Monday
Jun292009
Personal Democracy Forum Brain Dump
Monday, June 29, 2009 at 06:09PM
My thoughts on Day 1 at the Personal Democracy Forum 2009. Feel free to respond to the fragmentation of my fragmented thoughts about fragmentation.
Reader Comments (29)
You are SO serious (now?) It seems like when you were doing your thang on Adam Currys site, you just were YOU and cute and chill. Alcohol is your friend Natali. Or meds!
Very interesting "brain dump." I think that our social media, like commercial ventures, will have to combine or be reduced in some way to a few key players. The biggest fragmentation is that there are so many social connections and no one can be part of all of them - information overload. At some point, as these merge or fall away, the messages will as a natural course be less fragmented.
However, the concern in the mean time is one you touched on, because not all journalists or bloggers are going to report news and commentary accurately or at least unbiased, the consumer will always have to pick and choose. News networks demonstrate that. If there wasn't an underlying presupposition that most networks are liberal and "Democrat-leaning", then FOX would not be able to get away with being so conservative and "republican-leaning." If more journalists were as concious as you are toward delivering content with a minimum of slant, then less would be required of the consumer.
But then, do we want stupic consumers? The ability to "separate the wheat from the chaff" is desirable in our society of news consumers. They vote based on their perceptions and if they cannot discern the truth from opinion in media, then their vote becomes directed by the most influential media.
Your brain dump has me thinking quite fragmented as you can clearly see. Hope this helps resolve your thinking.
@markmnelson
Many years ago I worked on a project called Nation.1 designed to operate as a "kids country" with borders defined by technology and age as opposed to geography and race. It was later integrated into a great project called http://www.TakingItGlobal.org" rel="nofollow">www.TakingItGlobal.org
How do you add meaning to such a fragmented society?
Simple - one person at a time - starting with yourself. By adding as much value in every communication you offer. Talking to people for whom your unique insights add massive value, instead of trying to reach everyone.
Our World is evolving. There is a growing diversifying deluge of messages bombarding our senses... and each unique person gets to surf through a unique World of messages with some overlaps. The only way to handle this is to appreciate that diversity makes us stronger overall, and will enable new kinds of governance.
Surely if there are more messages travelling more quickly amongst more wise folk in society, the "wisdom bandwidth" in society naturally increases, and the populace becomes smarter, and more quickly. Twitter is a great example of this; overcoming the deluge of information by limiting messages to 140 characters. Reading my friends Tweets is far better than browsing any headlines of a media outlet. The obvious effect is that the imaginary borders of geopolitics dissolve a bit more, and people who yearn for less fractionation get to choose an interface to available knowledge, like Twitter, that is better than what they had before.
Hi Natali,
I'm old school, which I guess is the same as old. I feel that there is a definite difference between blogging, and journalism.
In my mind, journalism is more of a collaborative effort. Sources, reporters, fact checkers, and editors all working together, to publish something that is as close to the truth as possible. I don't expect journalism to be as timely as blogging, but I expect it to be more accurate.
Blogging is more of a solitary pursuit, which I expect to not be as well sourced, and contain more opinion. It may be more timely, and a blog my be a starting point for journalism.
I feel that the future of democracy requires both of them. It is kind of a check and balance, in the journalists can't ignore a story, because news consumers will hear about the story from the bloggers. Bloggers have to spend more time checking sources, of the journalists will discredit them.
The way I see it, the Internet was conceived as a way of transmitting data, and data, as I learned studying Computer Engineering, is one step far from information. Information is kind of processed data. So consuming Internet is consuming data that might or might not be true, reliable information, and is up to the consumer to process it and decide what is valuable and what is not. This means we can see reality as a sum of many different points of view (i.e. read the same piece of news from different sources to make up one's own opinion), which is good, but it can be also the cradle for conspiracies, hoaxes and false news as we've seen many times.
People are always going to have their very own personal filter therefore it is impossible to have one message that is going to have one unified significance to the the entirety of the world. I don't believe it's even possible to have one message to even a specific region. That's why the best politicians tailor their message to their audience, al-a Bill Clinton, who was able to say one thing to a group of managers and say the entirely opposite thing to a group of teamsters an hour later. Probably the best ally of anyone in politics is the media, and pandering to them the liberal agenda would make them most successful.
