Technology: Twitter | theguardian.com

Big W joins Aldi by taking 'Australia Est. 1788' T-shirts off the shelves

Daniel Hurst, Bridie Jabour — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 03:03:10 GMT

Shopping chains bow to social media pressure after complaints that the shirts were offensive to Indigenous Australians

Twitter bullies must learn that with a voice comes responsibility | Claire Hardaker

Claire Hardaker — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 18:42:54 GMT

The internet gives a priceless voice to the marginalised – but the Caroline Criado-Perez abuse case shows that freedom of expression does not mean freedom from consequences

For many, the internet embodies an idealised vision of democracy – a liberal, open-minded environment that promotes free speech and provides a platform for alternative views. Once, only the powerful and wealthy had a voice which largely operated as a monologue; the elite spoke, and the masses listened. In turn, the masses drowned out the voices of the powerless and poor. This hierarchy, established over centuries, has been short-circuited in mere decades by the internet, in the form of article comments, government e-petitions, and social media sites such as Twitter. Now, the words or deeds of the powerful can trigger a loud and sustained response that is hard to ignore. It's easy to see the benefits of this. Marginalised and wronged groups have been able to use online campaigns to usher us all forward into a more enlightened era in which we are more open-minded about the LGBQT community, disability, race, religion and so forth.

In the perfect sweep of democratic even-handedness that characterises the internet, however, a voice is given to all, including those who use it to be abusive and intimidating. A case in point is the banknote campaign by the feminist and journalist Caroline Criado-Perez. After successfully petitioning the Bank of England to include a woman on a banknote in July 2012, Criado-Perez was subjected to a torrent of rape, mutilation and death threats sent from more than 80 different Twitter accounts. The response from Twitter was painfully slow, and Criado-Perez has described her frustration with the police investigation. While other trials are ongoing, only two individuals have so far appeared in court in relation to the abusive tweets. This week, John Nimmo from South Shields and Isabella Sorley from Newcastle pleaded guilty to sending messages of a menacing nature.

Nimmo had created multiple accounts to send numerous threats to both Criado-Perez and MP Stella Creasy in a campaign that lasted several days. His solicitor presented him as a sad individual; a social recluse who had jumped on the "rape threat train" as a way of seeking attention, validation and popularity. Descriptions of how he had been severely bullied at school were used to explain how he had become a pitiable, alienated individual who barely left the house except to empty his bins, and whose only life was lived through the internet.

Meanwhile, Sorley claimed to be unable to remember sending the abuse, and described herself as "off [her] face on drink" at the time. Her defence likewise sought to show that the occurrence of the threats, on only one day, in the early hours of the morning, was indicative of a moment of poor judgment brought about by ongoing drink problems. A possibly contradictory element to this, however, was that like Nimmo, Sorley had created multiple different accounts to send the abuse – a step more consistent with someone covering their tracks. Indeed, whilst Nimmo was bailed until sentencing on 24 January, Sorley has been remanded in custody due to a range of prior public order offences, and in her case, a custodial sentence is inevitable.

While Nimmo's accounts have long since been shut down, Sorley's remain active. At 9.16am on the morning of her trial, Sorley tweeted a selfie from Buckingham Palace, with the words, "Just chilling at the queens #London". Meanwhile, on 15 December, she tweeted, "Pretty sure i was in the quiet coach on the way home yesterday. There was nothing quiet about my behaviour #sorrymam". weets like these, and others besides, suggest an emotionally immature young woman who simply doesn't understand – or perhaps doesn't want to understand – how her behaviour affects those around her. It reasonably follows that someone with a limited grasp of empathy offline has little chance of being empathetic online.

Overall, that idealised democracy that the internet offers is priceless beyond measure. For every negative Nimmo or Sorley story, there is a positive one – such as a campaign that has brought about real, meaningful change. In other words, while this case might seem to implicitly support the censorship of marginalised voices, what it in fact demonstrates is a need for a better understanding that freedom of expression does not mean freedom from consequences. The web really does give a voice to those previously silenced, but with that voice comes responsibility, and a moment on the fingertips could turn into a lifetime on the criminal record slip.

Dr Claire Hardaker is a lecturer in corpus linguistics at Lancaster University

Claire Hardaker

Forget funeral selfies. What are the ethics of tweeting a terminal illness? | Emma G Keller

Emma G Keller — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 18:40:03 GMT

Lisa Adams is dying of breast cancer. She has tweeted over 100,000 times about her journey. Is this educational or too much?

Lisa Bonchek Adams is dying. She has Stage IV breast cancer and now it's metastasized to her bones, joints, hips, spine, liver and lungs. She's in terrible pain. She knows there is no cure, and she wants you to know all about what she is going through. Adams is dying out loud. On her blog and, especially, on Twitter.

