This week, I’m down in Florida at the Poynter Institute as a “visiting faculty member,” talking about social media and politics. My first presentation, embedded below, was on the promise of open data journalism.
Category Archives: journalism
On online trust, reputation, satire and misquotation on Twitter and beyond
The issue of online trust deeply resonates with me. People can and do lose jobs or opportunities because of social media. I do not find intentional misquotes of someone, particularly any journalist or government official, funny. It’s happened a couple of times to me recently, so I thought I’d offer some personal reflections on why I asked those who did so not to change my updates or to substitute words I never used.
Andy Carvin talks with Jeff Jarvis at the 2011 SXSWi Twitter Retreat
1) The size of someone’s following is irrelevant. One tweet to 100 can easily be picked up globally. Context that one person has is also irrelevant to the choice, because the update can be quickly shorn of its origin.
2) I’ve heard that I shouldn’t ask others not to intentionally misquote me because it will “hurt public engagement” or diminish the interest of others in amplifying my signal. I accept that it could affect “engagement” with those I challenge. I prefer to correct the record, especially while history’s rough draft is still being written, to protect my reputation against a misinterpretation of something I never said than that abstraction.
3) With respect to tone, I don’t believe that asking someone politely, directly, to please retract or correct a update is unduly “harsh.” Similarly, I don’t think that objecting to someone else changing my words without indicating that alteration is insulting. In either case, I can also choose to share my request more broadly with an entire audience or use stronger language, though neither is my first or second recourse.
4) Whenever I have asked others to respect the integrity of my writing, whether it’s in 140 characters or 140 paragraphs, I stand by that choice. I’ve been making it for many years and will continue to do so. I’ve reviewed those decisions against the advice of journalism professors and open government advocates and am now in a relatively good position to make a judgment myself, often in a short period of time. It’s quite straightforward to natively RT someone without changing any text, or to share words on Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter.
5) I don’t see my presences here, on Facebook or Twitter as simply “personal accounts,” as I use them all professionally. I don’t see them as 100% professional, either, since my words any of them do not represent the official views of my employer unless they are shared on corporate accounts. My own accounts also travel with me between positions. Certainly, updates sent to family and friends via circles or closed groups are at least expected to be treated differently, though there’s no guarantor of it, aside from trust in the recipients. Over time, some number of people have chosen to regard me as a trusted source in those contexts. That’s a series of relationships that I’ve built carefully on several platforms over many years, with a great deal of time and attention built to accuracy and focus upon what matters.
6) With respect to scope, If anyone thinks his or her own “personal account” couldn’t inadvertently do damage to that reputation with a joke that went viral, I believe that they are very much mistaken. Here’s a Twitter-specific reference: The decision to place different weight on tweets @attributed to me is based on my history, reputation and trust, along with years of accumulated algorithmic authority. When someone tweets “RT @user: quote,” it indicates to everyone who reads it that the named @user wrote the tweet. To date, I haven’t seen those kinds of issues on Google Plus. Regardless, if someone keeps doing that after being asked politely to stop, the next step is to expose them and then, failing changed behavior, block them.
7) Satire is absolutely approved on social networks, including satiric impersonation. (Ask Rahm Emanuel!). If someone sends out a satirical tweet, update or ‘plus’ that “quotes” me, another writer or a public figure with a goofy picture, it wouldn’t be out of tune with what the Borowitz Report or @MayorEmanuel do. That’s fair game, like SNL skits. Updates that imply actual words (like RT @user”fake quote”) are not, at least in my book.
Are fake updates “allowed?” Governments, corporations, and all kinds of other agents put them up. I think we’ll see more of it. Someone can lie or obfuscate of they want — I think it’s increasingly difficult to do so, though it will continue to happen, particularly in conflict zones. The role of editors and journalists on these networks — and open government advocates or technologist — is to sift the truth from the fiction.
8 ) With respect to whether social media is used differently by journalists, whether different rules apply or whether there are “formal rules” applied to it, I’ve seen enough policies emerge to know that the same standards that apply to those employed by media organizations that distribute journalism on television, public radio or print magazines.
I’ve seen a lot of thought given to the issue of trust and its relationship to media using social networks, particularly by big journalism institutions and those that work for them. This isn’t about rhetoric: it’s about created trusted relationships online over time, where authority and truth aren’t simply stamped by a masthead by given by networks of friends, followers, colleagues and networks. The idea that you don’t need a reputation to succeed, at least as a writer of non-fiction, strikes me as patently false. Trust and reputation is why your pitch is accepted, why you are hired or retained, followed or unfollowed, feted or fired.
When journalists really get things wrong, they can lose trust, reputation and, in some cases, their jobs. And yes, that can include satire gone wrong. My point tonight was to recognize that the professional and the personal have crossed over on these networks.
What I say or what is incorrectly said on my behalf can and does have significant offline effects. In other words, it’s more than a personal problem, and it’s one that you can expect me to defend against now and in the future.
Filed under blogging, journalism, social bookmarking, social media, technology, Twitter
Can we still quit Facebook?
