Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

John Burn-Murdoch

@jburnmurdoch.ft.com

120K followers 1K following 980 posts

Columnist and chief data reporter the Financial Times | Stories, stats & scatterplots | [email protected] 📝 ft.com/jbm

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · Nov 7

We’re going to hear lots of stories about which people, policies and rhetoric are to blame for the Democrats’ defeat.

Some of those stories may even be true!

But an underrated factor is that 2024 was an absolutely horrendous year for incumbents around the world 👇

67 770 2.4K

Reposted by John Burn-Murdoch

Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 3d

Terrific weekend essay by @henrymance.bsky.social

How polarised is Britain?

Behind media perceptions of a sharpening political divide is a more complicated picture

www.ft.com

3 22 75

Reposted by John Burn-Murdoch

James O’Brien @mrjamesob.bsky.social · 4d

Not to make light of the editorial failure, but look how far Twitter lies now permeate in to normal discourse. We think we know about the racism but the utter contempt for truth since Musk bought the platform is deliberate & very dangerous. You can’t foment racism with fact checkers in the building.

Zoë Crowther @zoecrowther.bsky.social · 4d

Oh my god.

Have I Got News For You just referred to this completely false claim as a fact!!

67 330 1.1K

Reposted by John Burn-Murdoch

Wolfgang Blau @wblau.bsky.social · 4d

Spot the North-American anomaly: only region where social media use is still growing.
Great work by the FT’s @jburnmurdoch.ft.com
www.ft.com/content/a072... “Have we passed peak social media?”

5 42 98

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 4d

It’s more “what are your reasons”, from about a dozen options. Will dig out the full list when I get a sec

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 5d

Ah, fab!

Reposted by John Burn-Murdoch

Tony Tassell @tonytassell.bsky.social · 5d

Have we passed peak social media? @jburnmurdoch.ft.com here www.ft.com/content/a072...

31 130 470

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 5d

For sure! I’m not saying it is bad.

But the point I think David is making is that lots of people (including many who are certainly not right of centre) are complaining about the rising costs part without realising it’s downstream of redistribution.

2 1 14

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 5d

Fully public. Facebook Messenger eased the transition from public to WhatsApp and iMessage.

Reposted by John Burn-Murdoch

Soumaya Keynes @soumayakeynes.ft.com · 5d

Eeee the cover for the UK edition of How to Win a Trade War is out!

Pre-order your copy here...
www.amazon.co.uk/How-Win-Trad...

5 17 69

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 5d

Yeah the key point is a fair amount of those group chats with mates, sharing and commenting on links/memes etc used to happen on the big public or semi-public platforms (Facebook, even Twitter), and now almost exclusively happens on WhatsApp.

Bifurcation into messaging vs entertainment.

1 2 9

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 5d

I like the theory but am not totally convinced. The research I’ve read finds video is not just better at grabbing attention but at keeping it too.

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 5d

Excellent thread.

I’ve seen the same point made in the US, where the tight post-pandemic labour market saw significantly stronger wage growth among the lowest-paid workers, including hospitality, and sure enough the complaints about the cost of takeaway and eating out came flooding in.

David Henig @davidheniguk.bsky.social · 5d

Ok, been waiting for this one, price rises for going out that affect so many of us... there's a lot of factors here but one of the main ones is... this is what we collectively chose... what do you think happens with more regulations and a higher minimum wage? www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

What a £5 coffee (or a £100 Pizza Express) tells us about a changing Britain | Gaby Hinsliff

For many Gen Xers, it feels like we’re sliding back towards the land of our childhoods: where eating out was for special occasions, and Thermoses were king, says Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff

www.theguardian.com

11 17 89

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 5d

Agree. And I suspect people *are* keeping up with friends and family roughly as much as ever, but that’s now on messaging-specific platforms.

Sort of a separation of social media into social apps (WhatsApp) and media apps (TikTok, Insta, X).

4 3 63

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 5d

Thanks Rob! Stuck to headline numbers for now, but planning another couple of pieces digging deeper

1 3

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 6d

Apparently we’d need to leave the ECHR for it to be enforceable

1 20

Reposted by John Burn-Murdoch

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 8d

On the morning of Keir Starmer's conference speech here's a new post on an odd psychopathology in British politics - our main parties don't like the people who vote for them - the dreaded Professional Managerial Class. And so they are acting out like a divorced dad seeking cooler voters. 1/n

British Politics' Midlife Crisis

Why British Parties Can't Make Peace with Their Actual Voters

benansell.substack.com

21 460 1.2K

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 16d

I guess I just don’t really think me replying to DMs by French economists helps advance the political goals of the platform’s owner?

1 1

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 16d

It’s just very useful for me as someone who writes a lot about a) the US, b) tech/AI, c) the media landscape.

My DMs there are full of chats with academics and policy people (here far less so).

If I wrote mainly about the UK (my job is to do the opposite) it would make much more sense to leave.

2 10

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 16d

I mean I’m still on there so I can’t fully co-sign on that part, but I do draw the line at “blithely adopt the noxious terminology of a group of extremely online nutjobs”.

2 20

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 16d

Yuuuuuup. Another decidedly unpleasant but useful illustration of how everything works now.

Like using dye to find a leak in a plumbing system.

4 3 92

Reposted by John Burn-Murdoch

Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 17d

My essay in this weekend's @ftweekend.com, featuring terrific charts and analysis by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com:

The truth about immigration

Ageing societies seeking to preserve living standards will continue to rely on new arrivals — but governments can be clearer about the trade-offs

www.ft.com

2 16 61

Reposted by John Burn-Murdoch

Jacob Edenhofer @jacobedenhofer.bsky.social · Feb 3

🚨 New working paper! 🚨
@grattonecon.bsky.social and I just completed the first draft of "The Rise and Fall of Technocratic Democracies". Excited to present it in Munich this week—thanks to Laura Seelkopf, Christoph Knill & others for hosting us! 🧵👇
▶️ Motivation
Many democracies have undergone a

4 14 89

Reposted by John Burn-Murdoch

Duncan Robinson @duncanrobinson.bsky.social · 24d

Shot, chaser

Young men more likely to vote Green than Reform. Young men second most progressive group of any demographic. Combined right-wing vote barely bigger than Green vote alone for young men

130 1.3K 4.2K

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 24d

So sure it’s technically possible that that could change, but it would take a lot of years where wage growth significantly outpaces inflation, whereas the opposite looks much more likely (OBR have the gap widening to £16bn by 2030).

2 1 10

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 24d

No calculations or assumptions, it’s what’s already happened.

That sentence is comparing the optimistic estimate of wealth tax revenues (£10bn) to the additional £12bn per year (per OBR) that pensions currently cost vs the counterfactual where they had just risen with earnings growth.

2 1 14