She has tweeted over 100,000 times about her health. Lately, she tweets dozens of times an hour. Her Twitter followers are a mixed bag. Some are also battling cancer or work in the medical field, others seem to follow Adams' life story like a Reality TV show. Here's a taste of what it's like:

Pain today is worst in days. Cannot get on top of it. I have 1)constant drip plus ability to do 2)on-demand drip, 3)emergency. All in use.
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) January 8, 2014

But it radiates out to side of back ("radicular pain") and has nerve component of pain. Mixes with the lung pain/same side
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) January 8, 2014

All morning docs and nurses go in and out so you may see answers to questions in spurts. I also sometimes nod off mid tweet...
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) January 8, 2014

She has been scrupulous about keeping track of her seven year decline. Her journey began with six month routine postpartum checkup after the birth of her third child. You can read all about the details of her disease and treatment on her blog right up until about this morning, which is when she posted her latest entry, only a few hours after the previous one.

She begins each day with the same tweet:

Find a bit of beauty in the world today. Share it. If you can't find it, create it. Some days this may be hard to do. Persevere.
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) December 27, 2013

Over the past few years she has tweeted more than 165,000 times (well over 200 tweets in the past 24 hours alone.) Her clear-eyed strategy of living with cancer for as long as she can has caught the attention of many women with breast cancer, several writers and thousands of fans from everyday lives all over the world. I heard about her in the process of organizing a Guardian US Living Hour chat on DNA and cancer tumors in early November. Before you knew it, she was in the chat having her tumor genome and her cancer trial discussed in detail. I never met her, but I swapped tweets and emails with her, and kept track of her health.

Which is why a few weeks ago I noticed she was tweeting a lot more and from a situation she described as agonizing. The clinical drug trial she was on wasn't working. Her disease seemed to be rampaging through her body. She could hardly breathe, her lungs were filled with copious amounts of fluid causing her to be bedridden over Christmas. As her condition declined, her tweets amped up both in frequency and intensity. I couldn't stop reading – I even set up a dedicated @adamslisa column in Tweetdeck – but I felt embarrassed at my voyeurism. Should there be boundaries in this kind of experience? Is there such a thing as TMI? Are her tweets a grim equivalent of deathbed selfies, one step further than funeral selfies? Why am I so obsessed?

Social media has definitely become a part of Adams' treatment (I wonder what her hospital, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, thinks about that.) Tweeting makes her less lonely, it gives her a purpose, it distracts her from her pain, and the contact it brings clearly comforts her. Adams has managed to keep her dignity and her deft sense of humor intact as she has charted her decline.

As she tweeted a few hours ago:

"Why is she tweeting if it hurts so much?" I am sure people ask. It helps to distract me especially when I am alone (it's 6 AM here)
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) January 8, 2014

Adams is not alone in doing this. Journalist Xeni Jardin live tweeted her cancer diagnosis two years ago and the long treatment journey. Jardin told the Guardian last year that she wasn't sure if she would be quite as "sharey" if she could go back in time.

It's clear that tweeting as compulsively as Lisa Adams does is an attempt to exercise some kind of control over her experience. She doesn't deny that. She sees herself as an educator, giving voice to what so many people go through. And she is trying to create her own boundaries, flimsy as they might be. She'll tell you all about her pain, for example, but precious little about her children or husband and what they are going through. She describes a fantastic set up at Sloan-Kettering, where she can order what she wants to eat at any time of day or night and get as much pain medication as she needs from a dedicated and compassionate "team", but there is no mention of the cost. She was enraged a few days ago when a couple of people turned up to visit her unannounced. She's living out loud online, but she wants her privacy in real life.

In some ways she has invited us all in. She could argue that she is presenting a specific picture – the one she wants us to remember. "I do feel there will be lasting memories about me. That matters," she wrote to me in a direct message on Twitter.

The ethical questions abound. Make your own judgement.

Are those of us who've been drawn into her story going to remember a dying woman's courage, or are we hooked on a narrative where the stakes are the highest?

Will our memories be the ones she wants? What is the appeal of watching someone trying to stay alive? Is this the new way of death? You can put a "no visitors sign" on the door of your hospital room, but you welcome the world into your orbit and describe every last Fentanyl patch. Would we, the readers, be more dignified if we turned away? Or is this part of the human experience?

We've put together a condensed timeline of Lisa Adams' tweets. You can also read her entire feed.

Emma G Keller

Global development tweeters to watch in 2014

Maeve Shearlaw — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 12:01:52 GMT

This year’s movers and shakers on the microblogging site include the Filipino climate change commissioner and the co-founder of Food Tank

Maeve Shearlaw

Nigerians turn on comic over rape 'joke'

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 08:35:30 GMT

Basketmouth's comments spark debate about sexual violence in country with high prevalence of abuse against women

The Nigerian comedian Basketmouth has come under fire on social media after posting a joke about the difference between dating "white girls" and "African girls". In a nutshell, white women put out after a couple of dates, but African women keep holding out, so on the ninth date a bit of rape is required.

Funny? No. Instead, most Nigerian and other African commentators found it offensive. Basketmouth was trivialising rape in a country suffering from an epidemic of sexual violence.

"Show me a man who is insensitive to rape and I'll show you a man who is capable of rape&hellip," tweeted the Nigerian novelist Chika Unigwe.

Basketmouth had his defenders, who went the usual route of calling those who criticised him over-sensitive, or humourless, or saying they perhaps missed some grand satirical intention.

