Lex Ferenda

Nevertheless, despite the emergence of online election humour, it has been generally overlooked by academic scholars (We found only three papers that dealt directly with this theme - all of them based on US experiences (Warnick 1998, 2002; Foot & Schneider 2002)). Our paper, therefore, represents a first attempt to analyse a range of online humorous political genres in the UK. The central research questions considered here are twofold: How was online humour used by different actors in the 2005 UK election campaign? And, what were the specific characteristics of online humour in this campaign?

Limor Shifman, Stephen Coleman and Stephen Ward take on this challenge in a new article, Only joking? Online humour in the 2005 UK general election. Here’s the abstract, but you’ll need a subscription to go further. This is a deadly serious article , what with references to Freudian approaches to Flash games about certain acts not normally performed in Parliament and detailed parsing of graffiti - but it’s of interest to anyone who follows political campaigns and the sillier side of them in particular. I’ve heard Coleman speak before. He has a great job - serious academia that involves being absorbed in all elements of politics and the public debate over politicians, in his role as a professor of political communications.

As it happens, while I was writing up this post, I saw news of the FEC decisions on blogs and campaign finance law; nothing too new given an earlier FEC statement on Internet activities and the media exemption. Much as this is being celebrated as a victory for free speech and blogs being treated like media and all that, I find it hard to cheer anything that emerges from the mess that is US campaign finance law (and the continuing notion that money really does talk, at least as far as the regulation of elections is concerned). It’s still broken. Blogs grabbing one of the fifty million opt-outs doesn’t mean all that much.

Damien Mulley’s familiar ‘fluffy links’ includes an embedded KLF video today. Not the first time that Damien has shared the love of Mu Mu with the world - he posted a series of KLF videos before - but all of those links have died. Such is the fate of the dance of GooTube.

Anyway, Damien links to the ‘million pounds’ documentary and the Boing Boing post about it. What’s more, though, recently I noticed a flurry of interesting KLF archive pieces turning up on YouTube and elsewhere. For example, user klfcommunicationsnet (presumably the people behind this) has posted a whole load of things (view the channel here). For now, this includes a rake of the infamous Top of the Pops appearances, such as Justified and Ancient (complete with ice-cream cones playing guitar and Tammy W on a big screen) and Doctorin’ The Tardis (mmmm). Also available through various sources are things like the ‘final’ performance at the Brits (KLF v Extreme Noise Terror), the chaotic comeback (***k The Millennium, and no I’m not being prudish, that’s what it’s called) complete with Liverpool dockers, audio (but not video, that I know of) of the Justified Ancients of M.U. (probably not actual KLF) singing about Cantona and the Acid Brass (no, I’m serious) version of What Time Is Love (which made an appearance in the comeback).

Darius Whelan notes that the Attorney General’s office here in Ireland now has a page for ‘new’ statutory instruments (SIs); there’s a good archive up to 2005(in the online Statutes Book) but getting released ones (online and without charge) has been very hit and miss.

Good news.