I’m beginning to recognise the signs. Have you seen them too? The mercury is holding steady but there’s a sudden and unexpected stiffening of the breeze. And a darkening tint to the clouded sky. Yes — there can be no doubt — there’s a storm coming.

A Twitter-storm.
We’ve not had much of this kind of thing in the past but these squalls seem to be becoming more frequent. They are a very interesting phenomenon; the kind of climate change that I might welcome.
I don’t think anyone expected this sort of impact from Twitter. Maybe it’s illusory? The past two weeks have been so blustery that my head is still reeling. But things are calmer today so I have a moment to take stock.
I first noticed a change in the air when, on the night of Monday 12th October, Jack of Kent wrote a carefully worded post about an equally “carefully worded” article in The Guardian revealing that the paper had been prevented on legal grounds from reporting an item of parliamentary business. Within a few minutes news of the Guardian’s gag had spread around Twitter and the involvement of Trafigura and their attempts to keep secret their report on the dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast came tumbling out. At the end of his post, Jack of Kent raised a quizzical eyebrow and wondered if the newspaper might have acted in a calculated fashion by placing enough cryptic clues in its article to let the twitterati solve the puzzle.
On Wednesday of that the week Twitter, or at least that tiny segment that I choose to keep an eye on, was alive with the unexpected news that Simon Singh had been granted leave to appeal Justice Eady’s ruling on the meaning of the word ‘bogus’ in the libel suit being brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA). At the Wesminster Skeptics in the Pub meeting the previous night where Singh and others had spoken out against the dis-empowering effect of the English libel laws, the mood had been feisty but resigned. So there was an eruption of delight buzzing across the net as soon as those attending the appeal hearing had managed to rush outside and reconnect with it.
The news of the appeal, and perhaps also the effusive response from Singh’s supporters, elicited a hasty press release from the BCA. The organisation affirmed it would continue to press its case because it felt it had been “maliciously attacked by Dr Singh in the Guardian newspaper” (my italics).
That careless adverb was seized upon immediately. Word went out on Twitter asking people to download or cache the BCA statement because it represented a serious mis-step by the organisation. They appeared to realise this themselves since the press release was quickly reworded to remove the offending term. But that was of course too late. As Jack of Kent explained in a post that evening, in attributing malice to Singh, the BCA had defamed him and the author may now be in a position to counter-sue. Whether he will do so remains to be seen but it was a moment of delightful irony. One that was shared by hundreds, probably thousands of witnesses, on Twitter.
The Trafigura and Singh cases came together on Wednesday of this past week in a parliamentary debate organised by Evan Harris (Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon). Thanks to notification on Twitter I discovered it was being shown live on the web and managed to catch Harris’s impressive speech outlining the threats posed to open debate in this country by our laws on injunctions and libel. (You can watch it here or read the Hansard Report).

Evan Harris waxes lyrical
I suspect the audience for this debate was one of the largest they’ve had in a long time on Parliament TV. For me, who had never tuned in to a debate before, the revelation of this level of access was an impressive demonstration of the transparency of our parliamentary procedures, a window across which Trafigura had sought to draw a heavy curtain. I have them, and Carter-Ruck and all the good folk on Twitter to thank for bringing it to my attention.
But that’s not all. On Friday 17th October, just a couple of days after Singh’s success in the court of appeal, another storm thundered and flashed across Twitter as people reacted to Jan Moir’s now infamous Daily Mail article on the death of the Boyzone singer Stephen Gately. Without bringing any new information to bear on the case Ms Moir felt able to flatly contradict the cornoner’s finding of “death by natural causes”, link Gately’s death to the recent unrelated demise of Matt Lucas’s former partner and wax unlyrically about this being “another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.” The article was grossly insensitive and struck many, including myself, as tapping into a homophobic vein. To add further insult, it appeared in the paper the day before Gately’s family were due to bury their beloved son. The reaction on Twitter was exponential; a few drops of rain in the morning turned into a crashing downpour by lunchtime.
Later that day Charlie Brooker fired off a characteristically caustic Comment is Free article in The Guardian that gave voice to many people’s anger at the insensitivity of Moir’s article. Helpfully, he detailed which aspects of the press code of conduct might have been breached. He also provided links to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), information that was rapidly disseminated, 140 characters at a time.
