Phil Gyford, in With great audiences…, wonders what it takes to get a story propagated in the weblog world, and is afraid that the answer is merely ‘attention grabbing headline + a patina of Old Media validity.’ He writes about a “banning blogging” story picked up from the traditional press, where the weblog…
…got carried away with the newspaper’s headline, repeating it in theirs even though a cursory read of the newspaper article reveals that no one “banned blogging.” The newspaper claims the principal doesn’t think blogging is educational, and Cory could certainly have criticised him for this alone, although it would make for a less dramatic post. The repetition of the lie about the principal banning blogging, rather than his apparent opinion, is possibly also what prompted a reader to suggest people should email the principal to complain.
Phil posts about BoingBoing, but the pattern is quite general — you can see misleading posts like San Francisco Attempts to Regulate Blogging almost daily on slashdot.
The pressure to give things a dramatic headline, online or off, is tremendous, because if you don’t get readers with the headline, you won’t get them at all. This leads, in the weblog world, to a curious moral hazard, where fact-checking can be left to the furthest upstream source. “Well, if the Osceola Star-Ledger, with their enormous resources, can’t fact-check the article, how can I be expected to???” And so we get ourselves in high dudgeon at injustices that may never have happened, because they are the kind of thing we would hate if they had happened.
Thiscontrasts with with the magnificent distributed fact-checking done elsewhere, as with the Trent Lott or Dan Rather investigations. The choice to fact-check vigorously, even when a story is reported by well-funded news outlets, seems only to happen when the writers in question disagree with the story, while the decision to accept the fact-checking of any traditional media outlet, in order to be able to fast-forward to the aforementioned high dudgeon, seems to come when the weblogger likes repeating or even amplifying the claims made further upstream.
Which brings me to ‘toothing.
‘Toothing was the craze for arranging on-the-spot trysts among users of Bluetooth-capable cellphones, as reported by Wired last March. Except ‘toothing was a hoax, as the perpetrator revealed after seeing this slashdot thread.
It seems harmless, except that many of the subsequent references weren’t about ‘toothing per se (understandable, as there was nothing to study), but rather referenced ‘toothing as one member of a set of activities mobile technologies enabled. ‘Toothing went from being a thing to being a touchstone for reasoning about mobile technologies generally.
A couple years ago, I spent some time on the trail of the urban legend that half the world had never made a phone call. While ‘toothing was never likely to acheive that degree of saturation, it was, like the ‘half the world’ phrase, a distortion not only in itself but as the avatar of larger social patterns.
I checked the M2M archives, and to my relief, we didn’t write about ‘toothing, though probably not out of any native skepticism, or we would have written to de-bunk it. Yoz Grahame is the only person I know of who got this right, in the voluptously titled Sex-Crazed Brits Just Doing It Everywhere, Like, Everywhere Man, You Can’t Stop Them, They’re Like Dogs In Heat Or Something, And Dude, I Gotta Get Me Some Of That:
Pausing only to spill some famous London ale down the front of his XXL-sized rugby shirt, Barry outlined some key points in the rapidly-evolving lexicon of British desire. “So what you do, right, is you spot a nice tart over by the bar and you think, lovely, I’ll have a bit of that. And you tip her the wink, you know? And then, if she looks back at you, she’s gagging for it.”
“Just like Bluetooth signalling,” I commented as I tapped hurried notes into my Zaurus. “Ingenious!”
One lesson we could all take from this is “Pay more attention to Yoz”, which couldn’t hurt, but a better motto is ‘WWYD?’ Note that he didn’t fact-check the ‘toothing story, he sense-checked it. The thing wrong with the toothing story isn’t that the participants of the toothign scene aren’t IDed, it’s that the story itself doesn’t make any sense. Most of us will not be able to afford the calling and re-calling of sources to double-check a quote, but all of us can ask ourselves, just before we hit Submit, ‘Is this true?’
And the time we should be most careful to do that is if we feel really satisfied with what we’ve written — “How dare the House of Representatives propose a mandatory bar code tattooed on the foreheads of liberal bloggers!!! Must. Denounce. Now.”