The comedian himself eventually claimed that he was trying to flag up an important social issue: "I would never in a thousand lifetimes encourage rape, I broadcasted a joke that many clearly misunderstood and have found offensive and I sincerely apologise, the intention however was to highlight an unfortunate trend and the ridiculously flawed comparison between money & the worth of a woman."<

But his full apology only came after a half-hearted first attempt, and he has form – a year ago he entertained a British crowd with a charming granny-rape joke.

Basketmouth is just one in a pantheon of international stand-up comedians to use the rape of women as a subject for a cheap laugh (British 'comic' and tax avoider Jimmy Carr has been mining this seam for years). But in Africa he is a lightning conductor – he's the one with the big profile, who chose to shout out his rape joke to his one million Facebook fans. He's the big goofy team mascot for those Nigerian men who think women are teases and there for the taking. #basketmouthgate, as nobody called it, opened up a whole debate about the subject of rape in Nigeria and beyond.

There is no doubt that rape is a problem in Nigeria. When writer Elnathan John spoke about marital rape, he was attacked by angry men for daring to suggest that a woman could withhold sex once the ink on the marriage contract was dry.

On Twitter this week he said: "There is a reason Basketmouth makes so many people laugh with female rape jokes. We condone it. It is not yet a big deal here… All rape is abominable, but I tell you if men got raped as often as women, there would be no celebration of rape jokes."

Victim-blaming is widespread in Africa and much of the world – an Indian judge recently said that a Dalit woman who was brutally raped had indicated her sexual availability by going out of her house after dark. Across many countries in Africa, so called mini-skirt laws are being debated – the implication being that men are animals and women pieces of meat who should know better than to flash the flesh at their predators.

What happens in Nigeria is that women are often raped. They are raped in their homes by their husbands, on dates with men who think that a meal or a few drinks have purchased her consent; they are raped in police custody; they are raped by their teacher, professor or fellow students when they're trying to get their education.

The state colludes with this by failing to collate coherent statistics about rape and sexual violence, rendering these crimes invisible – or at least until some buffoon raises his head above the parapet to joke about them.

It seems that perpetrators can often get away with rape, but that critics jumping on a rape joke by a comedian is beyond the pale for some. Get a sense of humour and stop messing with our fun, was the general message from Basketmouth's apologists, mostly men. Nigerian-British blogger Mia Farraday (a pseudonym) was one of Basketmouth's biggest detractors on Twitter. "I made a fuss about this quite deliberately. Not because I've never heard a rape joke before or because I'm a secret Basketmouth hater… It's because Nigeria has a real and present rape epidemic and because our sense of humour about everything is often detrimental."

Writer and former Basketmouth fan from Zimbabwe Barbara Mhangami addressed a strong blog post to him after the joke was made public. In it, she says:

"From an early age girls are taught to view themselves from the negatives that are heaped on them because men rape. It is girls' fault that men are depraved. We teach them not to walk alone after dark, not to be alone with boys, to wear 'decent clothes. Yet after all this, many are still raped. Why is that, Mr Basketmouth? BECAUSE BOYS AND MEN ARE NOT BEING TAUGHT THAT RAPE IS NOT A JOKE!"

Of course, rape culture diminishes men as well as women. A woman is passive, a thing, without agency – but a man is, says the rape culture model, a flesh-covered skeleton with a penis and a bunch of uncontrollable impulses. Yes, most of humanity are capable of gross abuses of power if they are conditioned to them and feel they have the backing of the crowd – what is wrong can seem like the norm, or even funny or enjoyable.

Challenging rape culture is about calling out the men, one by one, who joke about or belittle women, and violence against them. It's about looking one man in the eye – your colleague, your family member, your friend – looking directly at them and explaining why one flippant comment can add to the weight of ALL the comments, which in turn diminish women as humans, which in turn makes it easier for a man to do what he can to them without their conscience reacting.

And this time, on Twitter at least, Nigeria fought back. Its women, and many of its men, called bullshit on Basketmouth, they hit him where it really hurts – in the wallet – by threatening to boycott his shows and by alerting his sponsors to his joke.

As Nigerian TedxEuston organiser Patrick Anigbo put it: "Well done to my people for rejecting this scourge totally. And those few thousands that did not get it, I hope you have learnt today."

Several Twitter users even suggested that Basketmouth should use his platform to educate his fans about rape culture – or even become an anti-rape activist. So, Basketmouth, the ball's in your court. But the ball is also in the court of every citizen of Nigeria and any other country where rape culture reigns.

More from the Africa network: What if it was your daughter?

Aldi takes 'Australia Est 1788' T-shirts off shelves after racism complaints

Bridie Jabour — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 03:31:09 GMT

Supermarket chain says decision to remove the design followed comments on Twitter 'by a limited number of concerned customers'

Bridie Jabour

Ministry of Defence funding research into online habits

Ben Quinn — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 22:53:34 GMT

PhD papers sponsored by military include studies of hacker culture, crowd behaviour and social networking sites

A branch of the Ministry of Defence is funding postgraduate research into the culture of computer hackers, crowd behaviour at music festivals and football matches, and the impact of Twitter, Facebook and online conspiracy theories in times of crisis.