As so, because I was appalled at the article and — crucially — had ready access to the means to do so, I logged on to the PCC web-site and, for the first time in my life, complained about a newspaper article. It took a little while to get connected; I think they were having trouble with the volume of traffic. Once I got through I saw that the PCC had obligingly put up a special link for those wishing to complain about Moir’s article.
Moir saw in all this an “orchestrated campaign”. I suspect that is probably what it feels like when over 20,000 people complain about your obnoxious journalism but there was nothing terribly orchestrated about it. Nobody told me what to do and I like to think that, in common with most other people, I have a mind of my own. But — as with Trafigura and the reports on the Singh-BCA case — there was instant access to information on Twitter and elsewhere on the web and to modes of action. And it was exciting be be able to be involved.
Finally in this past week great interest was excited by the appearance of Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, on the BBC’s Question Time program. Griffin, an odious little-Englander racist who has denied the holocaust, faced a largely hostile audience in the studio. But there was an even larger audience watching at home and many of them were simultaneously bombarding Twitter with comments. It was a strange new experience to be watching TV in the company of this vociferous online audience. Thrilling even.
So I joined in.
I’m not sure if anything so very insightful was said in these comments. It felt much like shouting at the screen as you might do while watching football. But not entirely the same. Occasionally, because our society is thankfully not as homogenous as some might like it to be, there would be a dissenting or sparky view. One person wondered about the true value of all the self-righteous Griffin bashing. The comedian Peter Serafinowicz, observing those in the studio audience with their arms raised to catch the Chairman’s attention, made me laugh out loud by commenting “Surprising amount of people ‘sieg-heiling’ between questions.”
There have been lengthy and knowledgeable debates elsewhere on the rights and wrongs of the BBC’s invitation to the BNP’s elected representative. I won’t rehearse them here except to say that I favoured allowing Griffin to appear on Question Time. If freedom of speech is to mean anything, it must include allowing those whose views we despise to be heard. Anyone wishing to oppose Griffin and the BNP should have enough respect for the electorate to try to win the argument with facts and logic and a sense of natural justice (resources that Griffin so clearly lacks). We need to have some faith in our democratic institutions.
In Twitter, especially in these past two weeks, I think I detect the emergence of a new pillar to support our democracy, simply because it has provided a new way of bolstering of our freedoms of speech and information.
Now I have no doubt that there’s a mob element to much of the activity on Twitter. The re-tweet (RT), which simply re-broadcasts a comment that you have seen to all your followers probably makes it too easy for news to travel without the intervention of thought (though Ian Hopkinson suggested aninteresting possible counter-measure). And there’s certainly something primal about being part of the crowd – even when you’re not in close physical proximity to those baying around you.
But I would contend that it isn’t simply mobbishness. Perhaps it’s just from the people that I happen to follow on Twitter but there is a reflective thread running through all this commentary and activity. In the aftermath of the Moir shitstorm and his own foot-in-mouth episode with the people of Poland, Stephen Fry wrote a wonderfully thoughtful piece musing his own foibles, the accusation that he has a disproportionate influence as a result of his prominence on Twitter (at the time of writing he has nearly 900,000 followers) and, most interestingly, on the possible broader role of this new medium.
Of course I re-tweeted it as soon as I’d finished reading. (It is well worth a look.)
I get the sense that tools like Twitter are switching people on. It has certainly affected me. I noticed it first when Twitter became my primary source for news of the protests that erupted in Iran in the aftermath of their presidential election in June. In that case I was able to keep informed and to pass on information, reports of attacks by the security forces and links to photos and videos. It didn’t, I have to say, lead to much action beyond that on my part.
But these latest episodes — more home-grown — have been different. I have never felt more engaged in society than in these past two weeks. This has happened because I have better, faster access to the information about what is going on and because I have tools at my disposal, either through blogging or tweeting or writing to the PCC, to do something, even if it is just to make my voice heard.
I know just enough about human history not to get too carried away with the promise of a bright new future. But I cannot help being at least slightly optimistic that some of the energy humming around the internet might, just might, do some good.
Then again, perhaps it is just a local shower and will pass.