Category Archives: communications

You can trace the evolution of the media landscape through the medium of transfer deadline day.

As a Stoke City supporter, I’ve a love-hate relationship with this day of hype, cameras at training grounds and whooshing graphics.

Yet, once it was all so simple. The transfer window didn’t slam shut at midnight. In fact, not only did it not exist there was not even the internet. 

But how did I get my updates on my football club? It evolved over time and started at the paper shop. 

The 1980s

The Evening newspaper. Growing up in Stafford, one of the few places to find out what Stoke City was doing was the Evening Sentinel. This, boys and girls, was printed on paper and I had to cycle to a shop and pay 26 pence to the person in the shop to take it away and read it. It was a physical copy.

Sports news was on the backpage while other news was on the front. Occasionally, they would swap over. A signing was only confirmed when they were pictured holding a scarf above their heads.

This is what AI thinks it looked like.

There was no guarantee that Stoke City would have signed anyone.

BBC Local radio. Living in Stafford, I’d get BBC Radio Stoke. You had to make a point of listening on the hour and sitting through news of tailbacks on the A500 before you got the sport. 

There was no guarantee that Stoke City would even be mentioned. 

The premium rate phone service. The 0898 phone number came about after BT liberalised phone numbers. In central London, phone boxes became covered in 0898 numbers promising adult services. Not wishing to missout ClubCall was set up in 1986. This allowed fans to ring a premium rate service to find out news about their club.

The Stoke City ClubCall was an exercise in making a little go a long way. A basic piece of information would be spun out into 40 or 50 seconds. 

There was still no guarantee of Stoke City signing anyone. 

Ceefax. This was the internet of its day. It got delivered through the television set and you punched in numbers to find out what the news was. Because Stoke City was not a big club you had to turn to page 312 on the service. This was the catch-all for most of the Football League as football used to be called. However, there was often many sub-pages to get through and it was not unusual to have to read it for five minutes while you scanned every page. 

There was still no guarantee Stoke would sign anyone.

This is what AI thinks that looked like.

The 1990s 

The supporters’ messageboard. Early social media was messageboards. A fan could start a public topic and then others could contribute. To me this was revolutionary. Instead of the odd paragraph on Ceefax I was now getting ALL the hot news. It took me a while to work out I was getting ALL the misinformation and ALL the arguments when Gudjon Thordarson got sacked.

Once, ‘I’ve seen Lee Trundle looking for houses in Trentham’ was the cue to think the Swansea striker was about to sign. Very soon, I realised that the internet could actually lie. The Oatcake messageboard in its pomp was a truly wonderful place.

There was no guarantee that Stoke City would sign Lee Trundle.

Signings were celebrated with hackneyed local news poses. When Sheffield Wednesday swooped – it was always swooped – for Italian duo Benito Carbone and Paulo di Canio the photographer from the Sheffield Star brought along an uncooked pizza as a prop. Italians signing, see? 

Amazingly, the pair agreed to be photographed.

You can Google the original. It is owned by Getty who are notorious litigious. Here is an AI impression of what that photograph looks like.

The 2000s

Newspaper websites. While the internet was invented in the 1990s, it took deep into the 200s before the club pages became worth paying attention to. Overnight it became pointless in paying to buy a newspaper when it was all online for free.

The Sky Sports transfer deadline day coverage. This started in 2003. For a news channel with 24-hours to fill deadline day was a God-send. Send reporters to the training grounds of the big clubs, have Jim White in the studio. 

However, when fans of one club placed a marital aid into the ear of Sky Sports News reporter Alan Irvine in one live broadcast steps were taken to sanitise the event. 

There was no guarantee Stoke City would be featured.

The 2010s

Fans with Twitter accounts. Enter social media, where respected fans with Twitter would supply the breaking news. Newspapers had turned into news brands and would operate on Facebook as well as Twitter. Eventually, clubs would catch-up.

Club websites. Forget, Ceefax. The breaking news is now only confirmed on the club website the final arbiter of fact.

The signing big reveal video. Forget the shot of the new signing in front of the Boothen End with the scarf above his head. It’s now the Big Reveal video. So, when German midfielder Wouter Burger signed the video was staged in a cafe where the dish of the day was a… Wouter Burger. I do see what they did there. 

The 2020s

Now , the football reporter must be a self-facilitating media node. The local news title’s football correspondent is a blogger, reporter, live streamer, tweeter and WhatsApper. Reach plc’s coverage of Stoke City – which is excellent – has a WhatsApp group, website and Facebook page. 

There is still no guarantee of Stoke City signing anyone. 