The MoD's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) pays six-figure sums to support individual PhD students to help understand the rapidly evolving world of cyberspace and the way in which social media have become an integral part of daily life.

While some of the PhD projects in the £10m programme have conventional military applications – such as researching technology to support underwater drones, and the development of clothing with fully embedded electronics – £97,487 of funding for research at King's College London into "the rise of the digital insurgency" is typical of the new direction.

Background papers for the digital insurgency doctorate at King's College say that the research will target the so-called "hacktivist" group Anonymous. The project will involve the researcher aiming to interact with members of Anonymous, addressing "known unknowns" relating to the group, and understand its grievances and goals, why people are attracted to it and its internal politics.

Rather than just focusing on hacktivism, however, the DTSL appears to be taking an increasing interest in broader issues of social media and online behaviour too. In February, it will host an invitation-only conference focused on "social influence in the information age".

Other PhD projects funded include one at the University of Exeter, which receives £82,630 from the DSTL, entitled Collective Action in the Digital Age: Social identities and the influence of online and offline behaviour.

Picking out the role of Twitter, Facebook, Skype and mobile messaging, a contract for the project states: "The events of the Arab spring, the London student protests or the summer 2011 riots in English towns and cities show the importance of understanding synchronised collective actions driven by online interactions."

The project aims to "deliver new and innovative ways to understand and influence online behaviour".

Mark Levine, a professor of social psychology who is supervising the Exeter PhD, told the Guardian: "I think [the MoD] are interested in online influence. That is why they have put money into this kind of stuff. They want to know what influences people, when and how.

"They are interested in influences which might promote what, from their point of view, might be antisocial stuff that they might want to stop, but they are also interested in the kinds of things they can do to promote situations where groups themselves prevent things they are worried about online."

Levine, who has been a working with others to demonstrate how groups can reduce violence or promote pro-social behaviour, added that the idea behind the project was to test, in an online environment, the psychological theories about why people behave collectively in the way they do offline, such as in football crowds.

The MoD initiated a national PhD sponsorship scheme in 2011, with the intention that successful bidders for the support would also spend time at the DSTL, "subject to certain caveats", according to the agency. Researchers in a wide range of disciplines have been provided with hundreds of thousands of pounds of funding across a range of applications.

How technology can be used to wield influence is also the focus of a £137,433 PhD programme at Queen Mary, University of London, called "Analysing and influencing crowd behaviours through arrays of ad-hoc mobile sensors". Mobile sensors typically include the digital compasses that are used in modern mobile phones for mapping, but which can also be used to identify the location and activities of their owner.

The contract states: "The PhD student will gather large-scale datasets from a variety of different mass crowd events, such as music festivals, sporting events, etc."

It adds that the research will aim to "provide essential tools for event planners and event monitors for wide ranges of events, planned (festivals, football matches, political rallies) or ad hoc (riots, protests)."

Techniques to be explored will include "targeting influential individuals" and crowdsourcing.

Elsewhere, £139,649 is being channelled to another Queen Mary PhD called "Cross-cultural attitudes and the shaping of online behaviour in crisis situations". It aims to examine trends and patterns relating to the flow of information on social media during events such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

Course organisers say it will "look at how news production is mediated by first-hand accounts through social media platforms such as Twitter and, secondly, how crisis situations foster the setting-up of dedicated platforms for communion and their function in mediating trauma as well as in endorsing or rejecting dominant commentaries (including conspiracy theories and propaganda) in mainstream media".

A Queen Mary spokesperson said that as part of the research, small pilot studies had been conducted at a music festival and at internal gatherings, but seeking ethical approval and participant recruitment would begin for large-scale events in 2014. The spokesperson said that the research would examine the impact of incorrect information in transport and disaster situations as well as music festivals. "All research on human subjects at Queen Mary is subject to ethical review. Furthermore all data was gathered and will be gathered with the informed consent of the participants."

The spokesperson added: "For festivals, we are looking at gathering information in order to provide participants with interesting topographical information such as 'fun' or crowdedness. This research will collect data that will provide essential information on crowd dynamics of such events."

Other PhDs benefiting from military financial aid include: "Exploring identity within modern technology – the influence of social and ethnical concerns on models of distributed identity" (£107,012, the University of Southampton); "Achieving legitimacy in a new media ecology" (£85,588, University of Glasgow); "Data mining to understand international dimensions to online identity – a classification of 2+billion names and their linkage to virtual identities and social network traffic" (University College London £106,160); and "Social movement 2.0: collective identity in the era of online participatory media" (Kings College London, £97,486).Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, said: "Clearly there is a range of things which the security services already do.

"There is often a strong case for moves in this direction to be tempered by some very hard thinking about the ethics of these questions and the risk of legitimate policing slipping, potentially, into being attempts to control and influence.

"Obviously, the nature and type of the mass surveillance which we now know that the NSA and GCHQ engaged in was simply not legitimate.

"But the fact is that digital information will increase. What has to also increase alongside it is transparency and oversight. We have not really had that debate and the fact that we should be taking note and looking at the potential use of research such as this is entirely appropriate."

Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch, said: "People will rightly want to know why the Ministry of Defence is investing in research that clearly carries significant privacy implications. These areas of research also highlight how badly in need of reform the wider legal framework governing surveillance activities is, particularly given the apparent interest in using social networks and internet-connected sensors to track and analyse people.

"The department needs to be much more transparent about why it is funding so much of this research if the public are to have confidence that it does not threaten our civil liberties and that the military's surveillance capabilities are not to be turned on British citizens."

An MoD spokesperson said: "Cyber-security is an issue of growing importance. As routine cyber-security measures (patching, anti-virus) become ubiquitous, socially engineered attacks are a growing threat.

"DSTL seeks to understand these threats and the vulnerabilities they exploit in order to provide effective advice and support to the MoD and wider government on defending against these threats."

The spokesperson added that the MoD was also "trying to understand the world in which we live and anticipate the world in which we will live" and that to do so "it now needs to incorporate an understanding of events in cyberspace and how they might unfold".

Ben Quinn

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone's Jelly app wobbles onto iPhone and Android

Stuart Dredge — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 19:33:44 GMT

Social Q&A app aims to 'search the group mind of your social networks'. But who will use it? By Stuart Dredge

Stuart Dredge

Marijuana-loving Twitter users resolve to start 2014 on a high note

Katie Rogers — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 18:32:17 GMT

Everybody might get stoned: an analysis of tweets before and after New Year's Day shows that more Twitter users are publicly voicing their desire to light up

Katie Rogers

Police investigate antisemitic tweets posted after Arsenal v Spurs match

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 14:48:36 GMT

Police say messages referring to Holocaust and coin throwing during game are being assessed and taken seriously

Police are examining antisemitic tweets posted after an Arsenal-Spurs clash that saw winger Theo Walcott and St John Ambulance staff pelted with missiles.

Scotland Yard confirmed it is assessing the messages that referred to the Holocaust and is liaising with both clubs over the objects that were thrown.

A spokesman said: "We're aware of antisemitic messages posted on Twitter following Arsenal v Tottenham on Saturday 4 January – an assessment is under way."

Walcott was apparently pelted with coins as he was stretchered off after injuring his knee during the north London derby.

The incident is being looked at as part of Operation Arrowtip, which focuses on football-related crime.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "The Metropolitan police service is aware of incidents during the Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur match on Saturday 4 January, where a number of objects were thrown from home and away sections of the crowd.

"The MPS takes all such incidents seriously. Officers from Operation Arrowtip are investigating and are liaising with both clubs and the Football Association over these incidents."

The FA confirmed that it has contacted Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur over the missile-throwing and said it will back the harshest punishments possible, including life-long bans.

Should Australia's Winter Olympics team fight for their right to tweet? | Alex McClintock

Alex McClintock — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 02:29:22 GMT

Alex McClintock: The athletes – backed up by Australia's new Human Rights commissioner – claim their voices are being silenced by restrictions on social media

Alex McClintock

The whimsical world of Gerry Adams's Twitter account

Stephen Moss — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 17:04:50 GMT

It all started off so earnestly, but the Sinn Fein leader's microblogging timeline has rapidly filled with cake-baking teddy bears and rubber ducks

Forget Chinese wall posters and Kremlinology. These days reading the political runes relies on decoding politicians' Twitter feeds, and the one currently preoccupying analysts is that of Gerry Adams. "Is the strain of being Sinn Fein president telling on Gerry Adams?" asked Ruth Dudley Edwards in her column in this week's Sunday Independent. "More and more, he seems to be taking refuge in a Twitter persona that would be more suitable for a fellow living in his mother's basement, playing in the bath with his rubber ducks."

The putdown came after a Christmas in which Adams, who started twittering (as he likes to call it) a year ago, exposed a supplier for failing to deliver his Clonakilty black and white pudding, said his teddy bear had baked a cake for Northern Ireland first minister Peter Robinson and tweeted a photograph of four luminous rubber ducks he'd received as a present. He ended the year by sending New Year greetings to "family, friends, comrades, detractors, begrudgers, bigots, the media".

Dudley Edwards is not the first to wonder what the idiosyncratic Adams Twitter account means. He started to tweet on 6 February 2013, and his early efforts – "Emergency legislation shortly on Promissory Note. But no information from government. This is no way to do Dail business of significance" – suggested grinding earnestness. But he quickly found his true voice. "Barr an lá leat. Another soft day," he tweeted a week later. "Me @ Ted have work 2 do. Have a nice Lent." He appended a photograph of Ted, his teddy bear, a frequent theme in his 2,000-plus tweets since, along with rubber ducks, cupcakes, his dog Snowie (who has his own account, @SnowieAdams, unverified but followed by his owner), food – he likes to tweet photographs of what he's about to eat – and popular music, especially Leonard Cohen.

Some have suggested the Flann (or perhaps Flan) O'Brienish tone is a little calculating. "Gerry Adams tries too hard to be cute and whimsical on Twitter," said the Irish writer Damien Owens (on Twitter of course) last week. "It's like Charles Manson showing you his collection of tea cosies." Adams is alert to the criticism. "I listen to some of those things that are said about my twittering by journalists who have never talked to me in their lives," he told an interviewer last year. "It becomes a sinister Sinn Fein plan. It's just me. If people think it's stupid, they can." "But what about the teddy bears?" demanded the fearless interviewer. "You have to think of the sensitivities of teddy bears," insisted Adams. "Teddy bears aren't given their place in the scheme of things in this world." Quite.

