Alexander Chalkidis

Category: Communication

  • Communication lessons from Afghanistan

    These days in Greece we celebrate independence from Ottoman rule.  It was in essence guerilla warfare.  Greeks have a tradition of sorts in this type of war.  But of course the true and proven modern masters are the Afghans.  The greatest powers of the world have tried their best to conquer the place and failed.

    In corporate communications and especially in selling ideas, we often emphasize the need to coordinate messages.   We try to aggregate them or centralize the sources.   We try to get disparate groups to converge around a single “authorized” source.   We do our best not to let some stray independent voice confuse the information market with conflicting views.   We want to be able to react quickly and without noise when necessary.

    But that is not how the Afghans fight.   One of the main advantages they have, from the time they fought the British, to the Soviets and now the retreating Allies, is that they are not coordinated.   You can’t easily agree something with one of the tribal leaders and expect him to get the others nearby to follow him.     You will have to find your way through the mountains, risk getting shot by an AK47 and locate the next tribe yourself.  Then figure out the leader, then start a whole new conversation.   And – even if he agrees with your proposal – there is no way to guarantee that he will communicate to others in the way you want him to.

    This is an encouraging and useful as a model for certain types of idea propagation.   Interest groups, from environmentalists to anarchists, often lament their lack of resources to create big communication machines similar to the multinationals or government agencies they are fighting.  They try to centralise information flows using social media.

    But maybe it serves better to think like an Afghan warlord some times…

  • Facebook has a secret weapon: making money from politics

    In Greece, the media has always depended heavily on politics in order to survive.   Which is putting it very politely.  Private TV is the playground of rich business tycoons.  They pay money, to get eyeballs and influence and then use that influence in order to get big public sector projects.   We also have a public broadcaster with  thousands of journalists on its payroll, most of them doing nothing other than taking a fat salary.  They also dish out money for “external productions”…   Both of these ways of controlling the media agenda are still working, but are not as powerful as they used to be.  Not so many big projects, not so easy to give a job to your wife’s brother or whoever else you want to make happy as a politican without everybody noticing.

    But this corrupt model of media financing is so powerful that everyone still tries to emulate it.   So right now, as we are gearing up for the next elections, hundreds of small or medium media people think they have the masterplan.  They set up a website, get a lot of traffic and then get business people or politicians to pay them to write whatever they need written.  At first it looks like a genuine new news portal.  They invest in building it up.   Which means getting some content from somewhere, maybe even hiring a few journalists and…

    …facebook ads!  It is part of the package and at first they simply tick it off:  build website, get social media entities, email blast, google ads, facebook ads…  But then they notice that it’s the only thing that drives traffic.  Their content is rubbish, or – at best – the same as everyone else.  It takes time to build an audience like that and they don’t have time.   They try a few email blasts and then get blacklisted all over the place.  Even in Greece, it is getting harder to simply email a list you picked up from “a friend of a friend”…  So Facebook ads are easy.  They are relatively cheap.   And they bring clicks.

    Because all a Greek (new) media tycoon is interested in is his ranking on alexa.com.   This is all this market understands so I assume it will apply to probably 80% of the countries in the world too which are even less advanced in understanding media.  So find a Facebook ad that seems to work and just plaster it all over the place.   No need for fancy targetting, just blanket position to “anyone that has a pulse and lives in Greece“.  Does it bring clicks?  Sure it does!   Do they hang around much?  Of course not!

    Google has a different system.  They usually setup a mechanism whereby they have a fixed sum, something in chunks of 50 thousand Euros, and they go straight to the top of the food chain.  Much like a pimp, political parties will pay them directly for protection.  Under the auspices of a Google Ads campaign, the search giant turns the screws of the algorytm in your direction.  But a similar amount of money on Google Ads will not bring you the same number of clicks outside of the run up to elections.  People searching for information, looking for answers, don’t idly click on an advert of an article on some news portal they have never heard of.  