The club as media organisation. Most football clubs want to announce the news and give the first interview themselves. Fine when you are winning but not so good when you are bottom of the table. Some clubs charge for the chance to hear the manager paraphrase: ‘We’ll take the positives. We go again.’

Conclusion 

In the olden days, we were once thinly served badly with print but the information was generally accurate.

Now we can get information and comment when we want it. The veracity of that is a different thing. For me as a football fan, the trusted source is the club website and the local paper – sorry, news brand – is the benchmark.

When I worked in local government, a neighbouring council’s traffic warden put a parking ticket on a hearse outside a church. It kicked off.

The story, quickly turned from local row to national story which didn’t play well for the council. The general tone was ‘What kind of jumped-up little Hitler would do something like that?’

At my next meeting with parking services, I flagged this up as a banana skin to avoid. Their response stunned me. But, Dan, the car was breaking parking regulations of course it should be ticketed, to a man and woman they said.

Here’s what I learned. There is a right way according to the rule book. This may not be the best approach. Parking services care bout traffic regulations not community cohesion.

So, we come to the flags issue in England. In recent weeks, a semi-organised campaign has seen street lamps decorated with England flags and Union Jacks. Even mini traffic islands are having red paint daubed on them to make them look like circular Crosses of St George.

To some, this is an outpouring of patriotism. It’s England. Why shouldn’t we raise the English flag? To others, this is the far right on the move trying marking territory and intimidating rivals. Hope Not Hate have identified Britain First as playing a role in ‘Operation Raise The Colours.’

It’s also a quandary to local government and police in how to deal with it. Take them down by following the rule book and it may antagonise some of the population. Leave them up and they may antagonise others.

Last week, I blogged what this all meant for local government communicators.

In this post, I’d like to look at what lessons can be taken from 50 years of flags in Northern Ireland. 

Lessons from Northern Ireland

Flags in Northern Ireland have been a charged issue for decades. Streets in some communities which are Republican and Catholic often fly the Irish tricolour of green white and orange. Some Unionist and protestant communities fly Union Jacks and can also paint kerbstones in their own colours of red, white and blue.

So, how is this dealt with?

The Housing Executive in Northern Ireland is one of a number of public bodies that has had to grapple with the issue. It has five decades of experience since the early 1970s  communicators in England can learn from.

I’d suggest anyone with half an interest in this look at ‘A Good Practice Guide to Flags, Emblems and Sectional Signals: A Community Perspective.’ This download has been drawn up by The Regional Strategic Housing Authority for Northern Ireland with the Housing Community Network.

 This is a well developed, mature, responsible bottom-up approach. 

Here’s what I take from that approach:

1. Flags can be flash-points

There are many instances in Northern Ireland where the flying of flags has led to civil disorder. In 2012, moves to limit the number of days the Union Jack was flown from Belfast City Hall led to rioting and months of protest. This is not to predict similar would happen in England if flags in Weoley Castle in Birmingham were taken down. Rather, it just points out that they can escalate.

It’s also important to note that Paramilitary flags are a different thing. That’s a police matter.

2. In Northern Ireland, they don’t do anything without talking to the community

Workers from the Housing Executive are charged with building a relationship with each community to understand what makes them tick and build dialogue. No action is taken without talking to the community. Why? Because things can escalate really quickly.

The flag document clearly states a number of key points:

1. The pace of change will be determined by the local community. 

2. The process is dependent on local circumstances

Vision: 

People have the right to live in a tolerant, diverse society where differences are recognised and respected. 

Aim: 

To create an environment where people feel safe to celebrate and respect culture within and between communities. 

Objectives: 

1. To facilitate communities to create a stable environment free from aggressive cultural displays. 

2. Promote community empowerment in the management of flags. 

3. Raise awareness and mutual acceptance of cultural diversity. 

4. Encourage the removal of tattered and torn flags, emblems and sectional symbols.

 5. To explore alternative expressions of culture. 

Principles: 

1. The safety of residents, staff and property is paramount. 

2. All matters discussed re flags, emblems and sectional symbols will be treated in a confidential manner.

As part of the Northern Ireland approach there is a process for gathering information, data and opinion from the community before action is taken. Questionnaires can gather information and insight. I’m guessing this is slow but thorough.

My worry is that in England, many community workers who may have networks across the community have long since been lost since 2007 in cuts. In the mind of English local government, the next default setting would be elected members. However, this introduces a political element which may not de-escalate the problem.

