Fail

Dear Day of Commenting,

You were a great idea. In fact, you should become a holiday. A day dedicated to providing feedback, commenting, reacting and reacting to comments on feedback.

If you were a holiday, you would be like many other holidays in my life. Days that come, which I will probably have to work on anyway, and likely will ignore.

I wanted to give you the attention you needed, but it just wasn't going to happen.

Sincerely,

Bad Feedback Citizen

Tweetaholism

Assignment: follow a ton of people on Twitter who post, like 50 tweets an hour.

Verdict: I have written about Twitter on this blog multiple times and don't need to really rehash my feelings about the service. It has its usefulness, and as someone who works in a social media immersed environment I have spent a fair amount of time managing it.

If anything all this assignment managed to do was the following:

1. Tweetdeck appeared to be a potentially useful tool
2. There must be a reason its Tweetdeck Beta -- I couldn't get it to download
3. Managing these updates in Twitterfox was a nightmare. This changed the service from providing a few useful posts an hour to an overwhelming and obnoxious quantity of information.

In fact, this assignment may have turned me off to Twitter all together. Since I had already established a pattern of use, disrupting it for this assignment was challenging. I followed a few links here and there, but mostly I couldn't keep up with the pace. I'm wondering of other students also experienced this. It's a challenging time of year to add following the Tweets of Twittaholics on top of all the other work involved in ending a semester. In my case, this was a week of travel and a crazy work schedule that had me away from the computer or completely buried in reading and writing without any time to devote to following the insider company happenings of the Tribune company. (Besides, I am already reading those posts from the public media world).

And then there's the media's obsession with Twitter. With Oprah Winfrey's foray on to the network, its popularity is plummeting its users' cultural capital. And it continues to crack me up that even after I presented my thesis this afternoon – which was on the use of communications technology in street protesting – a couple students came up to me afterwards to say that they know what Twitter is but they have never seen a “real person use it.”

My boyfriend called this obsession by corporate America months ago. “Twitter? Its a thing? Okay, we need three of them. Someone buy us three Twitters.”

Twitter is my information overload realized. Without defining a very limited network of people whose posts interest me, the service mostly drove me crazy. If my sole directive in life was to follow people and determine trends, this would be fine. Alas, I have other things to do.

I never direct messaged anyone or @ed them, because again I had nothing to say. This assignment also came up during a week where I had little to post myself.

Once the ordeal was over I deleted almost everyone from that list, leaving only Jeff Jarvis, Patrick Thorton, and Robert Scoble. We’ll see how long that lasts. I’ve had Twitterfox turned off for a while now so that I could get some work done.

Commenting on commenting (Assignment 3b)

For my “intro to online marketing” assignment (oops, I mean Assignment 3 – haha), I originally wrote an obnoxious treatise on what the definition of journalism is. I figured that it would get quite a reaction from my classmates, even if that reaction was just pissing them off and getting lots of “you f****g suck” posted on my blog. After all, this assignment had absolutely nothing to do with soliciting comments of value. Here we were shooting for quantity, not quality.

So with that in mind, it was actually pretty easy to get people to comment. But I had to write about something bound to cut across a wider spread of my social networks. And after I received umpteen emails, tweets, and even invitations to join groups on Facebook with names like, “Yes, I have seen the video of Susan Boyle singing,” I knew I had found my ticket.

I do think that the content of the post, to some extent, matters. I say “to some extent” because ultimately the Internet is certainly populated with hordes of folks who are happy as clams to respond to banal, vile, vapid content. To write this post, I started in the real world. I made my pitch to my boyfriend, to a classmate, and to a few other folks who happened to be standing within earshot once I started ranting. This was something a lot of people had seen and reacted to. What better fodder for a commenting fire?

The comments themselves are on the sophisticated side, which is entirely due to the group of people I solicited feedback from. I sent out a few emails to friends and others in my extended acquaintance social networks. I posted it as a note on Facebook and tagged a few folks to get their attention. I used the subject line “help me do my homework” to guarantee the emails would be opened. But I also restricted the amount of people who could view the post to certain pockets of my social network. Not because I didn't want their opinion about Ms. Boyle, but because I don't like sharing writing with a wide range of people unless I am very proud of it. In that sense, I could never be a blogger in the way that Ms. Huffington told Jon Steward it should be done. I don't want to just put it out there, leave it, and see what happens. I have writer's insecurity issues.