As for the media, I would argue that they spend entirely too much time doing what I like to call "naval gazing". This phenomena is not unique to the media however, many celebrities are guilty of the same ailment. The media's primary role in society is merely to inform. Naturally, because the media is comprised of human beings they will tint the story with their own perspective, however when the media is intentionally attempting to espouse a particular view, in my humble opinion, they have crossed the line.
This fragmentation gap can never be fully joined because we are still human beings with our own individual perspectives. As for you Natali, I love the fact that you are trying, but I would argue instead that you have an innate quality that resonates with people. As you know, there are other tech broadcasts and many more members of the media, I choose to follow you because of whom you are. If you engage in too much naval gazing, you may begin to criticize yourself to the point of changing the essence of you.
In conclusion, just be yourself.
I say having more information is always better, as long as the message isn't diluted.
The problem is, there's so much disinformation out there, who's to tell who is telling it down the middle? CNN? Fox News? BBC?
Yeah, the onus is on the user to find out what's the truth, and what is not.
The line between the truth, and not... may blur even more.
TRUE Democracy is public opinion in all forms. :) Nice NDC! Hope to see some color soon. :)
Enjoyed hearing your thoughts live vs. just reading them. So much more feeling behind it. You should make your Youtube thoughts a REGULAR EVENT. :) I'll keep watching and posting. Your intelligent, articulate, gorgeous, and stylish. It's such a pleasure to watch M-Th...Ciao!
Journalists should be thinking the 'big picture' and deciding what they believe is relevant and having the integrity to report on those issues.
We as consumers do have the responsibility to chose who we listen to and make our own judgments about what we think of that journalist.
The 'new media' allows us the consumer to combine both sides and interact with the Journalist to give better and immediate feedback to hopefully influence the choices of stories. The challenge for the Journalist is to not pander to what the public claims they want but to also give them what they need.
BOB
Hey Natali, tried to leave a video comment, but it didn't go through for some reason. To recap.
I don't think we'll see news sources combining in the future. I think we will see an expanding of what we call 'new sources' to include a lot of non-traditional sources. What I think will change is the way we collate these sources. Products like Google Wave will allow us to track all of these sources in one place. So I think while you may leave comments/posts/videos/podcasts spread out across the whole of the internet, the way in which we interact with them will become centralized.
As for who to trust? Well I think that's probably not much changed in the new era. You trust who gives you the truth. Those sources who give you the facts most quickly will be rewarded with a bigger following. If you start just making things up, your following will notice pretty quickly. I also think that this will correspond to a growing of the individual reported, not affiliated with a company. Perhaps by taking micro payments for individual stories, an individual can become beholden only to their audience, rather than a company.
Big companies like CNN or Fox have their place, I just don't think it's in the 'break news first' market. Everyone is becoming a journalist now in some sense. To become more than everyone else you need to collect sources and read into what they're saying to be able to produce the timely, truthful material. I guess, as always, that's what will set a journalist apart.
I'll be interested to see the other comments that come in regarding this. Now get your video commenting fixed, I did my hair up all nice for nothing! ;)
Hey Mark,
I actually think instead of a combination of sources, we'll actually see more of an explosion of sources. With devices becoming more and more capable of sending out information about what's going on right around us, I think many people will become 'amateur journalists'. Now that's not to say they will actually have an quality content. So it's really just the combing through the crap til you get to the good stuff, just like always.
I don't think that there is any basic change that is in place that requires
anything new from the readers/viewer of blogs. You can get opinionated,
untruthful, "news" from newspapers today. You can get it from television
news also. It has always been the job of the reader to decide which parts
are accurately given and which have a bias. The journalist needs to have
ethics to provide valid information, but that does not mean that an editorial
is out of place, as long as it is clearly identified as an editorial. So
the internet, blogs, vlogs, twitters on subjects that come up suddenly are
all just new technology. But the new technology does not change the basics.