    I proved the extent of this problem in the past (details here http://alexanderchalkidis.com/blog/?p=18670 ) when a lazy advocate of the technique used a Goo.gl shortener so I could track the number of clicks.  More than 64 thousand paid clicks for an article which was bait.  What they wanted us to read were other, political, articles next to it.  It cost them maybe 7 or 8 thousand Euro to get a topic into the public limelight.  Seems cheap to me!  And – an important added advantage – it is the media equivelant of money laundering.  Nobody needs to know how much you spent.  Sure, they might see your advert plastered on the top of all ads in their personal Facebook profile, but that doesn’t prove anything.    I could have taken out an ad and paid with my personal credit card simply because I am a fanatic reader and wanted to share it with the world.  It is my favorite news portal…

    A news portal of course that they probably won’t hear much about after the elections…

     

  • Climbing Mount Improbable with Professor Varoufakis

    Climbing Mount Improbable is one of many books by Richard Dawkins.   The author of “The Selfish Gene” fame.   Because that is what popular science is all about.   Finding a good analogy, or making a new one that catches on.   It’s not about science.   It’s about communication.    I remember raving about one of his books to a zoologist friend who simply noted that “you know, it takes thousands of other works of solid research for him to cherry pick and make those books such good reads for you.”   It is true.  Much as I love reading popular science I realise that it is a bit like enjoying the introductory course for university entry in any topic.

    But Richard Dawkins has turned into the global symbol of the fight to protect evolution as a theory from naysayers around the globe.   Which led him to become the main event at massive atheist gatherings.   It doesn’t really matter if he chose it, or the role chose him.   I am one of many people that think he is great.   As I do of Steven Pinker.   For making such enjoyable introductions to topics I may have never wrangled with otherwise.   Mainly on language though his most recent book comments on the history of violence.   Reminds us of Noam Chomsky, who Wikipedia succintly describes like this:  ” In addition to his work in linguistics, he has written on war, politics, and mass media, and is the author of over 100 books.”  I can personally testify to the fact that the ones on media (my Masters topic) are way too simplistic.   He was out of his league, applying a simple theory to a complex problem.  Even if it is true, it is not useful.

    It is probably anathema to most readers that I even include Yanis Varoufakis in an article after these great thinkers.  But it is the only way I can rationalize his behavior.   Here is a Professor of Economic Theory whose most recent book concludes that  “while economics has scientific pretensions, it is primarily an ideology that supports the interests of the rich and powerful, and in the process, confers prestige, influence, and money on its practitioners.”   Which is a bit like a high priest writing a book which concludes that religion has no claim to any Holy source but is simply a scam for high priests to get money from poor people”!   And I didn’t even need to fish around for that quote.   He has put it on his blog himself!

    That part is fair enough.   If you are looking to sell popular science books, self promotion is of course part of the set up.   Twitter, Blog, articles anywhere and everywhere.   I even read an interview he did about the island of Aigina simply because he spends a lot of time there.   A nice tidy article in Wikipedia which I am guessing he wrote himself is nothing to be ashamed of.  Quite the opposite, all scientists or public figures would be wise to pay attention to theirs.    And taking a public position in the recent elections in terms of being openly for one party and against others is also an admirable trait in my opinion.   As is submitting a “Modest Proposal” about the future of the Euro Zone.

    Mr Varoufakis does a pretty great job at spreading his views.  The BBC (though I am not sure they were happy with his take on their “censorship” of the interview) , BSkyB, Max Keiser and even CNN host his views.   The man is a rarity by Greek standards as he speaks and writes in very good English, and is obviously always available for any media opportunity.   So he can get away with ludicrous generalisations like this one in an article for CNN: “Whereas in the past we were divided between Left and Right, between pro- and anti-Americans, nowadays America is being seen by almost everyone here as a kindred spirit…”

    Really?  And you write this Professor Varoufakis on what authority?   A journalist with a finger on the pulse of Greek society?   A political scientist with some similar claim?   A sociologist with some supporting research data or even simply a supporting theory?   We could of course blame CNN for not being more careful in their choice of contributor.   Or of not editing it out.   If you think like the sort of people who follow him you could even make up a conspiracy theory and assume that he never wrote it.   (The CIA must have added that sentence…knowing wink…)  But this is a small example of a very big problem.