Stephen Moss

Mark Zuckerberg says connectivity is a basic human right – do you agree? | Maeve Shearlaw

Maeve Shearlaw — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 13:32:47 GMT

Amid a year of online innovations, the Facebook founder says a better-connected world benefits local economies. Is he right?

Over the past year, several significant online innovations have emerged. It was predicted that mobile phones would outnumber people by 2014, with low-cost smartphones opening up opportunities for even more people to get connected. And the UN turned to the internet to canvass opinion on what should replace the millennium development goals.

In August, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that he aimed to get every person on the planet online. He then launched internet.org, along with a 10-page document entitled Connectivity is a Human Right that outlines his vision of the future.

This followed the 2010 launch of Facebook Zero, a text-only version of the site with no data charges. In the 18 months since its launch, Facebook users in Africa increased by 114%. The business benefits for the popular social-networking site are obvious, but Zuckerberg believes a better-connected world is better for local economies, too.

Next came Twitter, which in December signed a deal with a Swiss mobile company to enable cheap access to users of phones with basic features or on low-cost plans.

Wikipedia also got in on the act. Its foundation, Wikimedia, has a clear mission: to create a world "in which every single human being can freely share the sum of all knowledge''. Last year the company launched Wikipedia Zero, a flagship programme that partners with mobile phone providers to let people browse with no data charges. As with Facebook, the term "zero" signifies free data.

In October, Wikipedia joined forces with Airtel to provide Wikipedia Zero by SMS for the first time in Kenya. Users can text *515# to receive an invite to search Wikipedia; they are then sent the information requested a paragraph at a time. After a three-month trial they hope to expand the service. Wikimedia hopes to reach 1 billion people by 2015.

The most recent partnership announced by Wikipedia is in Burma, which has a 10% mobile phone penetration rate, one of the lowest in the world.

Meanwhile, Groundsource is testing a new platform to ensure that communities that are not online are able to get their voices heard. The platform, which works on feature phones, hopes to bring people together over shared concerns and connect them with journalists.

In India there are an estimated 200m internet users, but only 30% are women. Google hopes to change this by helping 50 million women go digital over the year. It's helping women get online website gives a step-by-step guide to the internet, from computer basics to language preferences. Mothers are targeted by "inspirational" quotes such as "internet moms connect well with their kids" and "internet moms make meals fun". The company has also set up a toll-free helpline and partnered with companies to raise awareness of the initiative offline.

There are also innovations such as BRCK, a low-cost modem, designed for Africa, that can switch between ethernet, Wi-Fi and 3G/4G connection. Its backup battery means it can last for eight hours off grid.

So are we going to see a dramatic increase in the number of people getting online in developing countries over the next few years? How can people overcome the barriers of high charges, low network coverage, a lack of reliable electricity and restrictions to information due to laws enforced by their governments?

We want to hear from you. Do you agree with Zuckerberg's view that connectivity is a human right? Will his initiative have an impact on your life, or do you see it as simply a marketing strategy by global tech companies?

How does your internet behaviour differ from five years ago? Many people now turn to the web for information on key services – are you among them?

We'd like to hear about similar innovations that have caught your eye.

Add your thoughts in the comment thread below. As always, if you have any problems posting a comment, or would prefer to comment anonymously, email us at development@theguardian.com and we'll add your views to the thread.

Maeve Shearlaw

Happy new year tweeting interactive

Ami Sedghi — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 11:59:00 GMT

You may have already relegated New Year's Eve and its celebrations to the back of your mind, but if you're still hanging on to New Year's Eve revelry, then take a look at this interactive produced by Twitter's visual insights team which looks at the phrase Happy new year in various languages and how they spread across the globe as it celebrated midnight

Ami Sedghi

12 New Year's resolutions that should be abandoned

Stuart Heritage — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 10:53:00 GMT

Vowing to be a better person in 2014 is a waste of time. Just embrace the lazy underachiever you really are

1 I must meet up with my online friends

This is always a popular resolution. It is also, without question, the stupidest. An online contact is the perfect friend. Their profile photo is charming and flattering, they talk exclusively in witty little soundbites and, if they ever start to annoy you, you can click a button and never hear from them again. That's enough.

I guarantee that meeting these people in real life will be a profound disappointment. That zany guy who constantly spouts hilarious zingers on Twitter? He's a monosyllabic data entry officer with dribble in the corner of his mouth, who twitches and stares at people for slightly too long. That gin-obsessed burlesque and cupcake fanatic you've secretly had your eye on? She looks nothing like her profile picture, smells of rotten vegetables and cries for 18 hours a day. But the alternative is even worse. The alternative is that they'll be exactly like their online personas – overbearing and needy and desperate to react to everything with a tedious one-liner. Go out with a group of people you only know online and one of them will definitely try to kiss you. Which would be good, except they're internet people, so it isn't.