3. This argument  is a strong one: ‘We think the flag should be honoured… do you think a tatty and dirty flag does that?

As a piece of rhetoric I’m paraphrasing, but I find this utterly compelling. This takes the flag seriously and goes to the core of the argument. It does not draw on traffic regulations or health and safety. Instead, it draws on the well of patriotism that prompted the flag to be put up on a lamppost in the first place. This is something that crosses the Irish Sea and would work in Stoke-on-Trent, Birmingham or Dudley.

The flag should be respected. Does daubing a red X on a white traffic island so cars run over it honour the flag?

British military history is filled with stories of the Regimental Colours being protected at all costs. It is a slight on the Regiment’s reputation if the colours touch the ground. To be dragged through the mud is a slight. 

At the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, 15 men died defending the 2nd Somersetshire’s Regimental Colours. At the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879 two lieutenants drowned saving the Colours in a defeat at the hands of Zulus. At Dunkirk in 1940, the Royal Welch’s colours were hidden to stop them from falling into enemy hands and rediscovered 40 years later.

So, using this argument, a mini roundabout with tyre tracks and a red cross on looks pretty pathetic.

Communicators in England would be well served not just to look closely at this argument but to play it back to the decision makers. It is powerful but it needs to be made real. Perhaps, this is through installing flagpoles in the community to tap into sentiment but fly the flag properly.

In Dudley, Cllr Adam Anston in the past donated a flagpole for by the war memorial in Upper Gornal. This feels like a step to take.

The Northern Ireland approach sees an action plan drawn-up with the community itself. A joint clean-up to remove tattered flags for example, the download says, should build confidence within the community.

4. Communication involves the community

The Northern Ireland approach is clear on expecting community input on how any changes are commuunicated. This is striking for an English audience. I’m guessing that this may be as the result of trust being built and maintained across a community. 

5. The approach has had tangible results

In Portadown, there were 350 flags. These have been reduced by 90 per cent with an agreement with the community to fly them eight weeks a year instead of 52. 

In Strabane, political murals have been removed with a rotating and updated mural instead offering a place where voices can be heard.

In Belfast, the city hall flag issue was resolved after a long period of violent protest.

Conclusion

Northern Ireland is not England and while there is some shared history and culture they are different places. Flags there can be incendiary. But it should not be downplayed that the English Cross of St George and the Union Jack also bring baggage with them. Not everyone approves of them. In England, they are often seen as being more closely connected to the far right than they are to the rest of society. Yet, should that be so? When the Lionesses retained the Euros it was England flags that greeted them.

Labour leaned in to the Union Jack in their political messaging before their successful General Election campaign in 2024 but not everyone was thrilled by this.

However, head to Facebook and the flag issue and there is an at times hostile discussion between two sides. One side are ‘flag shaggers’ while the other are seen as ‘unpatriotic’ and ‘happy to let ‘illegal immigrants in.’

It’s in these arguments that the real issues the flag debate in England provoke come to the surface. Online, they can be a places where people feel as though they can freely voice their opinions on immigration. 

From observation, Facebook posts on flags can be rallying points for both Reform and protests against hotels being used to house asylum seekers. These protests have sometimes turned violent.

In England, community cohesion is the issue at stake. There are some hard-won lessons in Northern Ireland that communicators and policy makers would be well served at looking at.

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Picture credit: istock.

As if from nowhere, England flags on lampposts have suddenly become a political campaign tool. 

On the one hand, this is a spontaneous expression of cultural identity and a celebration of English identity. They have national flags in other countries. Why shouldn’t we have them in our country? 

On the other hand, flags can lead to crude nationalism designed to mark out a territory for those who belong and those who don’t.

In Belfast, flags mark out areas of political influence. Union flags marking Unionist areas and Irish tricolours marking out areas of the Republican tradition. Academic Dominic Bryan who has studied the phenomena in the city says flags can bring alarm.

 “A flag can simultaneously be the marker of official and legal sovereignty and can become the marker of local space… It is emblematic of democracy but also the harbinger of fear. The display of a symbol can be defended as freedom of speech whilst also be criticised as intimidation.”

In short: it’s complicated.

In Birmingham, the flags on street lamps have centred around West Heath, Weoley Castle and Northfield. Birmingham is a city built on immigration from the Irish in the 19th century to post-war South Asian and Caribbean and in recent years from Eastern Europe.

How does this all play out online?

Inevitably, it comes back to Facebook groups where the issue of flags has been highly divisive. 

A search on Nextdoor found nothing. 

Ofcom have said before that Facebook groups are the primary place where people find out about what’s going on with their council from the age of 24 to 65. So, no wonder it plays out there.