"How to split up the US" by Pete Warden
Over at Mashable, Christina Warren writes that “You won’t quit Facebook” in a new op-ed. (Side note: Mashable is a media partner for Facebook’s social news reader. I was surprised that neither Warren nor her editor disclosed that in her op-ed and will leave it to Micah Sifry to ask whether Facebook’s media partners can cover it objectively.)
I’m not so sure of Warren’s larger point. Comments there suggest a few Mashable readers have left, which is minimum an interesting data point, given the rather social audience we know visits the site. BrianBoyer left tonight and livetweeted his exit, linking to a post on “why logging out isn’t enough for partial explanation.
As a news application developer – a so-called “hacker journalist” – Boyer has a different relationship with technology than many members of the media and public. He makes the platforms and works at a newspaper company that sells ads against them. He’s commented on journalists using Facebook before and now has acted on his convictions.
Whether many others follow, I think, will depend upon whether there are substantive harms to users that result from the changes that are subsequently publicized by print and broadcast media, changing the perceived risk around usage. When whether anyone in the social journalism group would quit Facebook (closed group), the overwhelming answer was: no. That’s not surprising from that particular cadre of the media, of course. There’s a vibrant discussion around this post over at my first draft on Google Plus where others feel differently. (The convergence of Google and online privacy deserves its own post, which I have written elsewhere.)
I’m not predicting that will happen but I can foresee several different scenarios where unexpected sharing of reading or socializing behavior could have consequences to work, employment, education or relationships. @Mat Buchanon of Gizmodo explored the new Facebook integration more eloquently than I and at some length here:
There are significant benefits to be gained from social sharing, as my publisher Tim O’Reilly has outlined at Radar and in his talks. I have enjoyed many of them, given my frequent user of social media, and expect to continue to do so, with care.
That said, I do not want to have all of my actions online shared, nor would I wish those of marginalized segments of society to be made public if it endangered their safety.
I’ve talked with senior executives at Facebook several times, including its CTO and chief security officer and chief privacy officer. My sense remains that they all want to do the right thing by the people on their network, providing them with better tools to share information, keep them safe and give them better privacy controls… although the persistent cookies that remain upon logout pose an issue on the latter counts.
All that said, I can’t help but wonder if these changes will tilt the balance for more users. We’ll learn more over the coming months.
Caveat Lector
If you use Facebook, you need to read this New York Times article on new changes and think carefully about how much of your activity online you want to share here publicly.
From reading to listening to watching to buying, anything connected to Facebook will be tracked, logged and added to the growing body of information about your life online.
As with so many other aspects of our lives, we all owe it to ourselves to be educated about our digital choices.
Digital privacy is about much more than Facebook
To be clear: while Facebook is the biggest social network on the planet, with some 800 million users that spend more time on it than any other site, the issue of digital privacy is much larger, as anyone who has read the Wall Street Journal’s “What do They Know?” series or followed the issues knows well.
I covered all of last year’s FTC privacy hearings and was reminded of just how broad and deep the issue of digital privacy runs. New online privacy frameworks are lagging far behind industries that are crunching unprecedented amounts of data to try to target and personalize everything we buy, read, eat or watch. Location-based services have new bearing on online privacy. Last year, online privacy debates heated up in Washington. Expect more of the same.
Filed under blogging, journalism, social media, technology
New digital journalism tools and platforms to connect, present and inspire
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” said Alexis Madrigal. “You don’t have to write bad stuff to get people to come to a website”
Tonight at the August meeting of the Online News Association in D.C., +Madrigal shared several of the tools that he’s been experimenting with to connect with his audience and rethink the way he shares information in his work as senior editor at the Atlantic Monthly.You can find his digital journalism at www.theatlantic.com/alexis-madrigal and on Twitter at @alexismadrigal.
I’ve been reading his book on green energy, “Powering the Dream,” over the past few months. It’s excellent. Alexis also co-founded longshot magazine and wrote for Wired for years.
Given that context, when he talks about the digital tools that he’s using for work and the new applications or platforms that he’s experimenting with online these days, I paid attention. Here’s the breakdown of some of the tools he shared tonight.
First, Google Forms. Alexis described them as “frictionless, easy to set up, and then pull into spreadsheet. He referenced Amanda Michel‘s work using them in her crowdsourcing work at ProPublica.
Second, SoundCloud. That was a new one to me. Time to experiment.
Third, Twitter. This one was not new to me. Alexis said Twitter worked very well for Longshot. He did, however, say “the retweet is dying.” There’s an issue of splitting the incentive model, between “native” vs “manual” RTs, and tracking. Alexis said that he’s noticed all around that retweeting is way down, which has made Twitter less effective.
So, off to explore new places.
One such platform is Tumblr. The problem, said Madrigal, is that Tumblr has its own ecosystem. (I agree with this.) There’s no natural move over from another social media platform, he said, and that sad fact is that you have to put in the same damn work, and then see what moves. On that count, they’ve brought in curator to the Atlantic video channel who’s deeply immersed in the culture but it’s still challenging.