    Lacking any sort of communicational skills on a political and diplomatic level, this is what Greece has been relegated to.   What our pathetic and wimply academia doesn’t have the balls or ability to do as they are too busy saving their own jobs and fighting to stop anyone from actually judging their performance.   We have a part time economist and full time self promoting author “representing” Greece abroad.   I wouldn’t mind if he was not so good at it.   I don’t dislike what Mr Varoufakis does because it is unclear where he stands.   Is he a budding politician?   Mainly an author?   A media persona on any topic?  (Heck, let’s run around the world to the seven dividing lines and do some artsy installations!)  Nor because he is taking advantage of his claim to science on one hand to make more persuasive his pretty weak arguments on the political level.  (A sin not uncommon to people as great as Noam Chosmky at times – especially when he delved into Media analysis.)

    So it is not because Mr Varoufakis is “wrong” that he ruffles my feathers so much.   In this day and age, and especially in Economics “wrong” and “right” are not even part our vocabulary.  Nor is it simply that it seems rather irresponsible to me that he doesn’t take into account the consequences of his attitude.   Spreading fear of an imminent Eurozone collapse most obviously increases the chance of it happening.   Doomsayers have always had this advantage.   Even with their wishy washy vague language, a quick retrospective look at their work usually indicates how little their predictions bear a resemblance to reality.

    No, what really annoys me about Mr Varoufakis is that my country hasn’t got anyone better to represent us on the global media stage.   Rather like pine trees gain a foothold in our mountains and sea gulls or goats are the only animals that survive in a lot of our much troubled natural environments.   A once wondrous complex country, with natural and intellectual complexity second to none is being turned into a one question entity.   And that is the doing of people like Mr Varoufakis.

     

  • The Greek crisis produces media stars of disinformation

    For more than two years now international attention has been on and off.  George Papandreou milked it as much as he could.   Having the potential to blow up Europe or even the world economy according to others is a feat unmatched even by Bin Laden.   Unfortunately nothing constructive has been done with this spotlight.

    Yannis Varoufakis is a prime example.   Our rather dim witted prime minister had legions of advisers.   Varoufakis was one of them and realised the potential better than others.   The world economic crisis has changed the role of economists in general.   A lot of interesting debate has come of it.   Some rise to the challenge and put old theories into new shoes from a communications point of view.   And some, like Mr Varoufakis, decide it is easier to simply become militant.   The joy of economics is that you can always construct a counter argument which seems convincing.

    Try reading his “message to the BBC and other assorted international media“.   Chomsky can crossover from linguistics to economics and to media analysis and still be a reference point.   Varoufakis can’t.   Using vocabulary pretty similar to the SYRIZA party he supports.   We learn about the “Assault on Truth” and that international media are “violating every journalistic standard and principle known to man or woman”… (is that even logically possible?) …you get the point.

    Even better, he writes a whole blog post about how the BBC cut him off  before he was  ” given a chance to complete my point”.   The rather interesting video shows him on a uniquely boring monologue of more than two minutes during which he is only briefly interrupted with a question.  Not even heads of State, or major international personalities with few media appearances get such an easy time on the BBC.   He is right, there is bias.   I suspect the journalist doing the interview just didn’t know how to cut him off politely!   It was a hot day and he probably just thought “ah, let him rant and I will take another sip on my frape instead…”

    If the BBC faked a technical glitch to cut him off well, that’s a pretty good call from the viewers’ point of  view.   Anyone with experience in such interviews knows damn well that you are usually lucky to even get a soundbite through intact.   Varoufakis complains about them not letting him develop his argument as if he is structuring a lecture.  (Though the rest of his interview doesn’t bode well for his lecturing capabilities.)  And all this strong wording and rather unfair criticism from a man who the BBC has on various shows quite often!   (Listen for example to a more usual interview here – after 16′ 55″ where he speaks much less and the journalist interrupts him much more.)

