Usually I will try to stick to reading my way through books in German one at a time but now and again I find myself with two or three on the go at once. I'm currently working my way slowly through Halbzeit, Martin Walser, Knaur. It's not an easy read and last night I realised I had turned a couple of pages without finding a full stop. The 'sentence' actually stretched to five pages.
Tuesday, 11 May 2010
Politicians and the internet
Only this morning did I get around to watching Sunday evening's edition of neues from 3Sat. I can't read or watch everything at once! A large part of the programme was reporting on the use of the internet by politicians and political parties during the election campaign in NRW. Sunday was election day and the result would not have pleased the CDU. I can't say I was excited by this election but the reporting on the use of blogs, Twitter, etc. was interesting.
The interviews with the candidates were brief and did not go into their political views. There were also interviews with young people who expressed views about the lack of opportunity to interact with the politicians. This is all good listening material and there were also some journalistic blogs mentioned that have a definite regional emphasis. To understand the German speaking world (DACH as it's sometimes called. Work it out - Germany, Austria, Switzerland) you sometimes have to get down to regional level or even more local. Identity and culture have great variation and richness.
Politiker im Online Wahlkampf gives written comment from neues and you can view a short video report on the same page. Some YouTube links you might like to follow are: Die Macht der Blogs and Interview mit Alfons Pieper. You can also download the whole half hour video
The interviews with the candidates were brief and did not go into their political views. There were also interviews with young people who expressed views about the lack of opportunity to interact with the politicians. This is all good listening material and there were also some journalistic blogs mentioned that have a definite regional emphasis. To understand the German speaking world (DACH as it's sometimes called. Work it out - Germany, Austria, Switzerland) you sometimes have to get down to regional level or even more local. Identity and culture have great variation and richness.
Politiker im Online Wahlkampf gives written comment from neues and you can view a short video report on the same page. Some YouTube links you might like to follow are: Die Macht der Blogs and Interview mit Alfons Pieper. You can also download the whole half hour video
Monday, 10 May 2010
Social Media in Rot-Weiss-Rot
One in four Austrians is on Facebook and half of them log on everyday. But there are local social media sites - Freundschaftsportale. These are quite regional in nature. Examples are epos4 and Szene1. There is also a Swiss version of Szene1 - http://www.szene1.ch/
I deliberately avoid giving a link to epos4 because I get warnings of multiple computer security threats.
There are also the so called Party-Communities such as http://www.niteguide.at/ - http://www.salzpop.com/
To find out more take a look at Social Media in Rot-Weiss-Rot on the kurier.at website.
Social networking sites like these give some useful bite size chunks of language and a sense of what people discuss online - but don't go there if you want formal language and grammar.
I deliberately avoid giving a link to epos4 because I get warnings of multiple computer security threats.
There are also the so called Party-Communities such as http://www.niteguide.at/ - http://www.salzpop.com/
To find out more take a look at Social Media in Rot-Weiss-Rot on the kurier.at website.
Social networking sites like these give some useful bite size chunks of language and a sense of what people discuss online - but don't go there if you want formal language and grammar.
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