{"id":84412,"date":"2025-07-28T07:09:36","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T06:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=84412"},"modified":"2025-07-28T07:46:26","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T06:46:26","slug":"the-role-of-social-media-in-economic-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/07\/28\/the-role-of-social-media-in-economic-reform\/","title":{"rendered":"The role of social media in economic reform"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gary Stevenson put out a YouTube video yesterday<\/a> in which he suggested that those who want to change the way in which our economy is working should be using social media to challenge the hierarchies of power in the UK because those in power are doing three things.<\/p>\n

First, they are resisting change. He highlighted the fact that Labour is very definitely a part of this problem.<\/p>\n

Second, they are using existing media to try to dismiss calls for change. Gary explained how incredibly bad most economic analysis on almost all broadcast and print media is, but when you listen to some of the interview<\/a> that Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell conducted with him on The Rest is Politics, you can see how those in power in this sector are also using their influence to try to suppress alternative messaging, which they were most certainly trying to do with Gary. To say those two were patronising men, imbued with the privilege of wealth, trying to put down someone who they obviously see as an irritating working-class man who, in their opinion, does not know how to behave and who should just learn how to ask nicely, would be overly kind to them.<\/p>\n

Thirdly, he suggested that he has growing confidence that if there are enough voices doing this, then we can change the political narrative.<\/p>\n

He then suggested that his is not the only voice in this area, and he suggested two others in particular. One is the channel of a person who calls himself Jimmy the Giant<\/a>, and the other one is me. Of me, he said:<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s not just me. I think another guy who is really interesting in this country is an economist called Richard Murphy. He has a channel, I think it's called Economist Richard Murphy, something like that, anyway you can find it on YouTube.<\/p>\n

And yeah, he's not your classic influencer type, but he's created this channel which talks about economics, aggrsssively talks about economics.<\/p>\n

And you know, I don't know if he's in his 50s or 60s, you know, a grey-haired older gentleman talking in a slightly posher accept about economics, and this guy's got a quarter of a million subs on YouTube, right? And it shouldn't work. but it does work because, number one Richard works hard, incredibly hard, does a video every single day, which hats off to Richard for doing that, but also just because the demand is there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gary confirmed during the course of his post that he is talking to other people on social media.<\/p>\n

I can confirm that we have been in discussion, but as yet, I do not know where this will go. I think it would be good if we debated each other, including on the points of difference that we have, which are not as significant as the points of common interest. Let's see what happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gary Stevenson put out a YouTube video yesterday in which he suggested that those who want to change the way in which our economy is
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,204,35,16,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-economic-justice","category-economics","category-ethics","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84412"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84430,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84412\/revisions\/84430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}