    So why does this obviously clever man do all this?   Why does he bark “wolf!” regarding an – always – imminent Euro collapse even though he has been barking up the wrong tree for some time now?   Obviously it works!   According to another report by the same, highly biased, BBC, he got offered a job through the attention.   It doesn’t really matter if the Eurozone doesn’t crash.   People like Varoufakis will simply reinterpret the data into some other conspiracy theory.   Much like the US was going to “collapse” back in the 70s with the oil crisis.   He brags on his blog of  his “duel with the bank exec” as if it is a game on the one hand and/or that he is the only saviour of the Truth and all the planet’s underdogs on the other.

    Betting on the future has been big business for fortune tellers for thousands of years.   Shame that some people choose to ridicule their countries when they do it publically and internationally like Mr Varoufakis.

  • Bernulli, calculus and copyright protection

    In what was probably an early example of distance learning, the rich French military man Guillaume François Antoine, hired Johan Bernulli to mentor him.   There was even a written agreement but much of the teaching happened through regular mail.   The  Marquis de l’Hôpital sent questions, Bernulli sent answers.  All went well.   Even when the student published a book based on these letters as his own.

    “Infinitesimal calculus with applications to curved lines” is such a useful book even now, that nobody really focuses on the fact that it was plagiarism at its worse.   He hadn’t informed Bernulli and didn’t even directly mention him at all in the book other than a vague sentence about “this work is of course based on a lot of fine thinking before me and has been influenced by thinkers before me and contemporary to me”.   It is irrelevant to a large degree because it is simply the material in a different form, that of a useful compendium textbook on infinitesimal calculus.

    There are a number of interesting facets to this story in view of ACTA, SOPA and all the modern copyright wars.   (By the way, why is Business Software Alliance keeping such a low profile as the world rages against ACTA?  ; ) One is that the book initially appeared anonymously.   Possibly so that the marquis could evaluate its success before claiming it.   The other was that Bernulli didn’t react at first.   As the years past and the book became a reference point he increased his complaints though!   Up until recently, even prominent mathematical historians like Struik wrote: “By 1696 the first textbook on calculus appeared, the Analyse des infiniment petits,written by the Marquis de l’Hospital under the strong influence of Johann Bernoulli, who for a while had tutored him.”  The same person who described it as a “strong influence” later fumed “Let the good Marquis keep his elegant rule; he paid for it.”

    Rather old school copyright thinking, eh?

  • Goebbels needed in Brussels to change the flag

    “The European flag consists of 12 golden stars in a circle on a blue background. The stars symbolise the ideals of unity, solidarity and harmony among the peoples of Europe.

    The number of stars has nothing to do with the number of member countries, though the circle is a symbol of unity.”

    That is all you get when trying to discover what the flag is about from the official site.    Contrast it to your nation of choice’s story.   You probably have several versions of your country’s flag as it developed, rich in history and people, wonderful colorful fairytales connected to your past.   You probably know this information by heart because you learnt it at school.   You probably have some emotional response to your flag.

    To anyone in communications or branding, what the European Union is doing is suicidal.   While there is much talk about “nation branding” and what individual countries do to themselves or to each other regarding negative press, nobody seems to care about the Union itself.   This goes against millenia of wisdom concerning economic and cultural development.   According to a summary:

    “Images of the EU are split:
    positive images:

    the EU as “strategic opportunity” for the partner countries; a trade giant; a
    supporter of multilateralism (or at least multipolarism); a model of regional integration; and
    a possible counterbalance to US hegemony, a protector of the environment;
    negative images:

    an actor whose policy is severely influenced by its own security or
    economic concerns; a neo-liberal actor in its external relations; and a protectionist power
    (CAP).  EU’s self-representation as a solidaristic actor is called into question. Moreover:
     Little evidence of the EU being widely seen as a “normative power” exporting
    universal values of democracy and human rights.
     No evidence of the EU being widely regarded as a social model to be imitated.
     No public reward for EU’s development cooperation policy”