All the phrases we use to separate the weblog world from other media outlets weaken with elapsed time — old media, new media, traditional media, all of it suggests that newcomers join the club when they’ve been around long enough to be familiar. As weblogs continue their symbiosis with the forms of media that went before, we will make ourselves targets of truly malevolent hoaxes if we simply decide to repeat what we agree with. The echo chamber is of far less danger overall than unchecked amplification.
1. Alex Halavais on April 5, 2005 11:34 AM writes...
Damn. Santa Clause and now Toothing. The world is a far less magical place than I had once hoped.
I'm guilty of buying the Wired story and passing it on. Perhaps one of the reasons it passed the gut-check is that (if I recall correctly) it suggested toothing was an outgrowth of dogging. While sex in parks and parked cars is not particularly unusual in the US (a park near where I lived in Seattle was well known for it), the idea that dogging is a popular past-time in the UK seems to be at the same level of gut-check as toothing. And yet, a bit of Googling suggests that dogging probably has some teeth as a story.
So, start with one dose of Orientalism, add in a bit of techno-exoticism, and a bit of erotic fantasy, and it surprises me not a bit that folks (including me) bought the story.
Permalink to Comment2. Yoz on April 5, 2005 12:16 PM writes...
"WWYD?" You've made my head room-sized and the girlfriend is complaining, please stop.
In this particular case, though, it wasn't so much that I didn't believe toothing existed since
(a) I still don't know enough about Bluetooth interfaces, being stuck on the Treo 600
(b) as someone on /. pointed out, it's a hacked reimplementation of the LoveGety, which that definitely existed
(c) in this massive, varied and complex world, such bizarre behavioural evolution may well occasionally happen in minor cases, and who am I to deny it
but rather that Wired was
(a) blowing it out of all proportion
(b) so obviously desperate for sex-and-tech stories that it was jumping on a web forum with about 20 posts on it and calling it a newsworthy trend
(c) trying to paint a picture of the UK as a place where the streets are paved with the sweaty, heaving bodies frantically-copulating strangers
... and I felt that someone had to stand up, be cultural ambassador, rub the "FOR A GOOD TIME CALL +44-ANY-NUMBER-AT-ALL" graffiti off the toilet wall, and point out to all the Yanks rushing for the first flight over that, well, you may have better luck saving your money for drinks in Greenwich Village/Malibu/The Castro. Plus, it was a wonderfully easy target.
But despite all that, at the time I thought there might well be some truth to it. What's worse, the dirty, dirty pervert in me honestly wanted some truth there. As Alex says above, it's all remarkably buyable, and much harder to verify. All too often the truth is often secondary to what people want to hear and what they want to enjoy getting worked up about, whether it's in a sexual or righteous way. Information finds its level and its target.
Permalink to Comment3. Yoz on April 5, 2005 12:34 PM writes...
Oh, and before anyone else gets there, the common answer to "WWYD?" is "Ramble about Perl, make excuses and procrastinate".
Permalink to Comment4. JamesJayTrouble on April 5, 2005 4:01 PM writes...
"Most of us will not be able to afford the calling and re-calling of sources to double-check a quote, but all of us can ask ourselves, just before we hit Submit, ‘Is this true?’"
It's difficult, but also useful before hitting Receive button, which I gather is your point. Useful especially when reading daily news from around the world, although I gather it's better to get the news filtered through blogs anymore.
"The echo chamber is of far less danger overall than unchecked amplification."
Imv, the unchecked amplification is just a subset of the echo chamber effect. It works (poorly) because people don't challenge the basic tenets of their belief systems. So blogging blather and urban legend gets accepted as fact. (Like the one that you don't need to read news, imho.) That's because it's still more important to be accepted in the clique(s) than be correct.
That's in the newsroom a little less than the blogosphere, imo/o (opinion/observation).
Which is the greater danger???
Permalink to Comment5. JamesJayTrouble on April 5, 2005 4:06 PM writes...
