Twitter blocked in China before June 4

There are a range of news stories about (here and here and here) about how the Chinese authorities have blocked access to social media sites including Twitter, You Tube, Flickr and MSN Hotmail prior to the 20th anniversary of the Tiannemen Square crackdown on June 4, 2009. This story won't be blocked, as my understanding is that Blogger is always blocked in China.

Governance as Social Networking

Lee Rainie from the Pew Internet and American Life Project on the Internet and news, politics, governance and citizenship.

Governing as social networking

View more presentations from PewInternet.

2008: Highlights and Lowlights

Everyone is doing one of these, so I thought I would contribute my list of the highs and lows of 2008.

Highlights of 2008


1. Barack Obama's US presidential election victory

After the campaign, the actual Presidency is bound to disappoint. It would have been pleasing to see Francis the Talking Mule take over as a Democratic Party president after eight years of the Bush administration, but Obama's campaign brought so many things together so seamlessly. Tapping into the 'Netroots' movement, the use of social media, a formidable bottom-up fundraising machine, and a campaign that actually offered hope rather than cynicism. Even the most hardened Obama sceptic would find it hard not to be moved by the victory speech in Grant Park, Chicago. I'm predicting a big win for Obama in 2012 as the two factors that could have worked against him in 2008 - race and inexperience - have been surpassed, and he meets a Republican Party at the end of the 40-year Nixon-Reagan Revolution and in its long, dark night of the soul.

2. The Rudd Government's apology to the Stolen Generations

At last, an Australian Prime Minister does the right thing about a historic wrong. Its hard to believe we spent a decade arguing over the importance of this.


3. The Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony

OK, so the Torch Relays were controversial, and China's human rights record is pretty iffy. But the world wasn't looking at Beijing in 2008 to understand the National People's Congress or discern the inner workings of the SARFT. They wanted a spectacle, and got it. Opening with 2008 drummers with traditional instruments, this was the gold standard of Olympic opening ceremonies. And aside from the dodgy yachting venue at Qingdao and the ongoing pollution problems, the Games themselves went pretty smoothly

4. Matthew Mitcham's diving gold medal

An unexpected gold medal win for Australia, and Matthew Mitcham thanked his boyfriend, his parents, and his coach, in that order. Quite a change from the traumas faced by gay athletes such as the US diver Greg Louganis in the 80s, and the sort of signal of change that may have more impact in the longer term on human rights in China than battles over the Olympic torch relay.

5. Radiohead "In Rainbows"

This came out on the Net in 2007, but the CD was an 08 release (just!). At a time when the album as format may be on its death bed (see Guns 'n' Roses "Chinese Democracy" lowlight #8 below), Radiohead released a beautifully seamless album that synthesises their mid 90s feel for a catchy hook with their late 90s/early 00s avant-gardism into a mix that is the more impressive the more you listen to it. The worthy successor to "OK Computer", which may have been the album of the 1990s.

6. Julia Gillard

A polarising choice perhaps, but one that has to be made. After admirably keeping her cool on Channel Nine when Labor won in November 07, she is the best Parliamentary performer on the Labor side since Paul Keating, and is particularly good when she tears into the myths of Costellology. She has always looked comfortable in the big chair whenever Kevin 007 has jetted off again to advise the Bolivian Government on medium-term monetary policy targeting.

7. Nate Silver's 'Five-Thirty-Eight' US election blog

Transferring a knowledge of baseball statistics to election prediction in the fantastically complicated US electoral college system, Nate Silver's blog had three great innovations that lifted it above the pack: (1) a real understanding of statistical probability (e.g. if John McCain didn;t win Pennsylvania, he had a 3 in 10,000 chance of victory); (2) gauging the momentum of each campaign by photographing which offices still had the lights on in swing districts at 7pm (McCain's didn't; Obama's did); and (3) profiling the voting propensities of each state through indicators such as the ratio of Wal-Marts to Starbucks (high in Kansas, low in Oregon).

8. Manly thumping the Melbourne Storm 54-0 in the NRL Grand Final

More controversial than Julia Gillard at #6, this was an amazing vindication of a side that was nearly down and out after the Super League fiasco (remember the Northern Eagles!). One for my late father, who wore the slings and arrows of being a Manly fan with pride all his life, even if it probably annoyed the Rees NSW Labor government (see lowlight #5 below).