When a singer of songs and a teller of tales went from village to village
giving information about what was happening in the rest of the land it was
up to the people who gathered to hear the tales to decide if anything valid
was being told, or if the story teller was not letting the facts get in the
way of a good story. Because of the sheer amount of information and the
large number of bloggers available deciding what is valid and what is not
is difficult, but as time goes on and as trained, responsible journalists
get involved this will change. There will always be people who only want
to hear what they already believe, and then there are people who want to
be informed so they can figure out what they believe.
Even with traditional media there can be bias. The Huffington Post and Fox News are typical examples of journalism sources that have a left or right bias. Even various social media groups have bias themselves. Reddit seems very Liberian and Digg seems to lean left itself, so even crowd sourcing can have bias. Ultimately, individuals have to decide what they want. People will either vote with their group (be it Republican Party, or Reddit user, or parents) or they will make up their own mind (like me) and just have more sources to draw from. People who only surround themselves with like-thinkers will never expand their viewpoints and always vote the same way. But people who take the time to learn issues, learn both sides, can make informed choices.
Saying all that, I don't think things will change very much in the aggregated view. It all still balances out.
Hi Natali, my take is that the journalists seem to be leery of the type of programming that you are striving for. No matter
what I read in print or see on the TV News they are limited by time and guided by their ideology. If anyone in the MSM denies that I would simply remind them of what happened to Dan Rather. He had a story that he knew wasn't verified and he thought he could slip it by without fear of retribution because he was Dan Rather. I have thought often hoe that single broadcast
and the cajones he had to go to air with a story he hoped, IMO anyway, would help his candidate John Kerry. I think without the internet the election may have been over before he got caught. Much more recent but just as troubling was the way
Obama tried to ignore what was going on in Iran. The hundreds of millions of tweets and emails going around the world
was something he could not ignore. Especially someone who has his own youtube, and won't give up his Blackberry. I think this the good thing for the citizens is when we see events like this unfold and our leaders and the Media in general try to look
away we in cyberspace have the power to hold their feet to the fire. But I think this is a good thing. The leaders should fear
their citizens, not in a threatening way but in a way that we are becoming able to hold them accountable, check facts
as I often do while I am watching Meet The Press and shows like that. I want to see if they omit parts of a news item
and if so why. I know they can't answer me with their format but I want them to know I am not just watching for news
per se but to see if they are doing the job they claim to be doing. I think the format you are nurturing will allow the
viewer a more interactive approach. But as Mark stated below, the number of viewers will shrink but that doesn't need to be
the case. I think what will determing viewership will be the ability to process the volume of tweets, possibly with keywords
so they contain questions or comments pertinent to the story at hand. I noticed many comments about your dress and how cute you looked and while that was all true I think you would agree that it takes away from what you are trying to do. Well my brain has been dumped for now.
I hope you can pic something useful out of this mess
Bill
not like the
From my perspective, most journalists are just one step above those “FIRST!” comment people on YouTube. As long as they can lay claim to being first, little else matters. Knowing this, I’ve had to take on the responsibility of trying to discern what’s real and what isn’t for myself. I’ve learned that dealing with all this information takes a lot of research from varied sources and, most of all, the maturity to let time pass while the whole truth trickles out. Unfortunately, we have an immature “FIRST!” media and a public that hasn’t the patience for waiting for those pesky facts.
All of these new avenues for communication make me wish I had possessed the foresight ten years ago to invest in fragmented thoughts and poor punctuation. Turns out, they were the wave of the future.
It is interesting for speakers at a conference to discuss how information will revolutionize politics by informing voters in new ways... while the last campaign managed to have the least meaningful content I can remember. The internet was used to Organize voters and volunteers... but, I'm not sure they came away more informed.
As we move from mass media and mass society to a demassified set of micro societies, messaging will be increasingly targeted to narrower and narrower channels, down to the level of the individual. This makes it easier to make all the promises an individual voter may want to hear, but doesn't tend to make it easier to deliver the promises when the election is over and it is time to govern.
You cover a myriad of thoughts that are too numerous to quantify into ONE theory. Much like the science of GUT (Grand Unified Theory). To date, no luck there.
You say about the type of journalist you want to be. I do not have your qualifications in that media, although I do have a registered IQ of 186 with MENSA. That is not trying to impress, just to say I can think laterally too, while 99% of the globe think linear.
