Showing posts with label bloggers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bloggers. Show all posts

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Ethics in Blogging: A Normative Constraint on Excessive Economizing and Power-Aggrandizement

0 comments Posted by Find Insurance Online at 10:45 AM

Blogs are interesting creatures. Like humans, they seek not merely self-preservation, but also the expansion of their domain on the internet. The empire-building does not have power-aggrandizement as its goal; rather, they use what power they have to maximize the reach of their words. To be heard by as many blogs as possible—as if quantity were more important than quality—is a still more intermediate means, with the end being to bring one's words to the world. At the extreme, a blog wants to see a world that has become a projection of its own words. Less extreme, a blog wants to be a significant player in societal discussions even beyond the internet. Toward such ends, blogs economize in the sense of seeking to minimize what they incorporate of other blogs beyond what they view as being useful to themselves, while attempting to maximize that of themselves that is incorporated on other blogs by power and moral suasion. Of the latter device, for example, a blog might say to another blog, “I’ll blogroll you if you blogroll me.” This is a variant of the manipulatory ploy of “I’ll follow you if you follow me” on Twitter.

As Susan Gunelius, an expert on blog marketing, observes in Blogging for Dummies, such reciprocity is no longer a normative practice in blogging. Indeed, the “I’ll follow you if you follow me” mentality is questionable at best. It implies that one person follows another not because of any value perceived on the followed’s account, but, rather, solely so he or she can be followed by yet another person.

For example, one way my essays are sent out is via @wordenreport on twitter. This is the entire purpose of that account. The reason why someone would follow the account is therefore presumably because he or she wants to read my essays (I don’t send out other tweets on that account). To hold that the value to the follower in receiving my essays is somehow dependent on me following him or her rather than on the quality of the my essays simply does not make sense from a logical standpoint. Moreover, the mentality that seeks to impose such a conditionality is inherently manipulatory. For my part, I would rather not have people follow @wordenreport if they do not want to read my essays, as receiving them is the sole purpose of that account. Furthermore, because I use @wordenreport simply to send out links to the essays, I do not look at incoming tweets; I have another twitter account to accommodate that. So it does not make sense for someone to want me to follow unless he or she is simply interested in having a higher number—as if that were an end in itself apart from signifying a greater reach attained for his or her mind. It is the combination of the element of manipulation and valuing a higher number as an end in itself that characterizes the mentality that I am identifying here. It evinces the sort of excesses that can manifest from the economizing and power-aggrandizing forces that are operative in blogging.

Fortunately, “semi-permeable” normative constraints can be applied to the two forces that seek to maximize the variable of self-interest. One might call such constraints ecologizing, for like an ecosystem they can be breached by a maximizing species or variable within. Susan Gunelius points to a few of the ethical “rules” that can act as constraints via pressure from other bloggers.

Spam can be interpreted as economizing or power-aggrandizing forces that fail to respect the normative "rules" of the internet society. Comment spam, for example, utilizes a useless or irrelevant comment-posting simply to self-promote (i.e., to economize) through links. Post-spam reduces a blog’s own post to an otherwise content-empty medium advertising the blog itself or someone else’s product in exchange for samples or money. Both of these kinds of spam are unethical because they operate under a subterfuge (i.e., promising to be something other than what they are). The underlying selfishness fuses with theft (i.e., stealing other bloggers’ time and effort in reading), and thus manifests passive aggression. In other words, it is a “taking” beyond that which the spammer is entitled to take.

As another example of the mentality that has a difficult time with limitation, some bloggers steal the bandwidth of other bloggers. According to Gunelius (2010, p. 69), bloggers and website owners can be charged more if the amount of time that their content is accessed increases dramatically, “such as when other bloggers use images without saving them to their own hosting accounts first.” Gunelius claims that a blogger should copy and save the picture (assuming fair use) before inserting the image in the post. Otherwise, the excess power-aggrandizing steals more than time and effort.

In describing excessive economizing and power-aggrandizing in blogging beyond ethical, or “ecologizing,” constraints, I have sought to bring out the element of aggression. The anger that bloggers feel toward the “cheaters” is not only due to the unfairness in the manipulation; the response is also to the passive aggression. If the responses go beyond what is proportionate, however, excessive power-aggrandizement is involved in the victims as well. That is, the victims can become victimizers! Such anger “over the top” is also evinced in comments that are hateful or otherwise attacking. It is the sheer excess in the anger that can strike one as amazing in the sense that it even happens at all.  For such intense anger to be directed to a total stranger, especially if he or she had posted on his opinion without ad hominem criticism, points to psychological problems in the person making the comment.

