, a new online space for campaigners, it’s really exciting). Even if I stay in academia (and my future plans are still pretty up in the air), I don’t want to get lost in my little ivory tower – and I really like that the internet has the potential to make it so much harder for that getting lost to happen.
But back to #Trafigura. It’s been said that Carter-Ruck’s claim that the Guardian would be in contempt of court (over their injunction) if they reported on Parliament would have been ruled against when they got to court, so twitter wasn’t necessarily a big factor – but I think it must be seen as a factor in getting Carter-Ruck to step back before going to court. That’s a lot of popular pressure – and more importantly, a great rise in unpopularity for your law firm and your client that you might think you could offset by backing down in advance of being removed. And I really liked the way the word spread on twitter – it was essentially well-mannered outrage, which sounds silly, but honestly, you’re more likely to make something happen and LAST if you don’t swear and jump up and down on people’s heads. It was a spread of information – which is, of course, exactly what Carter-Ruck and Trafigura didn’t want, so in this case the medium really worked for the issue.
I also quite like the way it’s worked politically – yes, the Prime Minister jumping on a bandwagon that is already rolling, in his call to investigate these super-injunctions (but I happen to like the bandwagon). But it was a bandwagon that actually started where it should have started – in good journalism by the likes of the Guardian and Newsnight, and in a question by an MP who actually decided he cared enough to ask the Justice Secretary a question about the injunction banning publication of references to a report (this one, here, on wiki-leaks). The dog did actually cause the tail to wag, created a broader public discourse and got some traction on the issue. This is good – long may it continue.