From the invention of the wheel to today's fast paced, in-you-face, ever changing Internet driven society a GOOD journalist, like a doctor with the Hippocratic oath, has ONE duty to the public. Be they online or in print.....
WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WERE, WHY, HOW?
Objectively as possible answer those criteria on each piece you do and you are not only a good journalist, but a socially aware journalist of both sides of the questions.
Your brain dump is you being too critical of yourself in the grand scheme of things. From the work I have seen you do from here in the UK, and as an Australian with that cultural background to draw on as well, you are well on the way to being exactly what you say you wish to be.
In short, you are over-thinking the question when you already have the answer.
Just an old mans point of view from a distance.
Continued success in all your work. And congratulations on the work thus far.
Marcus
I think your fragmented brain dump from the fragmented conference is a good measure of how fragmented overall this evolution of technology + politics + journalism is at this point. As quickly as the internet has changed in its short public life, I think it's still finding its way when it comes to finding a path to take with social networking/info sharing/etc type web portals. It will take time for it to work itself out. It's not that the "authentic" information isn't there, it seems to be that the tools for proliferating it are what will have to work themselves out. The same thing has been going on in the browser world, in respects to just accessing the web, and still is.
When it comes to choosing what is "authentic", I don't ever want to be in a position to where I can't parse through the information presented to me. It's amazing that even in situations where the facts are truly presented, we as humans still come up with our own individual and differeing perspectives. The job of the journalist, to me, has always been in the purest sense one where the facts are all that matter. Whenever personal opinion begins at any point to enter into the reporting of any information to the reader/consumer, then the info is tainted with bias. In our humanity, this is usually unavoidable, but I'm not so sure that this is always a bad thing. The goals of information providers usually have a somewhat differing mission.
I wonder if it puts the burden back on the journalist primarily then to ensure beyond a shadow of a doubt that the information being thrown out there is of the highest quality, and authentic. Although extreme, instances like Jayson Blair at the New York Times, or even Dan Rather's gaffe at CBS news throw doubt into the mind of the intelligent, concerned media/news/information consumer as to what is truly authentic. Whether left or right leaning, both sides of the screen (tv or computer) have a continuing responsibility to make sure that the information out there is reliable and usable for integrating into life perspectives and decisions.
I feel like that was really fragmented as well. But then again, I'm at work trying to write this in between tasks. Now I just have to figure out how to schedule in Buzz Out Loud today.
Ahhh, the ageless quality vs. quantity quandary. But it's really not a quandary at all in this realm because the two factors are positively correlated. I think that what is bothering Ms. del Conte is how that the correlation diminishes, which is undoubtedly true.
News is already fragmented. For the most part we watch TV, read newspapers, and talk to our friends and family. More and more people are adding internet sites (either owned by old media, new media, or social networks) to our list and dropping older media from our preferred list.
I really don't think people trust journalists as much as we once did (heck, a lot of professions are having this problem - ask general contractors with all the home building shows on TV). We can see the dissenting views easier and some networks have geared their whole model on being to one side of center (look at MSNBC movements to counter Fox News). We see when news organizations make up facts (exploding Fords or fake documents) or get into bed with a certain group (ABC's informercial for health care). Heck, we see things we want covered and they aren't so we look elsewhere (look at all the tweets asking why CNN wasn't covering Iran). Instead of the old water cooler, we have twitter and facebook.
The true danger for certain mass media is that we drop them from our list of places to check. We only have so much time in the day, so newspapers (a very time intensive process to read) are being dropped in favor of websites. My watching of Loaded reduces the time for some other information source.
I think the best you can do is develop a reputation for yourself of honesty and being informative that keeps you in people's list of places to go for news.
First of all, I'm jealous. I wish I knew about this conference earlier but thank you for bring it to my attention. Being that is annual and I'll have to put it in my calendar and look out for it next year. Thank you.
More specifically to your brain dump video, I have to say I was a bit disheartened by your last pilot. It was the coverage which was given to Michael Jackson which turned me off. I understand it was news and people were interested by it; however I just felt bombarded by the coverage it was given. A show of your format could be the perfect forum for the bigger questions such as those being discussed at the Personal Democracy forum. Especially, given the recent protests in Iran and the way in which digital media played its part.