From the Dept. of Small Nits, Dr. Shirky, lemme know if you want me to note the 4 or 5 typos in your find article...
Ooooops on me...;-D Fine article.... .... Got to be Irish spelling.. right?
Permalink to Comment6. pb on April 5, 2005 7:30 PM writes...
Hold the front page! Professor Shirky says blogs promote cult-like behavior!
I think John C Dvorak and Andrew Orlowsky were making this point three years ago. Now the cult leader decrees they might be onto something.
The echo chamber is of far less danger overall than unchecked amplification.
A definition of the echo chamber IS unchecked amplification. If it was more self-critical, amplification wouldn't go unchecked.
Permalink to Comment7. Clay Shirky on April 5, 2005 7:49 PM writes...
No, there's a difference. The echo chamber is a reader effect, unchecked amplification is a writer effect.
The echo chamber comes when people flock around views they agree with. Unchecked amplification, by contrast, can come from across a spectrum of disagreement, with each party amplifying the original story.
Permalink to Comment8. John Waterson on April 5, 2005 10:03 PM writes...
Were it any less a person than Clay writing, I wouldn't even think to ask, but: "moral hazard"?
Failure to fact-check is a real problem. So is blind faith in a more resourceful authority. But they are both problems with reasonably tractable solutions (diligence and healthy cynicism, respectively). The solutions do not - by their mere existence - create incentives for variants of the problem to recur. Therefore I don't see the connection with "moral hazard" as an economist would understand it.
Unless of course, the phrase wasn't intended as a term of art. But that would seem very un-Clay.
Permalink to Comment9. Jon Garfunkel on April 6, 2005 1:52 AM writes...
Clay-- you make a fundamental mistake here by repeating some of the myths of the blogosphere. The Rather and Lott incidents were only exceptional in that people thought that the blogosphere was doing distributed investigations. They weren't.
Doing the research on Trent Lott's quotes was almost exclusively Josh Marshall; the pundits and the blogosphere helped by fanning the flames and linking to his posts. With 60 Minutes, the public/online investigative research was largely non-blogger Joseph Newcomer. Of course, Newcomer didn't come on the scene right away. Powerline and the PR firm cybercast News Service pushed the story to Drudge on Thursday after 60 Minutes aired. The Washington Post put it on the front page the next day. The populist spin of the story having been broken by the bloggers (and not Cybercast) helped push it along. Read more of my analysis at What if there were no blogosphere?
My current research piece, which I am serializing this week as The New Gatekeepers, argues that it is the very architecture of the blogosphere which promulgates the same values from the traditional media: the loudest, fastest voices are required to break-out a story.
There is interesting developments in post-blogging distributed investigative journalism, which I will be reporting on in the next week.
Permalink to Comment10. xavi on April 6, 2005 10:02 AM writes...
www.sexo-glamour.com
www.spanishare.com
www.julioverne.org
Sois los mejores
Permalink to Comment11. lame on April 6, 2005 12:19 PM writes...
How is San Francisco requiring registration (including a registration fee), subjecting to traffic audits, requiring cost reporting, etc. *not* regulation? How is that story misleading?
Permalink to Comment12. zephoria on April 6, 2005 3:50 PM writes...
As the person who posted the principal-banned-blogging post that Cory put up on BoingBoing, i have to disagree with you and Phil. No, i did not call up the principal nor would i. I am not a journalist and i have zero desire to try to be one. I don't actually even care about the truth value of that article so much as the fact that it's the kind of hype that appears in the news. I posted that entry partially for my own records and partially to share a newspaper article that i found interesting with all of my fellow researchers who are thinking about kids and technology. We are all playing close attention to the paranoia, hype and attitude around youth and education. I didn't even bother commenting on the article.
Cory took it, cited it and put a meta commentary about his experiences and what he thinks that educators should do. Again, truth value is less important than dialogue. The pure fact that this is an issue that the press is reporting is interesting.
