Why is our Government shilling for AI companies?

FOMO is not an economic strategy

Three digital stories of the by-election: a media round up

There were three interesting tech adjacent stories during the campaign; betting via (relatively) new predictive markets, Generative AI answers missing the mark, and new spending data transparency.

By-elections: parties spend €225k on ads, 99.7% of it offline

What happens when you design a law around Meta's architecture, and then apply it to leafletting Connemara?

Reform's campaign for the British local elections: guest post

Friend of the newsletter Sam Jeffers from WhoTargetsMe has, for his sins, been monitoring the online campaign ahead of today's local elections in Britain. Reform has taken a fundamentally different approach to this election, working hard to make itself the main character. As Sam summarises: In 2024, Reform’

Desperately seeking Unicorns: a report from inside the Brussels bubble

Companies reach Unicorn size due to sheer ruthlessness; of their business practices and of the US idea of capitalism.

Missed appointments missed the point; how Gov lost the narrative war in the Fuel Protest

Sharing some incomplete thoughts on the narrative battle around the fuel protests, which feel like they are realigning Irish politics as we speak.

Who is funding the fuel protest's online campaign?

Political mobilisation does not scale "spontaneously", and, once that fire is lit, there is no controlling what it burns.

2025 Wrap Up: Moments of the Year

I will be on Virgin Media later this evening for the Tonight Show’s end of year review, and I thought I would share some of my speaking notes with you here.  We’ve been asked to prep our “of the year”s; moment, story, villain and person. I only

Highest percentage and highest number of votes in the history of the Irish Presidency

The results are in; Catherine Connolly won the Irish Presidential election of 2025, gathering 914,143 - or 63% - of the vote. There is a lot of talk of spoiled ballots (including from me) - but - this win is historically comprehensive. Catherine Connolly has garnered the highest percentage of votes in the

#Aras25 Campaign Roundup

Over the last few months I have tried to dig out and get on the record some of the hidden and more ephemeral aspects of this election. Here is a recap of what we covered.

Meta allows deepfake "election cancelled" content to spread in #Aras25

This video is worrying; it shows a combination of both intent and skill in building out very deceptive content, in a way that resonates with Irish audiences.

Comedy wins in #Aras25 content battle

Aoife Dunne's "Sorry now" video is one of the most subtle yet devastating pieces of political content I have ever seen.

Fine Gael's Attack Video: Áras25 in Content

By burying the lede and handing over airtime, have Fine Gael committed an own goal?

Our first American-style election?

Our politics is a techno-coloured pick-and-mix, this election is a Soviet department store

The financial hit of Jim Gavin bowing out

Fianna Fáil unlikely to get the €250k back from the state they would have if Jim Gavin had run

Is Google rewriting history?

Have the dates on Google's Fidesz ads changed in its ad archive?

Google just erased 7 years of our political history

Google appears to have deleted its political ad archive for the EU; so the last 7 years of ads, of political spending, of messaging, of targeting - on YouTube, on Search and for display ads - for countless elections across 27 countries - is all gone. We had been told that Google would

Which news sites are surviving the death of Google optimisation?

3 good reads and some Linkedin news you can use

The first #Aras25 ads are out

What the first political ads tell us about how the campaign might look

News

Is violence an inevitable byproduct of the attention economy?

We need to start looking at this kind of performative violence as an endemic byproduct of the attention economy

Irish Politics

Campaigning likes it 1999 (when it feels like its 1938)

How do you run a political campaign without digital ads? I asked two of our best campaign gurus what we might expect. 

Musk's profoundly ignorant and dangerous intervention in #Aras25

I really, really hope this isn't the start of a whole thing. Elon Musk has tweeted about the race for the Aras in the most profoundly ignorant and stupidly dangerous way possible. The tweet is screenshot below; in it Musk sub-tweets another tweet claiming Simon Harris "

elections

Seven weeks to polling day: what The Briefing will cover

We finally have a date: October 24th. Between now and then, The Briefing will run twice weekly: short, data-led analysis of campaign dynamics, plus curated reads on elections and tech policy. No horse race, just what the campaign reveals about our democracy, our economy, and our digital future.

Why is this Presidential Election so weird?

We've had a load of elections around here lately - we're in our stride - so why does the looming Presidential Election feel so... weird? We're about 10 weeks out (we think - there is still no date) and it feels like both no-one and everyone