    The current global economic crisis is focusing on the European Union for good reason; it is easy!   Any single sovereign country can deal with an external attack.   But in Brussels they decide by…committee.   In the worse sense of the phrase.   According to Nicholas Moussis in “Access to European Union law, economics, policies” “…the edifice of the European Union is divided horizontally in floors. The floor of the common market was built on the basement of the customs union. Apart from the four fundamental freedoms (free movement of goods, persons, services and capital), the common market floor consists of numerous horizontal and vertical compartments, which contain the common policies…”

    At least this author is trying to make it understandable.   Because moving from separate countries to any other system is something which citizens of Europe have not quite perceived yet.   The task is made harder by politicians in every country using the EU as a scapegoat for their political problems.   They used to point to some neighbor or other threat when they needed to rally up support; now they just point to Brussels.

    From a communicational point of view it is amazing.   We would assume that when you give a handout, you will demand some sort of media attention.   If I am bailing out French farmers, the least they can do is put up an EU flag.   Even better they should commit to some cultural change towards European integration.   Somehow the EU managed to squander its capital (economic and in terms of good will) without getting anything in return.   A feat only possible by a committee!   In any other human-to-human interaction there would have been more.   If the United States were set up as a “melting pot of cultures”, the European Union is set up as a feudal parody.   Immigrants entering the US learn about its constitution.   In Europe we can’t even manage that.

    The film industry is a great example.   A variety of Euroinitiatives concerning film making, film distribution and other cultural aspects of film and the results?   Absolutely nothing.   On average, European don’t watch more locally produced content, nor is European film thriving abroad.   We are neither helping Europeans become more aware of their cultural heritage nor telling the rest of the world anything about us.   And of course we are nowhere near making it a viable business in any of the country – members.   For the size of the internal media consumption market and the depth of talent in this field it is a simply amazing feat of incompetence.

    So now we need a Goebbels.   I don’t care who runs the ECB, I want to know who is in charge of propaganda.

  • How witchhunters taught the IMF all about communication

    I once famously wrote an article about the Business Software Alliance and how it’s methodology is similar to the Holy Inquisition.  The Middle Ages are to me a truly inspiring historical period, a time when many of our modern concepts were created.   Except they were in their more raw, essential form.  For example there were quite a few “tests of witchery” in order to ascertain whether or not someone was indeed possesed by the devil.  One was called the test of the tear.   Someone would recite in detail excerpts from the Testaments including all the sacrifices Christ made for us.   If, at the end of it,the accused didn’t shed a tear they were obviously a witch!

    My country is one of many areas of the world currently the focus of financial speculation.   And a pattern is emerging in terms of the communicational methods used.   Public statements of support for the enormous burden of measures dictated by the IMF are a bit like the test of the tear.   Another common test was conducted in deep water (either a lake or a specially designed big barrel) whereby the accused was left to sink or float.   But it wasn’t that simple; they were held for some time with sticks from outside.   So in effect they could be hurt in the ribs and made to get tired for quite long until they were truly exhausted; then they were let loose.    This is a lot like an economy taking a beating with rumors,  debt being rated “junk” and all the rest of the ways the international money markets work on a country to soften it up.

    The other great thing about witch hunting, is that it was a game that could only have one ending.   If the witch passed the tests it was because “the devil helped”.   In the same way there are plenty of countries much less guilty of mismanaging their finances than Greece.  Ireland is completely different for example.   But when the Inquisition comes to town we are all witches…

  • How team Romania put “national” into social media

    We tend to think of social media as quite an individualistic activity.   Very self centred.   Sure, it’s “social” but we often imply that the “circles” or “groups” are smaller and more fragmented to a degree which trivialised “old school” categorization.