The spiked anger is actually a projection of the person’s failure to deal with his or her own problem, rather than having much at all to do with the “offending” post. Trolls, for example, are actually playing out their pathology on the internet because they believe they can take their anger out on strangers without any downside. Blackballing such people is not only smart; it is an ethical obligation if it is in line with preventing or minimizing future attacks against innocent victims. However, lest such hate be conflated with spam as if the two were equally egregious, it is important that efforts to keep hate at bay do not overflow as excessive power-aggrandizing! While spam is annoying and involves passive aggression, the anger in hateful writing directed to an innocent person is far worse.

Generally speaking, the bloggers who subscribe to normative constraints in the blogosphere recognize the existence of excessive power-aggrandizement and economizing forces in blogging. The theft and anger elements in the excess are particularly onerous. While the law cannot effectively sanction such elements, “societal” pressure can. However, lest the latter become self-righteous, it is important not to label as spam anything that is inconvenient.

For example, commenting (or tweeting) to someone on topic and including a link to one’s own post can be a legitimate part of an effort to start a conversation on a mutual topic—as long as there is content on that topic in addition to the link. You might tweet on Obama and Libya. I might send the following reply: “yeah, but Obama waited too long. So his motive is suspect. See link.” My reply was on the other’s topic and added content as well as a link to my posting on that content. To treat my tweet as cold-calling would be to overreact simply out of the mistaken belief sending out a tweet should not occasion tweets. In such overreaction is an element of presumptuousness in addition to the excessive power-aggrandizement. In other words, excess can manifest where it is least expected.  

Of course, I’m reading Blogging for Dummies, which fits my pace on blog technology and using social media on the internet. So my thoughts should be taken with a grain of salt. Perhaps if we could bring more humility and less hate to our expansive electronic world, we might find that it would blast off to the stratosphere. We would be able to say, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” The new world is not merely technological; fundamentally, it is composed of fallible human beings—you and me. Lest we treat the self-seeking proclivity as anything less than ubiquitous, we could do worse than recognize it in ourselves.

Click to add a non-hateful Comment or Question (and View Posted Comments) on the efficacy of Ethics in Blogging

Source: Susan Gunelius, Blogging for Dummies (Indianapolis: Wiley, 2010).

On ecologizing, economizing and power-aggrandizing forces applied to business and society, see: William C. Frederick, Values, Nature and Culture in the American Corporation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

 

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Monday, February 28, 2011

Gate-Keepers in the Commerical Media: Looking Down on Bloggers as "Non-Journalists"

0 comments Posted by Find Insurance Online at 1:28 AM

In a few days during July in 2010, the American media was obsessed with Shirley Sherrod, who in a tightly edited video clip had made apparently-racist statements about not helping a caucasion farmer because he was caucasion. She was quickly fired by Tom Vilsak, the US Secretary of Agriculture, who, like the journalists and the NAACP, had failed to look at the full video.  The day after Sherrod was fired, the NAACP looked at the full video and realized that she was actually a racial healer rather than racist.  In the fuller video, she said, “I have come to realize that we have to work together … we have to overcome the divisions we have.”  Even as she used questionable language, such as “his own kind,” it should not be forgotten that the clan killed her father.  In other words, she deserves some slack.  At any rate, it was not long after the NAACP’s about-face that the agriculture department and the media were doing also doing an about-face. According to the NYT, “the White House and Mr. Vilsack offered their profuse apologies to her for the way she had been humiliated and forced to resign after a conservative blogger put out a misleading video clip that seemed to show her admitting antipathy toward a white farmer.”

Bill O’Reilly of Fox apologized—though while suggesting that Sherrod “very well could have seen things through a racial prism” and had been “blatantly partisan” on the job possibly in violation of the Hatch Act so she should not work in government.  O’Reilly was apologizing for not having done due diligence in “reporting” the story by watching the entire video before making a judgement. Like so many other journalists, he lept at the story without adequately checking the source—the video or Sherrod herself.  Even as the journalists were apologizing for their bad work, they wanted to distinguish themselves as journalists from the “blogger” or “activist” who had posted the edited video clip in the first place. O’Reilly promised his viewers that they could still come to him for good journalism even as he had gotten the story wrong.