Had I truly wanted to promote it far and wide – had I felt comfortable enough promoting the post to the full extent of my social network – there are plenty of other things I would have done. I would have posted it on Digg and told my friends to either comment or Digg the article. I would have urged them to cross-post it to other places. I would have posted it on Twitter.

But in the end, I rather enjoyed the results. In true micro-niche format, I was able to engage in an open environment (anyone is welcome to read the post, should they find it) but with an invited group of participants. And it wasn't just a circle of people patting each other on the intellectual back.

Receiving feedback was definitely more rewarding than not.

The Susan Boyle phenomenon (assignment 3a.2)

People won't shut up about Susan Boyle.

But despite all the teary-eyed colleagues who claim that "you just have to see her performance!" or the mass email that I and every other woman at Smith over the age of 23 received last week, I'm honestly not convinced. Though Susan gave a lovely performance, this whole thing stinks of a pre-packaged formula meant to spice up viewership and give the audience an emotional connection with the Britain's Got Talent brand.

I took a good seven minutes out of my lunch break to watch the video and I would describe my reaction as the following journey:

1. This woman is not ugly (which is what everyone who had described her to me up until that point had said).
2. Everyone's reactions to this woman -- who is funny and dorky and cute like a grandmother might be -- reminds me how hideous our culture actually is.
3. Of course she had an amazing voice. They wouldn't have put her on otherwise. The producers knew that people would be "surprised."
   
4. Every reaction each judge has merely reinforces the fact that Susan's acceptance is entirely based on her ability to perform in this well-honed sphere of "talent." Had she failed to deliver, she would simply return, in the eyes of the viewers and judges, to being an unattractive woman.

I have been told that I'm overintellectualizing this whole thing. Why can't I just "let her have this moment" and why do I need to "ruin it for her?" But for me, this moment has very little to do with Susan Boyle. It has a lot more to do with our reactions to this video of her performance.

And mind you this whole ordeal has been completely shaped by an editing room that went out of their way to be sure that you knew she was thought of as a social reject.

The only reason we (the grand all-encompasing "we") accept Susan Boyle is because she excels as a singer and because we don't expect her to. And even that definition of "excelling" is shaped by the parameters of the show itself. What would have happened had she opened her mouth and sounded like, say, Joanna Newsom (who, full disclosure, I cannot stand as a singer)? Conversely, if Joanna Newsom looked like Susan Boyle, would she be as lauded and praised as she is? (Second point of disclosure: I actually really like Newsom's songs, but not her singing them).

This, my friends, is all about optics (my favorite buzz word du jour) -- how it looks for the camera.

Our reaction to Susan just makes me sad. And though I am certain that her experience was amazing and uplifting and I don't look to take that away from her, I do want to grab all my friends who are falling for this by the shoulders and shake some sense into them.

Susan Boyle's story was fabricated for you by a bunch of producers who think you are a sucker. And guess what? You are.

The Host

Photo courtesy of danicamarica via Flickr and Creative Commons

In her 2004 piece on “the American imagination” and radio, Susan Douglas writes about the particularly personal relationship that radio listeners have had with the medium throughout the 20th century. “Radio kneaded our psyches early on and helped shape our desires, our fantasies, our images of the outside world, our very imaginations. Unlike other major technologies…radio has worked powerfully inside our heads, helping us create internal maps of the world and our place in it, urging us to construct imagined communities to which we do, or do not, belong.”

What Douglas suggests is that there is something particularly invasive and simultaneously personal about the medium. The illusion experienced by the listener is that you may be the only one (an image reinforced by numerous romanticized narratives about radio, such as the classic movie Pump Up the Volume which features the voice of a young Christian Slater beaming into the minds and hearts of a Gen X audience searching for meaning). And even though the voice on the other end may be consciously aware that they are speaking to an audience, there is a loneliness and uncertainty to that very concept.

Commercial talk radio, unlike the pre-1980s radio Douglas describes or the pirate radio Slater’s character is operating, is a beast whose primary aim is profit. However instead of pure entertainment, something that obviously conveys to listeners an objective of sensationalism in exchange for ad revenue, contemporary talk radio occupies that space which David Foster Wallace refers to as the “meta-media” or “explaining industry.”

Under most classifications, this category includes media critics for news dailies, certain high-end magazines, panel shows like CNN's Reliable Sources, media-watch blogs like instapundit.com and talkingpointsmemo.com, and a large percentage of political talk radio. …this is how much of contemporary political talk radio understands its function: to explore the day's news in a depth and detail that other media do not, and to interpret, analyze, and explain that news.