2 I'm going to read more books

This is self-delusion. Look at your life right now. Look how busy it is. Look how you've started to eat standing up and urinate in the shower, just to claw back a few scraps of time from your corporate overlords. Who has the time to sit down and read a story about pretend people flapping about in a made-up world any more? Aristocrats. That's about it.

Also, reading a book means buying a book, and when was the last time you went into a book shop? They've changed. They know that you're just going to buy everything from Amazon now, so they've all cut their losses and stacked every shelf with a trillion different 50 Shades Of Grey knock-offs called things like Disciplined With Buttplugs and 20 Carat Strumpet. If you're going to read more books this year, it means outing yourself as a pervert. Is that what you want?

3 I must use my smartphone less

What an exercise in futility this is. Why would you ever want to use your smartphone less? It's your entire life. You can't get to places without Google Maps. You can't win arguments without Wikipedia, or get through a single film without IMDb. You can't remember what any of your friends look like without Facebook. You keep all your notes on your phone. You keep all your music on your phone. Your photos. You're probably reading this on your phone. It's become an external hard drive for your brain. You may as well resolve to jam a screwdriver into your ear and jiggle it about a bit.

You'll miss your smartphone when it's gone. You'll have nothing to look at when you're left alone at a pub table. You'll be forced just to stare at the ceiling for hours when you wake up before your other half and they're asleep on your arm. What are you expected to do when you're on a train, or sitting on the toilet, or slightly bored, or just have two seconds when you're not being jammed in the face with lights and colours and noise? Think about stuff? Make plans to better yourself? Gain a sliver of self-awareness, even momentarily? Yuck. If anything, you need to use that smartphone more.

4 I must travel more

Two things are intrinsically wrong with travelling. First, there's the bit where you have to get to your destination. This involves booking a flight on an impenetrable website, lugging a load of unwieldy baggage around an airport terminal jammed with morons, getting annoyed at the smug Fauntleroys who've bought Speedy Boarding, getting annoyed at the barging elbows who don't understand the concept of allocated seating and then, finally, spending eight hours with your kneecaps wedged deep into your nostrils while you watch a badly edited romcom next to a relentlessly screaming baby and desperately try not to calculate how long it'd take you to hit the ground if this pressurised tin can that's shrieking through the sky in a godless act of heresy were ever to fall apart in mid-air.

And what's at the end of this ordeal? Other people. Because, wherever you go, that's what you'll find. Sure, they speak a different language and use an unfamiliar currency, but they're still people. They'll still stand in your way, and talk too loudly, and deliberately pretend not to understand your requests for aftersun cream or a sterilised lance to pop all your infected insect bites, no matter how furiously you mime at them. Their activities might look charming, but ask yourself this: would it still be charming if it was happening in this country? If they were breakdancing in the street or dangerously overloading a moped with livestock over here? Of course it wouldn't. It'd be infuriating. All you're really missing out on by staying at home is the chance to Instagram a picture of the sky, and God knows enough people do that already.

5 I will get a promotion

This is the year, big guy. This is the year that you show those bastards in head office what you're made of. You aced the McKenzie account, you double-digited Q4 growth and you personally ran more low-hanging fruit up a greater number of flagpoles than the Wilmslow and Harrowgate divisions combined. I'm sorry. I work from home. I literally have no idea what any of this means.

However, before you go charging up to your boss demanding a promotion, just take a minute. Sure, you might end up with a fancy new job title and more money than you can ever spend. And, yes, your partner is bound to love you much more than they currently do, because you've become the dynamic go-getter they've always wanted. But are you the right person for the job? You, with your clothes that limply hang off your ruined excuse for a body? You, who can't even ask for a cup of tea without first couching the request in 10 minutes of directionless context-setting? You, whom nobody trusts because you'd rather communicate in emails of cat gifs than actual spoken words? Probably not. This promotion isn't for you. Sorry.

6 I'm going to do more exercise

It makes perfect sense for you to want to get in shape. I mean, look at you. You've just spent the last three weeks packing your digestive system to capacity with Celebrations and cold meat. You perpetually suffer from acid reflux. Your eyes are glazed and milky. You haven't bent over for days, for fear that your jeans will explode and blind everyone in a 30ft radius with deadly slivers of rivet shrapnel. You're pretty sure that you've started to seep gravy at night.

But is exercise the answer? Is it really? Think about it. First of all, it hurts. Attempting any sort of physical activity, if you haven't done it for a while, will basically render you immobile for a month. You'll stagger around, unable to bend your knees, deluding yourself that it's doing you good. And what if you start to enjoy it? You'll buy tight little tops and expensive shoes that are wildly overqualified to help you plod around a park twice a week. You'll start drinking grotty protein shakes. You'll fill up everyone's Facebook with maps and distances and stats, when all they want is to be racist and perv over people they went to school with. You cannot win. Just join a gym and never go, like everyone else.

7 I will lose weight

Oh, what's the point? This isn't the first time you've decided to do this, and it won't be the last. But you got a Miranda Hart workout DVD and an instructional book about kale for Christmas, so people are obviously trying to tell you something. This may as well be the year that you finally lose weight for good.