To the point made by one of the panelist, I would have to agree with them. The rise of amateur journalism will create an amalgam of perspectives and bias which could be dangerous, in essence creating an alternate truth. To some extent it already does happen with traditional news media (see Operation Iraqi Freedom). There is not much difference in what happens or idealistically should be happening today. There is an implied shared responsibility on the part of the user and the provider. Just as an independent news media is crucial to a liberal democracy, providing a broader network of checks and balances, the user should be constantly questioning as well creating a broader network of checks.
Incidentally, the New York Time actually had a great article yesterday on how with the rise of digital media journalists are now more prone to publish first and ask questions later, as seen in the case of Iran in past two weeks. This is irresponsible, a powder keg waiting to explode. To their credit they do keep it somewhat distanced from their traditional reporting, as the Gray Lady points out. However, it will only be a matter of time (if it not yet) where governments will use this type of journalism in order to either subvert their people or sway public opinion. The same goes for ordinary citizens and civil society. We may see the era of the “coupe de text” (I wish I coined that phrase. It is so witty, at least to me). Rallying the people by text is nothing new however the methods of delivery have expanded greatly (ie Twitter). We have seen the benefits of digital media in the Philippines in 2001 and more recently in Iran where civil society has benefited to a point. However, the dangers have showed themselves as well, most notably in 2007 after the disputed presidential election in Kenya. Text messages were used to incite hatred and widened tribal fault lines in turn generating deadly violence. If traditional news media grows comfortable into the behavior of "reporting first, questions later" many of these reports will be seen as endorsement by them to certain extent.
There is so much more to say about this and I wish I had more time to write about it. I hope my thoughts were of some help. They seem fragmented as well and hopefully I made myself clear.
Hi Natali, I'm going to also try a youtube video comment, but just quickly here in case youtube does not take my video comment. I think there are two separate issues. I believe everyone bias will show through, at least some times. It's probably more interesting anyways if bias show through. So, first issue is that consumers of media do have to become better at dicserning and deciding for themselves. The Internet driven fragmentation just really brings that into relief.
Second issue is how journalists craft their stories in this age. One skill is learning to consume this whole firehose of material, and distilling what is important and perhaps popular. To give meaning, its also important to be trusted. Trust is no longer the "from the mountain, heavens(even) but is from connection and a reputation for hard work and speaking your mind.
Just some initial thoughts...
Hi Natali, aren't "users" have been deciding what's authentic and what is not for decades? How many times your segment was pulled because the network wanted to present a more "important" piece. News has become another form of entertainment and with a few exceptions it is supply/demand driven. Moreover consumers are happy with the fragmented news, because in the end we prefer to hear what we want to hear (usually something with the happy ending). Thorough investigative journalism is slow, hard and out of style. Perhaps in printing journalism "The Economist" got it right, use competent and reliable sources but make them anonymous so that consumers don't attach prejudices to the articles based on the author but instead evaluate it based on the content.
Can this model be transposed into the social media? I don't know, but even if it can, it may establish a solid following, but it can never become the main source of information, because the crowds do demand the 140 character long fragmentation.
i cant get your point, there's no standard for Journalists even think big, tell what you see is much more important than give a speech left people picture the thing as you told, brainstorm? most of time, Journalists love to mislead people cos they try to play a role as a storyteller.anyway, good job, think too serious, i am mass communication student, but i wanna break the rule in media.
From your brief summary of what had been discussed at the political forum, it's seems clear that politicians only want to share how beneficial modern technology truly can be and how it can be used effectively to help expand and extend their messages across an even wider audience. Not only will this help spread awareness of their messages but also help users lean towards their opinions and objectives.
I would agree with you in that users should not have to decide for what's real and what's not. Providing facts should not be difficult with modern technology. However, that wouldn't be a concern politicians would care to address or resolve, especially if it is a conflict of interest to their political agenda.
Unless a person is extremely wealthy and is not tied to external financial dependencies, then that person is much like the general individual in our current society; paid by an employer who may or may not insist in manipulating information to benefit their interests. Until we can all achieve financial independancy and upgrade away from our capital-based society, we will all need to struggle with fragmented information.