The Trafigura story from last week has grown and grown, if only because of the follow-up, which I was too busy to blog about, in which Jan Moir's piece in the Daily Mail was savaged across Twitter to remarkable effect. (Possibly including huge page views for the newspaper's site, which may not have been the intention, but will be mitigated by the Mail being forced to pull ads from the pages, and the record number of complaints...)
And some good analysis is being done:
And some good analysis is being done:
- John Walker looks at the slightly uncomfortable relationship the liberals who are often early adopters have with these mob moments.
- Gary Andrews touches on the implicit political bias(es) within the Twitter world.
- Dave Cross looks at how the sequence of events fits together and how the people at the focus of it reacted.
And that's the key thing to understand about these distributed, mass
publication media. They are not inherently good or bad. They are not a
force for good or evil, but merely a vehicle in which the voices of the
many can be raised for or against something, and, if enough passion is
felt by enough people, bring traditional media channels to their knees.
Jan Moir has been claiming that she is the victim of an "orchestrated" campaign against her. That's a classic journalistic misunderstanding of the nature of the medium: it's distributed, not hierarchical like conventional media, and so it's very, very difficult to orchestrate anything. No-one's in charge, there's not central authority. It only works if enough people buy into the cause to support it with the few seconds it takes to tweet about it - and the many more seconds to tweet about it many times to keep it trending. Some people have heavy influence - like Stephen Fry - simply by their sheer number of followers. But no-one has the power to actually orchestrate anything.
In the comments on my Trafigura post, Steve Jackson worried about what would happen when the power of the mob is turned on an individual rather than a corporate organisation. In a sense, we've already seen that happen. Twitter was instrumental in bringing to light the actions of a London Underground employee, who was recorded yelling at a passenger, a video which was blogged by the guy who shot it. The weight of public opinion is very much against Ian, but I can't help worrying about the fact I certainly wouldn't want my worst days at work recorded and posted on the internet. How many of us could stand up to such scrutiny?
As Stephen Fry points out in an excellent "blessay", the mob is unforgiving of mistakes. And the mob has a new voice, and new power. And that can't be removed, nor should it be. But people will take time to learn to use it, and mistakes will be made in the meantime. We're in for some stormy times ahead, I think.
Jan Moir has been claiming that she is the victim of an "orchestrated" campaign against her. That's a classic journalistic misunderstanding of the nature of the medium: it's distributed, not hierarchical like conventional media, and so it's very, very difficult to orchestrate anything. No-one's in charge, there's not central authority. It only works if enough people buy into the cause to support it with the few seconds it takes to tweet about it - and the many more seconds to tweet about it many times to keep it trending. Some people have heavy influence - like Stephen Fry - simply by their sheer number of followers. But no-one has the power to actually orchestrate anything.
In the comments on my Trafigura post, Steve Jackson worried about what would happen when the power of the mob is turned on an individual rather than a corporate organisation. In a sense, we've already seen that happen. Twitter was instrumental in bringing to light the actions of a London Underground employee, who was recorded yelling at a passenger, a video which was blogged by the guy who shot it. The weight of public opinion is very much against Ian, but I can't help worrying about the fact I certainly wouldn't want my worst days at work recorded and posted on the internet. How many of us could stand up to such scrutiny?
As Stephen Fry points out in an excellent "blessay", the mob is unforgiving of mistakes. And the mob has a new voice, and new power. And that can't be removed, nor should it be. But people will take time to learn to use it, and mistakes will be made in the meantime. We're in for some stormy times ahead, I think.
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Adam - I agree with those who are worried about the TwitterMob issues this brought up, and the uneasy relationship between web-"liberals" and real Free speach.
In other words, I don't think anyone who participated in the hounding of Jan Moir can count themselves a proud liberal upholder of Free Speech, at least as Voltaire understood it:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
There was far to much trying to put to (virtual) death the person who said it.
My blog post also covered these issues:
http://broadstuff.com/archives/1920-Jan-Moir,-the-Web,-Free-Speech-and-the-Wisdom-of-Mobs.html
I'm uncomfortable with the groupthink/mob mentality creeping into these twitter outcries with the masses charging into vitriolic outbursts without pause for thought of their own moral compass.
Undoubtedly, what Jan Moir wrote was disgusting, but in turn she received some pretty horrific ad hominem abuse, with few dissenting voices daring to point out the near hypocrisy of the consensus opinion.
I wrote about my concerns over the social media mob mentality in April, at the time of the Amazon FAIL experience.
http://meish.org/2009/04/14/spreading-like-wildfire-twitter-amazon-and-the-social-media-mob/
I said at the time that while the cause might have been just and appropriate, the baying mob that pursued it with schadenfreude and ill-will and stinging cynicism reflected badly on social media generally.
The same is true for Moirgate, but amplified tenfold by the fact it became about an individual rather than an organisation.
The trouble is that crowds of people storming in with placards demanding justice and apologies and resignations in the face of a poorly-written article look an awful lot like any other mob with pitchforks, screaming "burn the witch!", from a distance.
US/UK split. Trafigura and Jan Moir were UK twitterers; Balloon Boy was US ones. Did anyone in the UK give a hoot about it? Not that I could see.
In the case of Jan Moir, she claims a vast orchestrated movement. It wasn't orchestrated - it was "look at this odious piece of grot! [link] here's where to complain." That was the sum total of "organisation". She doesn't understand that when you kick a hornet's nest, whether you're aware you're doing so or not, each individual hornet is going to want a word with you. I think the Daily Mail is understanding, and won't be pulling this sort of rubbish again now that advertisers are pulling ads on such ad-banner trolling.
(Nestle pulled its ads! NESTLE! That's like Hitler saying you're going too far!)