Except it won't be. This is what'll actually happen. Next week, purely because it's January and you have been existing solely on a diet of chocolate oranges and beer, you'll notice that you've lost half a pound. At this point you'll decide that you deserve a treat and fall face-down in a pile of mashed potato. At Easter, you'll try out a new fad diet where you're only allowed to lick cauliflowers, and you'll lose weight again. But then you'll go on holiday and start eating puddings for breakfast. You'll have shifted that weight by October, but by Christmas you'll be in exactly the same place as you are now. All that effort, all that chronic yo-yoing, and you'll have nothing whatsoever to show for it. You're wasting your time. Instead, you should resolve to either gorge indiscriminately because it's your body, or exercise. I've already explained why that would be a disaster.

8 I want to try an extreme sport

OK, you're having a midlife crisis. I get it. Can't you just get your ear pierced or try to seduce an office junior who's physically repulsed by you instead? Because at least those will only destroy your self-esteem. If your resolution is to take up an extreme sport, I promise that you will end up as a broken, sobbing pile of limbs waiting for a mountain rescue team that will never arrive.

Didn't you see 127 Hours? Didn't you watch that YouTube video of the mid-air parachuting collision? Or the first few minutes of Ghost Rider? Disasters and warnings, all of them. Take up an extreme sport and, at best, you'll have to cut off your own hand with a penknife. At worst, you'll become a supernatural crimefighter who can't stop setting his own head alight. Also, you're not the sort of person to take up an extreme sport. The Felix Baumgartner video where he did a supersonic freefall from space just made your genitals hurt. It takes you upwards of five minutes to lower yourself into a bath if the water is either slightly too hot or slightly too cold. You're going to look like a wally on a snowboard. Please just admit this to yourself.

9 I need to drink less alcohol

How many times have you said this? You've contemplated cutting back on alcohol after every big night out since you were 16, and it's never worked. It didn't work after you wet yourself on a tram. It didn't work after you were arrested for dry-humping a bus stop. It didn't work after you were sick in someone else's coat pocket. What makes you think that, just because it's the first week of the year, it'll work now?

Only about 8% of people succeed at their new year's resolutions, and most of those made frilly cop-out resolutions such as "Appreciate the sunrise" or "See the magic in a child's eye". A tangible, quantifiable resolution – especially one that's going to make you feel as socially awkward as "Drink less alcohol" – is bound to end in miserable defeat. Perhaps set smaller goals to begin with, for instance "Don't drink the dregs of strangers' drinks" or "No drinking on your own in the morning in a toilet cubicle at work", and see where you go from there.

10 I need to spend more time with friends

Oh, your lucky friends. Imagine how enriched they'll all feel now that you're back in their lives. However did they cope last year, when they had evenings and weekends to themselves that weren't utterly dominated by your berserk insistence on turning up without warning, or asking to borrow money, or ringing them when they're eating, or just generally trying to pretend that you're all still students, even though you graduated 15 years ago and they've got important jobs and marriages and children that you do your best to ignore? Think how grateful they'll be when you tell them that you decided to see them only because you wanted to make a new year's resolution and it was either this or buying a cat.

What are you even doing with friends, anyway? You're an adult. You should spend your days in a miserable cycle of work and sleep until you drop dead from a mixture of exhaustion and lack of gratitude. Everyone knows that.

11 I should get a new hairdo

A prediction: you will regret your decision to adopt a new haircut approximately a millisecond after the hairdresser takes his first snip. You'll have spent months looking at pictures of celebrities and wondering if you could get away with anything quite that bold. Then, on the day of your haircut, you'll realise that you actually look quite good as you are. But it'll be too late.

You're not even getting a haircut at this point; you're watching yourself star in a stop-motion film about regret. When it's over, you'll nod approvingly at the hairdresser. Then you'll muss it up with your fingers as soon as you're out of his eyeline and pray that it'll look better once it's washed. It will not. You'll spend the next week wearing a hat and toying with the idea of having a go at it yourself with a pair of nail scissors. People will stare, unable to work out what's wrong with you. Remember when Jonathan Ross got a haircut like a musketeer? Remember how you couldn't concentrate on anything he said, because you were so overcome with pity? That's your life now.

12 I'm going to call my mum more

Obviously you should call your mum more. And maybe this year you actually will. Maybe this year your decision won't dissolve in a cloud of self-interested childishness, as it always has in the past. And maybe, when you do actually call your mum, you won't sit there, robotically uh-huhing to her anecdotes about the neighbours while you play internet poker on your laptop. And maybe you'll ask how she is, rather than simply responding to her questions with churlish, one-word answers.

But you won't, will you? You'll ring her twice, and that'll be it. Maybe you'll try to rationalise your lack of communication by blaming her inability to text or understand Facebook, but really it's because you're selfish and lazy. Didn't you watch Home Alone? Didn't you see the sad old man in church? You're the one who made him sad. It was you, you monster. Admittedly, his sadness is what made him a recluse, and his reclusiveness is what stopped that child from being murdered, so perhaps you're right. You shouldn't call your mum any more. Nor should I. My selfishness is saving children! Hooray for me!

Stuart Heritage