Beyond the momentary obsession that the media enjoyed at Sherrod’s expense—the obsession itself being a problem missed by the journalists themselves—this case allows us to glimpse how journalism changed so much in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The case put journalists in the position of distinguishing themselves from bloggers when both had engaged in bad judgment. Hence Bill O’Reilly’s statement that his viewers could come to him for good reporting (rather than have to rely on bloggers) in spite of the fact that he had just engaged in bad journalism and may have done Sherrod another injustice even in his apology. To be sure, the blogger had erred in posting such an edited video clip without providing the context.  However, given the opining of many mainstream journalists who work for media companies and the actual news provided on blogs, the line between “journalist” and blogger are blurred.  Hence the journalists working for media companies were sure to distance themselves from the blogger, who they said was not a real journalist, even though they had all made the same mistake. Were there a clear distinction to be made between the journalists and the bloggers, the former would have done better work—but they didn’t.

Back in 1984 when Daniel Schorr was working at CNN, he objected to the network’s plan to couple him with John Connally, who had been the Governor of Texas and a Secretary of the Treasury, to cover the Republican Convention. It was improper, Mr. Schorr said, to mix a politician with a journalist. In 2010, journalists were saying that it was improper to mix a journalist with a blogger. By then, many television journalists were giving opinions, and were thus closer being politicians, while many bloggers were providing news even before the networks. Lest the journalists point to their educational credentials from schools of journalism, how many American journalists in the nineteenth or even the twentieth century majored in journalism?  Is learning on the job at a newspaper so much different than the entrepreneurs who free lance at their own blogs to provide news?  If these are so different, why didn’t the “journalists” in the Sherrod case catch rather than perpetuate the blogger’s mistake? The proof is in the pudding.

The fact is that many bloggers are able to provide news because a person does not have to study journalism to have access to some information that is new. As a blogger myself, I have not found myself in this position—hence I confine myself to providing analysis based on my years of formal education and on the news provided by others—bloggers or “journalists.”  I must admit that I am more apt to trust the news from a company simply because there are institutional requirements for verifying stories, though as the Sherrod case shows, a media company’s procedures are not always sufficient. The difference between a news company and a blogger is perhaps in the checking or verification function, rather than so much in the getting of news (though the companies have more resources).  Even so, news can come from a variety of sources—not just from people who have a BA in journalism.  As a consequence, there is more of a need for verification—precisely because there are so many blogger/entrepreneurs operating. To dismiss them by saying they are not really journalists is an over-reaction and ill-founded. However, to insist on due diligence and verification on any report is even more pressing. Perhaps rather than have their journalists invoke artificial diremptions, news organizations could hire or contract per piece with many of the bloggers who are providing news so the latter could have access to the organizational wherewithal to verify stories.  These bloggers would then have the advantages of being entrepreneurs and of having the wherewithal to do due diligence.

Daniel Schorr, a protégé of Edward R. Murrow at CBS News and an aggressive reporter who got into conflict with censors, the Nixon administration and network superiors would likely see the advantages that bloggers have in terms of freedom, while being worried (as I am as well) concerning the due diligence limitations faced by the entrepreneurs. He got his first scoop, which earned him $5, when he was 12. A woman fell or jumped from the roof of the apartment house where he lived, and he called the police, interviewed them about the victim and then called The Bronx Home News, which paid for news tips.  Had there been an internet, he likely would have been a blogger. Would that have made a difference?

While good to a point, a profession’s gate-keeping can be readily subverted into simply keeping people out who are otherwise doing good work. In spite of the Sherrod blogger, other bloggers have been providing news—otherwise, the media companies would not be citing them as sources. Rather than fighting the bloggers, the “journalists” who got the Sherrod story wrong might offer a hand; they might just find that they will be helped in return. News is like water in a stream—there are many feeder streams.  Moreover, the nature of news is freedom,which is inherently broad rather than circumscribed.  This is particularly so in a high-tech world where the internet has had a democratizing effect in expanding the sources of news and analysis.  In this context, we might be wise to remember Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson concerning the need for an educated electorate rather than try to monopolize information-getting to those in the club.

Source on Schoor: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/business/media/24schorr.html?_r=1&hp
Source on Sherrod: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/us/politics/22sherrod.html?scp=1&sq=sherrod&st=cse

 

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