    Enter the nation state.

    A country is of course quite an artificial creation, but still a mighty powerful one.   So, with amazement I watched the Romanian entrants of this year’s “Web it” digital influence competition roller past us all to fill up all the top positions.   Romania also sits firmly at No1 in the country rank overall of course.   How did they do it?

    Readers of my Greek blog know that I went to extraordinary lengths (at a rather busy time of the year) to discover how and why this competition works.   It is fascinating to discover how you can coerce people into voting for you and I tried pretty much everything.   I measured each promotion (in fact self promotion to be accurate!) and took notes.   Which Facebook groups reacted better, which taglines, which times of day?  I quickly got to the No1 Greek position and 9th overall.   Not bad going for a couple days in between other projects.

    But then the Romanian invasion begun.  They didn’t go in bursts like the rest of us.  At first I assumed they were cheating.   Some automated script or something.   But this would be easy for the organizers to discover, especially since they are going through bit.ly.   The statistics will make it glaringly obvious.   In total, I have measured more than 4,000 clicks that have gone from various blogs I run to http://bit.ly/aIcDZ5   I would guess that roughly 1/10th of those have actually entered the four digits of the captcha to vote for me.   If the Romanians were cheating their votes would match their clicks.   It would be too good to be true.

    But then I Google translated the blog mentioned by the top Romanian entrant and there it was.  “Let’s all vote for ALL ROMANIAN entrants!”   Nationalism in its simplest form.   Simple, clever, social and viral.   The timing perfect (on the last stretch, too late for anyone else to do the same) and team Romania wins.   Fair and square.   Next time, when I try to think of something “social”, I won’t forget the altruistic aspect of nationalism as a force of mobilization…

  • 20 Social Media Statistics (which are completely imprecise and stupid)

    Email going around with the following disinformation:  (In italics my responses.)

    “These figures reveal the huge black hole that our time disappears into when we visit Facebook, Twitter or YouTube or other social media sites.

    1. One in every nine people on Earth is on Facebook ( This number is calculated by dividing the planets 6.94 billion people by Facebook’s 750 million users)   No they are not!   About 1 in 5 Facebook “people” is in fact a company or something else other than a real homo sapiens.
    2. People spend 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.    No they don’t!  Much like television, there is no way to measure when they are spending time on Facebook or watching television while the laptop has Facebook open in some browser window.
    3. Each Facebook user spends on average 15 hours and 33 minutes a month on the site.   No way of knowing!
    4. More than 250 million people access Facebook through their mobile devices.   And what a horrible user experience that is!   What exactly are they doing other than checking up in case ‘something happened’?
    5. More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook.   More than 2 million of those are completely automated through various other platforms which are also ‘integrated’ with loads of other services – it doesn’t mean anything.
    6. 30 billion pieces of content is shared on Facebook each month.  And by category that would be…extremely interesting information as opposed to this!  How much is video, how many original posts, how much news, etc.
    7. 300,000 users helped translate Facebook into 70 languages. Yeah right.   It is the beginning of a new type of democracy I presume too…
    8. People on Facebook install 20 million “Apps” every day.  And then never use them again most of the time!
    9. 190 million average  Tweets per day occur on Twitter (May 2011)  Of which most are highly concentrated by region, profession and other demographics which make them a pretty unrepresentative bunch in most countries.
    10. Twitter is handling 1.6 billion queries per day.  And their servers overload on average how many times a day?
    11. Twitter is adding nearly 500,000 users a day.   Rubbish.  Many. Twitter users never actually interact with their Twitter account again.
    12. Google+ has more than 25 million users.  Google+ has as many users as Google wants.   They can just turn all Gmail users into G+ users without asking them, or force you to have G+ to access Google Maps or…many other typically Google “here’s something for “free” approach’…
    I skipped the other 8 about YouTube which were fairly accurate (so boring!).   Is it just me or are we experiencing a wave of social media…media mania?