9. Season Six of The Sopranos

OK, this happened in 2007, but due to the unbelieveably crappy programming of Channel Nine (very lucky not to make the Lowlights Top 10 themselves, although I haven't seen Richard Wilkins NYE party show yet), I saw it in 2008. Serial televsiion as a medium for epic storytelling. James Gandolfini as Shakespearean hero-villain in a polyester shirt. Can talk therapy cure a sociopath? I think not.

10. Shane Warne: The Musical

I say this not having seen the show, but it seems a great resolution through live theatre of one of the great socio-cultural divides of Australian society. Every summer, Australia would divide in two. There were those who demanded harsh retribution for Shane's every personal misdemeanor as they objected in principle to his oafish occupation of the Australian public sphere, and wanted the national conversation to turn back to Radio National, Writers' Festivals or constitutional reform. And then there were those who revelled in Shane's outre displays of public bad behaviour, as he stood in for a number of other things the RN/Writers' Festival crowd disliked - SUVs, plasma TVs, alcopops, text messaging and, more generally, sports people being taken as barometers of the national psyche. Anyway, after Shane's gone, Ricky Ponting thinks that captaining a cricket team is like being CEO of a corporation, and look where we are now.

Lowlights of 2008

1. The Global Financial Crisis (GFC)

The GFC bundles a bunch of lowlights together, from the Bush Administration's handling of it in the US, the tanking of super funds (meaning that jobs in universities will remain hard to get for at least another five years), Iceland going bankrupt - and perhaps California next - and perhaps one million unemployed in Australia in 2009. One positive has been the return in a big way of Keynesian economics, which tends to work with the grain of parties of the left.

2. Telstra's no-show for the National Broadband Network bid

The idea that you get the money anyway even if you don't do the paperwork is not the experience of people who deal with Centrelink, Medicare or the Australian Research Council, and the idea that Telstra could just poo-pooh the whole notion of competitive bidding for a multi-billion contract for delivery of a service of vital national importance was indicative of just how adrift and insular the company has become under Trujillo and McGaughie. The probability that all of this will go through the courts in 2009 - which will involve a lot more time and paperwork than submitting a bid proposal for NBN would have done - is staggering, and inadvertently points to the merits of separating the network and retail functions of Telstra.

3. Robert Mugabe's presidency in Zimbabwe

A truly appalling situation, that deserves a particular dishonourable mention for former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who could have put a stop to this madness in May, and who has blemished the idea of anti-colonial solidarity forever by providing cover for this deranged tyrant.

4. The Federal Opposition

Being in Opposition after eleven years in government can;t be a great situation, but the Federal Liberal-National parties made extraordinarily heavy weather of it over 2008, making the Rudd government look considerably better than it actually is. At one point it looked like the balme could be pinned on Brendan "Emo Man" Nelson, as he would get ever more worked up and overwrought in public about the fate of truck drivers, Bundy & Coke drinkers, "ute men" (thanks Glenn Milne), and people who owned ten-year-old Toyota Taragos. But the period since Malcolm Turnbull came in has been just as ragged, despite the fact that he is a more obvious looking Opposition leader than Brendan Nelson was, with the various attempts to mug Treasury secretary Ken Henry in public and Nationals' leader Warren Truss describing the Federal government' economic stimulus package as "bulldust" being indicative of the quality of the contribution coming from the Opposition front bench. As someone who periodically finds myself listening to the Senate in the car, I can say that it is worse live than it comes across as through the media.

5. The NSW state Labor government

Cross-city tunnel, electricity privatisation saga, State Labor Conference, Iemma and Costa resigning, Reba Meagher leaving her driver at the car as she went home with an ex-Channel 7 journo, Matt Brown's 'pants-off' tenure as Police Minister ... the fun never stops, and may not stop for another 2 1/2 years. Nathan Rees and Eric Roozendahl proved to the financial markets how tough they were to eb with the budget by abolishing free school bus passes, and then proved they are listening to the electorate by backing down on the policy a month later (yeah, the electorate were going to celebrate the end of free bus travel for school kids). The Premier State: dazed and confused.

6. Corey Worthington

If you are going to do something stupid in Australia, do it in January. You can get condemned for it not just by A Current Affair, but by the Victorian Premier, the Police Commissioner, and the Police Minister. I'm surprised that Kevin didn't chime in.