A swift search shows flags can be found in debate in the B37 Facebook group with 30,000 members, Castle Bromwich ‘Official’ Group with Weoley Castle Community with 11,000, B News and Views with 62,000. 

In the Alvechurch Road Residents’ Facebook group there has more than 3,000 engagements and 300 shares. This is huge for a community group with 1,800 followers.

On the one hand there are those in the group that say this is an expression of national pride. 

And also…

But the range of opinion also leads to other British people pointing out that they feel British but they don’t feel the need to fly a flag. Others say adding a flag halfway up a streetlamp looks as though they are at halfmast. Who died? they ask.

With depressing predictability there is a racist element to the comments. Here on Birmingham Live’s coverage.

And comments which mirror far right tropes.

Elsewhere, Birmingham Live have limited commenting on posts. 

And in Birmingham, the far right have arrived. Turning Point UK, a group with links to Donald Trump have been quick to move into the space. The group post video which claims to be of ‘leftists’ in Wythall in North Worcestershire taking down a flag on VJ Day. This has been taken up by Reform in other parts of the country.

Birmingham Live, the Reach plc presence in the city, report one of the group behind the flags says there are 1,500 flags across the city. That would indicate there is serious money behind the campaign. Go online, and a single England flag varies from £8 to as much as £18. That means £12,000 minimum has gone into this. 

Not every flag will have come from the group to get the thing off the ground takes time, money and step ladders.

So what does this mean for public sector communications?

Everything is political, says 19th century novelist Thomas Mann. However, flags come with a special kind of politics. 

That British hero Winston Churchill was always careful with patriotism. Tradition helped being a country but also patriotism was also the last refuge of a scoundrel. 

So, some things to consider. 

It’s a community cohesion thing. This is absolutely about how different groups of people from different backgrounds can get along with each other. That’s central to local government communications.

It’s a social media house rules thing. Yet again, I’m going to bang the drum of having a set of house rules. This allows you to take action against people who break them. So, racism and abuse shouldn’t be tolerated. Polite discussion is fine even if it disagrees.

It’s anticipating responses thing. One lesson from Royal British Legion’s social media is to anticipate comments and have some lines to take. So, why Black History Month? Because six million troops from the Commonwealth served including India and the Caribbean is a good response to politely push back with. As ever, always push by sticking to the facts. 

It’s a question about the limiting of comments thing. There may be rare occasions when comments do need to be limited. I’m not sure if the flags issue is that point. 

It’s a disinformation thing. The space for disinformation and misinformation on this issue is huge. So too is the damage it can cause. UK Government’s excellent Resist 2 resource here is your friend. Any public sector communicator should be breaking this advice out. 

“Public communication should strive to be independent from politicization in implementing interventions to counteract mis- and disinformation. Public communication is conducted as separate and distinct from partisan and electoral communication, with the introduction of measures to ensure clear authorship, impartiality, accountability and objectivity.”

It’s a street lighting thing. In my experience, street lighting engineers who work for councils are very black and white people. There is a right answer and a wrong answer. Putting ladders onto street lamps is dangerous. It’s a reasonable message most of the time. But can it appear council jobsworth?

It’s a comms team rota thing. At times of stress, you shouldn’t leave social media to just one person. In cricketing terms, rotate the strike. Have a rota of people who can pick up the baton. Share the sweets. 

It’s a police thing. Some of the comments look pretty actionable. But they also highlight areas of tension in the community. 

It’s a Facebook group thing. In the General Election, Labour and Conservatives both encouraged supporters to post shareable content into groups and into WhatsApp groups and onto Nextdoor. The flags issue once again shows the importance of groups in the media landscape of communities. This is not new. So, what would sharable content on this look like? 
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Creative commons credit: Silver Jubilee boys race, 1977 by Madhava.

In Wales, BBC One remains the main source of news with Facebook in second place.

The social challenger to the news crown emerges in Ofcom’s breakdown for the Principality found in Ofcom’s Media Nations: Wales 2025 and Cyfryngau’r Genedl 2025: Cymru.

Overall, TV is a source for news for 60 per cent of the population of the country with social media second on 52 per cent, radio on 34 per cent and print newspapers 19 per cent.

The full table is here:

As with other parts of the UK, the figures underline the growing importance of social media as a whole. This is not new. But I’m not convinced all communications teams across Wales have invested staff time in the area.

From the league table, Welsh specific platforms that perform well are ITV Cymru Wales / ITV 1 which is in third place with 35 per cent and The Western Mail / Wales on Sunday with 13 per cent.