Wallace’s brilliantly crafted essay on talk radio host John Ziegler stitches together the complex landscape in which this brash, unapologetic, and essentially predictable personality operates. His claim that talk radio is “a frightening industry, though not for any of the simple reasons most critics give,” is elegantly explored through a framework that touches upon big issues such as public policy, commercial practices, race relations while simultaneously weaving in the heavy influences of individual personalities and interpersonal relationships.

Ultimately Wallace makes many of the points I have found myself repeating – although he makes them far more elegantly than I ever could – about whether or not talk radio is journalism. “The fact of the matter is that it is not John Ziegler's job to be responsible, or nuanced, or to think about whether his on-air comments are productive or dangerous, or cogent, or even defensible.”

The call-in assignment...

Jean-Luc Cornec's sheep phones courtesy of temp13rec via Flickr and Creative Commons

Okay. The radio assignment.

I tried. I did try. I spent a good 45 minutes listening to the Thom Hartmann show on WHMP. I caught him with a guest who was talking about global economics and as interesting as the topic was I didn't really have anything to contribute. So I waited for a new guest. And on came some woman who had written a book about whiteness and race and I thought to myself, "okay, this I can handle. I will call and ask a question about those people who believe that racism is now over in America because we elected Obama over McCain." (In case you are wondering, I think that people who believe that are incredibly unaware of racial issues in America and the reductive ignorance of a statement like that pretty much terrifies me).

So I dialed. And I was expecting to be put on hold or to reach an automated "press one for live questions" menu. Instead, a woman answered the phone directly. And then my brain and mouth launched into a debate with each other. Uh, why am I doing this? What is the point of my call? Do I care more about getting a good grade on this assignment or about making a valuable contribution to this conversation?

Instead of asking her if I could go on the air, I asked her if the show was pre-recorded or live. (Honestly, I was curious). She said it was always live. I paused for a moment and considered my options. And then I thanked her and hung up the phone.

I will be the first to admit that there's a lot of irony to my reaction. I can elaborate on this more in class, but suffice it to say that I've got a long history with radio and spend a lot of my time preaching the greatness of it as a medium. And don't get me wrong, I still think radio is amazing. Radio is one of the best communication tools we have -- it is a one-time investment that can keep us connected to news and culture with no additional cost. But as I sat on the phone with the woman who answered my call I realized that the entire root of my motivation was this assignment. I didn't want to ask a question just for the sake of doing it. I was just going through the motions. And that sort of empty interaction is not going to elevate the discourse on anything. So I hung up.

I've decided to take this assignment in stride as a sort of conscientious objector. Now don't get me wrong, had I taken the time to consume talk radio non-stop for the past few weeks I am absolutely positive I could have found a discussion going on that I actually wanted to participate in. And for that, I recognize that the reason I was unable to really complete the assignment is partially based on poor time management. (In all honesty, my thesis is due in ten days and I work about 50 hours a week on top of taking this class…excuses, excuses, I know). But after going through the forced motions of the LTE assignment, I just couldn't bring myself to do it again.

So let me instead close by going into some detail about why I think elevating the discourse is important enough for me to refuse to complete the assignment. I considered calling in to a program that played music to sound off about the host’s choices. But as I pointed out in my last post, that is not journalism. That’s cultural critique, it’s opinion, but it’s not reporting. My opinion on whether the music is any good, or on the things one should consider before adopting a pet from the pound (another fabulous program running on AM talk radio this morning), or even me calling in to Rush’s show to tell him that I can’t stand him and feel he is a symbol for everything that is wrong with America today – none of it is journalism.

If we re-frame this class as one on the role of interactivity in an emerging digital media space and its impact on culture, politics, and democracy then I would have a completely different take on this entire thing. Because all of these elements, from LTEs to talk radio to restaurant reviews to Twitter are all impacting culture, politics, and democracy. But that doesn’t mean they are journalism. And framing it that way has me asking the following: at what point did the lines completely blur between reporting and commentary?

I’m the first to say that when dealing in definitions about journalists and journalism we are confronting an important issue that is both nuanced and complex. This whole landscape of “citizen journalism” (a term that is immensely problematic) directly challenges a lot of the established and accepted definitions of what defines a journalist.

But that’s exactly it. I don’t know if the definition of a journalist is necessarily as important as the definition of journalism.