Clay... i'm kinda bothered by this post because you seem to be implying that we are supposed to act like journalists. I, for one, would not blog if i was supposed to act as such. This is a forum for me to think through ideas, keep records of things i read and just share what i think is important. There is no doubt that i have readers and they take me far too seriously but am i responsible for the foolish pedastal they've put me on? Just because i have readers, am i supposed to act like a journalist?
Permalink to Comment13. Jon Garfunkel on April 6, 2005 6:07 PM writes...
danah, here's the key part that Phil wrote: "With this greater audience comes a greater responsibility." Do you disagree with that?
That rule does not mention journalism by name. And I think that's what Clay was capturing when he suggested that the lines between new media and old media are blurring. It's really just a question of audience. And the reactions that Phil has gotten is not that BoingBoing is unfaithful to the truth. It's that they've stopped being responsible to their readers and to their motto-- no longer the "gwonderful things." (see more about media legitimacy that I wrote last month).
Curious, if one were to take in, it seems that the blogger ideal is to want all of the priviliges of journalists, and none of the responsibilities. AKA the ol' "blogging two step" as Henry Farrell calls it. Robert Cox of the Media Bloggers Association is starting to recognize this split as well.
My "New Gatekeepers" piece that I cited above advances the argument that the blogosphere as we know it today values freedom over responsibility. That's a blessing for closed societies, but should give us pause for concern here.
Permalink to Comment14. pb on April 8, 2005 4:52 AM writes...
No, there's a difference. The echo chamber is a reader effect, unchecked amplification is a writer effect.
And semantic slipperiness is a Clay effect? You can't make such distinctions here. This is the Blogosphere, where readers are writers are readers are writers.
You were much closer to the problem when you wrote -
The choice to fact-check vigorously, even when a story is reported by well-funded news outlets, seems only to happen when the writers in question disagree with the story
Dvorak -
In fact the brown-nosing that goes on between bloggers singing each others' praises makes the worst office kiss-ups look tame by comparison. I mention this anomaly since these Cluetrain folks all believe the opposite to be true. Somehow networking like this, according to the Cluetrainees, reveals truth—when in fact it supports and forces the worst kind of conformist behavior.
When the conditions encourage brown-nosing, why rock the boat?
Permalink to Comment15. JamesJayTrouble on April 8, 2005 9:55 AM writes...
I'll rock the boat, pb, because I don't know you all well enough to brown-nose ya.
I heard Dvorak sold out and has a blog. And your comment on bloggers reminds me of the ludicrous question raised here mebbe a year back:
Are lurkers bad?
The fact that the question was raised was telling, to me anyway.
And I wouldn't dream of speaking for Dr. Shirky, but don't see any problem with his use of "moral hazard", myself... There could be, and probably is, a moral element to the activity of diligence. (And isn't there a certain amount of blind faith involved when assuming one has done due diligence in non-trival situations?...;-)
Permalink to CommentLikewise I'm afraid, Ms. boyd, that you've gotten involved in a clique that says not only that bloggers are journalists, but blogging is better than journalism. That puts your post at odds with the non-conventional (cough...;-) wisdom. Enjoyed Jon Garfunkel's article on "Blogs: differing definitions", btw.
16. Phil Gyford on April 9, 2005 7:21 PM writes...
Danah - I understand the stuff about just using a blog as a personal record. I understand that's what Cory does too. But the point is that few people read, in this case, Boing Boing and think "oh I'm just reading some scribbled notes Cory's jotted down". People read Boing Boing to find cool stuff or interesting stories and assume it's written for them, not for Cory et al.
If the site made it obvious that it was just some personal notes that'd be different. If some of the more campaigning posts weren't written like a call to arms, aware of their audience, that would be different. But if a site tries to make points about issues it cares about, to try and get other people to care about them too, then it's going beyond being a stash for personal notes.
In acknowledging there's a big audience out there, and writing for it, it's naive for the blogger to throw up their hands and say "oh, but I'm just a little weblogger keeping personal notes, you shouldn't pay any attention to what I say!"
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