Elsewhere in the report

In 2024, the most watched TV show was the Gavin & Stacey: The Finale which was partly set in Barry, South Wales. 

Wales is a country of video watchers with the five hours and six minutes consumed daily the highest of any of the UK countries. Within this, the 50 minutes of video on demand was also highest in the UK. Over 65s are increasing their TV viewing. 

Also the highest in the UK, 88 per cent of the Principality connects their TV to the internet to allow access to Netflix, YouTube and other platforms.

YouTube is watched by 12 per cent of the county which is at the same rate as ITV channels. Unlike other countries, ‘how to’ videos are the most popular content with 41 per cent also watching YouTube Shorts. Short form video of less than 15 minutes is the most popular content with just one in 10 watching complete TV programmes uploaded to the platform.

Radio also performs strongly in Wales with 89 per cent of adults listening at some stage every week.

BBC Channels are watched by the most number of people per head of population with 72 per cent tuning in from Colwyn Bay to Cardiff and Bridgend to Bethesda. 

Internet connection is available to 96 per cent of homes. 

Eighty per cent of adults in Wales are ‘fairly’ or ‘very’ interested in news which focuses on the country.

I’ve blogged a summary for the UK here, Northern Ireland here and Scotland here.

You can find the full Ofcom Media Nations 2025 report here. 

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Creative commons credit: Spar Shop on the A5, Betws-y-Coed by Ian S.

In Northern Ireland, TV news has an unassailable lead as the most popular channel for news. 

BBC One with 42 per cent is the single most popular channel narrowly beating by one per cent UTV / ITV1.

Facebook is in the third place with 29 per cent.

The figures come from Media Nations 2025: Northern Ireland. 

For news, television as a whole reaches 64 per cent of the population beating radio stations and social media which are tied on 46 per cent each. Print media lags behind on 16 per cent.

Elsewhere in the report

In Northern Ireland, adults watch the most TV of any UK nation at two hours six minutes per day. 

Local radio out performs in the country. A total of 64 per cent pick up news from local radio which is twice the level of other parts of the UK. BBC local radio is listened to by 18 per cent and with commercial radio 44 per cent.

Superfast broadband is ubiquitous with 99 per cent of the population able to access this.

The largest TV audience in 2024 with 630,000 was The Grinch on Netflix.

Two-thirds of the population watch at least three minutes of YouTube at home but the country has the lowest rate of watching the platform – 35 per cent – in the UK. 

Adults in Northern Ireland are more likely to watch the news on TV than anywhere else in the UK. Sixty per cent watch in Belfast, Lisburn and Omagh compared to 51 per cent in England.

Podcast listening at 19 per cent is the lowest in the UK. 

You can find the full Ofcom Media Nations 2025 here. 

I’ve blogged a summary for the UK here, Wales here and Scotland here.

I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS, ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER, ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS and ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

Creative commons credit: The Book Stop, Omagh By Kenneth Allen. 

There’s a task I run in a workshop I run where we de-construct a news package that tells its own lesson.

An environmental campaiigner talks about how she went scuba diving in the 1950s off the coast of Bali and the sea was crystal clear. Now? It’s full of rubbish.

So far so good, but she pulls out two facts to illustrate what she is doing to the planet. We dump 12 million tonnes of plastic into the sea, she opens. That’s the equivalent of a truckful of waste every minute, she adds.

What stat is most powerful?, I ask.

It’s always the truck a minute. 

Why? Because it’s more relatable. We can see the picture of the truck dumping rubbish into the sea and if you were brought up correctly we are slightly morally offended. 

There is something uniquely effective about making something relatable.

I was reminded about this walking to work this morning listening to the Rest is Entertainment podcast. Apparently, the new Grand Theft Auto game has cost £2 billion to develop. That’s more expensive than the Grand Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai.

Now, working in and around the public sector not everything can be compared to a Middle Eastern property development. 

So what can? 

An Olympic-sized swimming pool is 2,500 square metres.

A football pitch is 90 metres long and at least 45 metres wide.

The Royal Albert Hall is 99,000 square metres of volume.

You can park 25,000 double-deckers in Wembley Stadium.

But real stats can also paint a picture.

More than 120,000 pints of lager were sold at Glastonbury 2025.

At Wimbledon, 1.9 million strawberries are eaten every year.

To quote Russian dictator Joseph Stalin, one death is a tragedy and a million a statistic.

What’s your favourite comparison stat?

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Creative commons credit: Wembley stadium: the old stadium from the stands by Christopher Hilton, CC BY-SA 2.0.