7. Sports stars in rehab

I do genuinely appreciate the decisions made by Ben Cousins, Wayne Carey, Andrew Johns etc. to face up (eventually, after getting caught out) to personal drink and drug demons, but they have generated a cottage industry around them as well as a book publishing phenomenon that suggests they have taken over from the ever popular "Rock stars in rehab" genre.

8. Guns 'n' Roses "Chinese Democracy"

Fifteen years in the making. Out with Slash, in with Buckethead. Straight to the remainder bins. Sorry Axl, its Welcome to the Wal-Mart Stacking Shelves (or perhaps the kitchen at KFC).

9. Britain's display at the Beijing Olympics Closing Ceremony

Red London double decker bus offloads Jimmy Page, who plays "Whole Lotta Love". I'm surprised he didn't stop off for a carton of milk and a pack of ciggies on the way.

10. Mandatory Internet filtering

Symbolic policy and pointless pandering to the Christian lobby by the Rudd government at its worst. Will hopefully be the first policy to fall over in 2009. Special dishonourable mention to Professor Clive Hamilton, who co-edited a book in 2007 titled "Silencing Dissent", and seems to spend much of his public life trying to silence dissent with him. As The Who said in 1970: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. We won't get fooled again.

And a fabulous 2009 to all of you.

Obama campaign and social media

Information from the Politics Online site about how the Barack Obama presidential campaign made use of social media to build its victorious momentum:

The Washington Post reports that in his 21 months of campaigning, Obama raised half a billion online. Equally impressive is Obama's online popularity within social networking sites.

Here is a breakdown of Obama's online operations stats:

• 3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million.
• Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less.
• Obama's e-mail list contains upwards of 13 million addresses.
• In total, more than 1 billion e-mails landed in inboxes....To put this in perspective, John Kerry's '04 campaign collected 3 million email addresses and Howard Dean had roughly 600,000 email addresses on his list.
• A million people signed up for Obama's text- messaging program.
• 2 million profiles were created on Obama's social network, MyBarackObama.com in addition to the 5 million supporters in other social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

Have think tanks had their day?

Gerry Hassan argues in Open Democracy that, with the declining fortunes of New Labour in Britain, that the 'think tank' has had its day, at least as a vehicle for policy and ideas on the left.

He argues that while think tank such as DEMOS and the IPPR had an impact in the early days of New Labour, this impact has declined. Moreover, he argues that the model inherently leads to elite 'capture' of the policy process, as think tanks invariably attune their arguments to their funders and political benefactors. These are seen as greater problem for centre-left politics, which needs a vibrant exchange of ideas from outside of the corridors of power more than conservative politics does.

Hassan's arguments could have interesting implications for Kevin Rudd's Federal Labor government. Its focus on 'evidence-based policy' should be fruitful ground for think tanks, but the argument is that this can present real dangers for Labour governments.

Once upon a time governments developed their policies through either party avenues such as a composite motion if the Labour Party, or a carefully worded resolution from a loyal association if the Conservatives. Both parties also had powerful research departments, while the civil service was a source of ideas when either party was in office.

This model began to unravel as politics became more technocratic and managerial, and policy more specialist and political at the same time, with the arrival of ‘special advisers’ in the Wilson Government of 1964-70, and even more so following this with the explosion of think tanks around Westminster in recent decades.

This essay addresses the unprecedented explosion in think tanks in the United Kingdom, what the consequences are for our democracy, polity and politics, and where it leaves those of us who care about the state of our democracy.

First, it is important to give a little background on the term and evolution of ‘think tank’. The phrase has its origins in the Second World War in the USA when it was used to denote strategists who discussed war planning. The establishment of the RAND Corporation in 1946 became the first body to be recognisably called a ‘think tank’ (apologies to the British Fabian Society established in 1884, but who were not called a think tank until much later).

The RAND Corporation are one of the key organisations in the making of the post-war modern world and a body which came from deep within the American military-industrial complex, and who gave us such concepts as futures thinking, scenario planning and ‘the missile gap’ between the US and Soviet Union.

Post-war the United States has developed an extensive infrastructure of think tanks – which has been driven by the adversarial nature of US politics, the alternation of bureaucracies with parties in power, and the lack of party resources for policy development.

From the 1970s onward, conservative and right-wing think tanks have contributed to the creation of an influential ‘conservative movement’, which remade the Republican Party, and shifted US politics rightward. The Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute and Cato Institute are all multi-million pound operations which dwarf the comparable operations of Democrat and centre-left bodies, and have a zealous, ideological drive to push forward their agenda.

Whatever the result of the forthcoming US Presidential elections, this imbalance in political power and finance will continue; the infrastructure of the ‘conservative movement’ and its think tanks, churches and groups will sadly not disappear.

A Short History of the UK Think Tank Revolution

The UK think tank revolution arrived first as a challenge to the ‘Yes Minister’ way of doing things and the Oxbridge consensus of managing decline. This was evidenced by the emergence of a number of right-wing think tanks: the Institute of Economic Affairs set up in 1955 and subsequently the Centre for Policy Studies, established by Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher, and the Adam Smith Institute, both formed in the 1970s.

These began as ‘outsider’ groups challenging the post-war settlement, the growth of government, public spending and welfare, and played a major part in the thinking of the Thatcher government which came to reshape Britain.

The Labour Party, reeling from three election defeats responded by setting up the Institute for Public Policy Research in 1988, and after a fourth defeat, independent centre-leftists associated with Marxism Today formed Demos in 1993.

These were meant to counter the influence of the right-wing think tanks and replicate their success. This completely misread the situation. The success of the Thatcher government was not mostly due to think tanks, but the failures of the post-war settlement and changes in Britain and the world economy from the 1970s onward. The Thatcher government also had from its beginnings an over-arching philosophy and sense of direction which it had begun to flesh out in opposition.

Labour after four defeats had lost any sense of confidence or direction it had in the post-war era and looked to the think tank model to replace this. Subsequently, the era of New Labour saw an unprecedented explosion of think tanks in the Westminster village. These two facts are related. As the political classes coalesced around a post-Thatcherite consensus, debate about policy and ideas became about technical and managerial matters and issues of delivery.

This suited think tanks and the way they operated. A shark’s infested sea of think tanks paradoxically offered less choice, and more of the same, as they jockeyed for position and told politicians increasingly what they wanted to hear. The UK has spawned such a large number of think tanks that in 2001 Prospect magazine set up its Think Tank of the Year competition which was won in 2006 by Policy Exchange for its ‘zip’ and ‘high impact’, and IPPR the following year in what the judges acknowledged ‘hasn’t been a vintage year in the British think tank world.’ (1)

A little bit of nuance and subtlety should be acknowledged here. It is impossible to tarnish all think tank work with the same brush. The Institute of Public Policy Research did undertake serious, rigorous work in its early years, particularly around the Commission on Social Justice; and Demos in its first years did produce a lot of vibrant and evangelical, if somewhat superficial ideas: ‘joined-up governance’, ‘social entrepreneurship’ and many others.

In the last few years, the most substantial thinking in this world has come from those challenging the conventional think tank world. There has been the idea of ‘the do tank’, moving from just thinking to doing, the ideas of Tom Bentley, when Director of Demos of ‘everyday democracy’, the Young Foundation, addressing issues around ‘community’, and the Centre for Social Justice, set up by Iain Duncan Smith. Most impressive as a challenge to the increasingly dogmatic and narrow bandwidth of political debate has been the work of the New Economics Foundation. What these examples show is that there is something significantly up with the conventional idea of a think tank. (2)

The conventional think tank model is a very Anglo-American model of politics shaped by money and influence, and one we have increasingly exported around the world – as we have proven arrogant enough to sell our view of deregulation and privatisation of even the most basic utilities.

Step forward with pride the UK Government whose Department for International Development has bankrolled the Adam Smith Institute to advise governments across the African continent of the merits of privatisation. Clare Short, supposedly a left-wing minister, said as Development Minister in 2002:

Privatisation is the only way to get the investment that poor countries need in things like banking, tourism, telecommunications, and services such as water, under good regulatory arrangements.

The Lack of Self-Reflection in the World of Think Tankery

What is revealing is how lacking in self-criticism and renewal are many of the people involved in the think tank industry. Richard Reeves, newly appointed director of Demos, has recently argued that think tanks ‘win their influence through intimacy with their principal political ‘clients’ or through independent technical expertise.’ This leads, Reeves believes, to the political class listening to them the way ‘you might listen to your spouse or your GP.’

Reeves did not address why think tanks are the best arbiters and providers of this ‘expertise’, or consider Jim Knight, Labour MP’s point that they are ‘ultimately very elitist, top-down institutions’.

There is now discernable doubt around Westminster about the quality of much of think tank work, the influence of corporate funding, and how success is judged by insider access to politicians and media coverage generated. The think tank world began as a set of outsiders challenging the old establishment. In its place it has become part of the new establishment, defending an even more narrow, undemocratic and doctrinaire view of the world.

This can be seen in the journey of IPPR and Demos. Under Matthew Taylor, IPPR moved from a ‘think tank’ to a ‘speak tank’ which Taylor used as a platform to support his burgeoning career as a media commentator (something he has continued at Royal Society of the Arts). Post-Taylor, Nick Pearce attempted to bring a more serious and thoughtful research ethos, getting into issues which challenged the narrow consensus, and distance IPPR from the wreckage of New Labour. Now it is breaking new ground headed up by a job share: Lisa Harkin and Carey Oppenheim.

So far the world of think tanks has been at senior level a very boys’ environment. Demos post-Tom Bentley has had three directors: Madeleine Bunting, Catherine Fieschi, and now Richard Reeves, with neither woman lasting very long.

Think tanks have also become in recent years more about ‘mood’ than substance, providing ‘independent’ backdrops for politicians to position themselves. Thus, in the last few years, as the limits of New Labour centralisation grew apparent, think tanks grew excited about the possibilities of ‘localism’. This led to David Miliband coining the phrase ‘double devolution’ which the think tank world thought might lead to a realisation of the perils of over-centralism. No real policy change occurred at all as a result of this rhetoric and debate, but some in the centre managed to look better and look like they might consider doing something.

The Tories have caught up with this game under David Cameron. In the early days of his leadership, Cameron showed he was a different kind of Tory by giving an address to Demos, the centre-left think-tank. George Osborne, Shadow Chancellor, aiming to outflank New Labour gave a recent speech about ‘fairness’ without any real specifics. All of these examples: Miliband, Cameron and Osborne are about politicians using think tanks not for ideas or research, but to aid spin and perception.

The respective fortunes of think tanks do tell us something about the political weather. There is usually one or two ‘hot’ think-tanks: the Centre for Policy Studies and Adam Smith Institute in the 1980s, Demos, post-1997, and currently, Policy Exchange, David Cameron’s ‘favourite think-tank’, at least until its recent report on the failure of regeneration of Northern English cities, which he called ‘barmy’ and ‘insane’. Policy Exchange are all by all accounts awash with money at the moment, whereas several of the centre-left think tanks are finding things harder.

It is true that Scotland has managed to create a policy environment around the Scottish Parliament without a think tank industry, with only one properly resourced think tank in operation for the last decade, Scottish Council Foundation, which has not had major influence on government despite its resources. The SNP have come to office without the support of a sympathetic think tank or the resources and networks to establish one, and so far it does not seem to have done them any harm.

The Welsh political environment has witnessed the work of the Institute of Welsh Affairs established by John Osmond. Northern Ireland in the crucial and sensitive transition period of the 1990s had Democratic Dialogue run by Robin Wilson, which ran out of funding when Northern Irish politics ‘normalised’ with the end of ‘the Troubles’.

There is something in the experience of the devolved nations and the absence of a think tank industry as new polity environments have emerged in each place. This is about the smallness of the political class in each, along with the ease of access and lack of corporate funding. It has long been a point of some political observers in Scotland to bemoan the absence of an infrastructure of competing think tanks thrashing out ‘new ideas’ and policies which sink or swim in the marketplace, but from where we sit now and the experience of UK think tanks, Scotland may have been blessed by this experience.

The Emergence of a New Establishment

The think tank industry is an increasingly narrow, incestuous one, emblematic of the lack of difference between the political parties, and shaped by a narrowing and professionalisation of politics, where similar ‘bright things’ inhabit Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems, and the world of think tanks. These oscillate around Labour and Conservatives at Westminster and tend to ignore the Lib Dems, as this is about power, influence and who has the potential to form an administration, not the cerebral pursuit of ideas.

If we were to address think tanks through the lens they see policy, and ask who are they serving, we would find that the vested interests which gain, are the world of corporate interests, accountancy firms and lobbying. If we asked what ‘new ideas’ have they brought forward and advocated in the last decade or so which has benefited the way government and policy is enacted which have aided the general populace, the answer would be threadbare.

After the Thatcher revolution, the think tank industry became a means by which the political class outsourced policy and built a new anti-democratic way of consolidating the new consensus which emerged. The think tank industry is part of the new establishment which has arisen in the post-democratic order and it is even more self-interested and self-serving than the previous one, which while it had faults, was also influenced by ‘duty’ and ‘public service’.

The world of think tanks has spanned an environment of incestuousness, of the blurring of boundaries between government and business, which has resulted in bad policy and government, and the pushing of marketisation, privatisation and corporate influence into previously unheralded areas of public life.

We need to ask penetrating questions about whose interests have been aided by the emergence of this new order, who gains from its maintenance, and who is paying for and perpetuating its existence? What is required of progressives is to imagine how we think of policy and ideas beyond the conventional idea of think tanks.

How can we imagine a more rich, pluralist and democratic network of institutions which think about policy and ideas, and which challenge the orthodoxies of the last few decades and the corporate interests? This is not just a narrow British story, but one with global consequences and implications from sub-Saharan Africa to the Middle East and Far East, as the disciples of free-market dogma take their mantras around the globe.

In the UK and even more in the United States, this requires that we think about the kind of agencies and institutions which can nurture, nourish and support progressive values, and the kind of ‘think tanks’ which can challenge the prevailing order, alongside a plethora of other bodies from trade unions, NGOs, campaigning groups and the net.

Think Tanks as Part of the Post-Democratic Elite

The think tank revolution in the UK is a story of the decline of party, which can be seen in the dilution of party research departments. These had a proud record of developing party policies – the Conservative Research Department under Rab Butler played a huge role in Conservative rethinking in the 1940s and acceptance of the Attlee Government’s programme for example.

Nowadays, we can see across all the mainstream UK political parties the dislocation of party leaderships from their party structures, and their shift of attention towards the world of post-democratic elites, of which think tanks are a part. This leads towards the corporatisation of politics and the ultimate outsourcing: the privatisation of policy making.

We have already seen in the United States that think tanks have been better suited to the politics of the right-wing, and this looks like it might be proving to be the case in the UK as well. One explanation of the changing fortunes of think tanks is to see this as a mere cyclical phenomenon: with first the rise of the right, then the centre-left, and now, the centre-right, corresponding to political fortunes. This seems a superficial explanation, with more profound and deep-seated forces at work.

The recent model of UK think tanks has seen the centre-left copying a right-wing model. As Adam Curtis’ groundbreaking series ‘Century of the Self’ showed the Clinton/Blair approach of ‘focus group’ politics and triangulation did not build a new centre-left politics – giving a temporary advantage, but creating a powerless, disconnected citizenry. The same is true of think tanks.

Think tanks are more suited to the politics of the pro-business, corporate world of the right than the left. That is why the interesting work on the left is happening far away from the narrow world of Westminster and the conventional think tank.

Notes

1. Winners of Prospect’s Think Tank of the Year are: IPPR (twice), New Economics Foundation, the Centre for Economic Reform, New Local Government Network, Institute for Fiscal Studies and Policy Exchange.

2. It is also true that specialist think tanks such as the King's Fund and the Work Foundation have built up reputations for expertise in their respective areas. Therefore, this emerging critique may be more relevant about the limitations of the conventional, generalist think tank which has no specific expertise and only has its brand and wits to live on.

ANZCA08 Conference - Power and Place, Wellington, NZ

I am in wintry Wellington in New Zealand for the Australia and New Zealand Communications Association (ANZCA) conference for 2008.

The theme of the conference is "Power and Place", and the keynote presentation this morning was by Maxwell McCombs, the pioneer of agenda-setting research. He was presenting a 40-year retrospective of the "Chapel Hill studies", as they are known, of agenda-setting in relation to the 1968 US Presidential elections.

One point that McCombs emphasised was that agenda-setting methodologies have been moving beyond the news/politics/public affairs nexus. He pointed out a study (missed author) that showed how agenda-setting research illustrates the rise of the U.S. National Basketball Association (NBA) from a relatively minor group in the late 60s to its multi-billion $ status today. It is also being used to evaluate corporate reputations, as is occurring with the Reputation Institute in The Netherlands.