Another new destination is Google Plus. Alexis likes Plus conceptually, given how it allows back and forth, but doesn’t know exactly what he’s going to do with it yet. Alexis said he has largely left Facebook and streamlined his social media use. His Google Plus use went way up during the first couple of days and then leveled out. Now he needs to decide what to do with it. (I know the feeling). Alexis is experimenting with “The Atlantic Tech Plus,” which he described as a behind the scenes look at what his team is working on. He’s not sure what’s next. The digest has driven little traffic to date, but Alexis feels like he “has to be here and know how it works.”
Alexis moved from tools for publishing or sharing to presentation tools. He’s interested in timed slideshows and made the analogy that they’re like “full bleed” in a magazine. He used to think they’re just a way to get pageviews but now he thinking that they’re “a way to get content horizontally. ”
Two points here: beautiful tools are awesome and people are limiting themselves in the way they think about them. In that context, Alexis wants to exploit the behavior readers exhibit in compulsive clicking through a slideshow for good. This sort of thing is “gamification,” though Alexis notes that they just ran a story “called gamification is BS.”
Given this list of of tools, I asked him about Facebook for journalism. Alexis said that he chose to keep who he is as a person vs his work separate there. He hasn’t started a Page but knows people like science writer Steve Silberman who have had “wonderful generative conversations there.”
Finally, Alexis shared two sites that are doing work that can push us to think differently about what an editorial product can be online.
DomusIT (http://domusweb.it) is an Italian art magazine website worth looking at because of its vibrant, colorful and dynamic design:
Zeega (http://zeega.org) is a next generation content management system. Zeega pushes website design to a “crazy extreme,” with HTML5 in fully full bleed experience, including video, animations. Alexis suggested that Zeega can enable a different kind of publication online, something “more magazine-y” and interesting. Less cookie cutter. He expects that this or something like it will open up a new way of telling stories.
We’ll see! I know I have some new places and platforms to explore, along with Twitter, Google, Plus and Tumblr. The lesson that Alexis drew from turntable.fm is that “feeling like the Internet is alive is awesome.” I’ll drop by tomorrow.
Filed under journalism, social media, technology, Twitter
Awesome Foundation DC Launch Party warmly welcomed in District
Over the past year, the Awesome Foundation has been growing globally, providing micro-grants for creative genius in multiple continents. Last night, hundreds of people bought “Tickets to Awesome” and joined the DC chapter of the Awesome Foundation at a launch party in One Lounge in Dupont Circle.
Party goers mixed and mingled with the DC chapter’s microtrustees, including this correspondent, and checked out exhibits and demonstrations from the first four recipients of awesome grants. DC FabLab, Ward 8, Petworth and Counterpoint were in attendance for awards ceremony. Bonnie Shaw (@Bon_Zai), DC’s “Dean of Awesome,” gave a brief speech at the launch party ceremony:
Curious folks also checked out exhibits from My Dream of Jeanne, ExAparatus and ScrapAction, donating to the projects they liked the most using the awesome tokens that came with their tickets. Counterpoint even performed upstairs in front of a packed lounge.
You can follow the Awesome Foundation DC on Twitter for updates on new grants, performances, installations and other awesome events at @AFdnDC.
Filed under art, article, education, friends, journalism, music, photography, social media, technology, video
Your Twitter journalism is so phat that _____
Today, spurred by a (rather absurd) debate about whether Twitter is journalism, Brian Solis asked whether tweets are recognized as acts of journalism, and as such, regarded as bona fide journalism. That’s a much better question. As of yet, unfortunately, no media law expert has sprung to answer it in the comments for his post.
Somebody else did answer the question on Twitter, albeit substituting snark for substance: @delbius, also known as Del Harvey, the head of Twitter’s Trust & @Safety team.
Her reply, below, set off one of the funniest exchanges I’ve ever had in more than 3 years of tweeting.
Del: Not gonna lie, read that Tweet and what sprang to mind was “Your mom’s an act of journalism.”
Alex: Your journalism is an act of Mom! Or to put it another way, your journalism is so fat, it had to create a @yearly account.
Del: My journalism is phat, thank you.
Alex: Ok, I’ll play. Your journalism is so phat, it can only be published in 140 characters or more.
Del: Your journalism is so phat that it uses the full title of weblog.
Alex: Your micro journalism is so phat that you have to make the Twitter display widgets auto-width.
Del: Your journalism is so phat your lede takes up a paragraph.
Alex: Your journalism is so phat that the IEEE had to create a new standard data format for your letters.
Del: Your journalism is so phat that your angle is obtuse.
Alex: Your journalism is so phat that you have to use deck.ly to share what your officemate ate for lunch.
Del: Your journalism is so phat your informant was Mrs. Fields.
Alex: Your zombie journalism is so phat that your editor has to use liposuction to find where you buried the lede.
Del: Your journalism is so phat you’re below the *second* fold.
Alex: Your journalism is so phat that your readers are directed by their physicians to go on Lipitor after reading it.
Del: Your journalism is so phat your b-roll had butter on it. (wince @ self)
Alex: Your journalism is so phat that newly elected Congressmen are considering a vote to defund it.
Del: Your journalism is so phat your jump cut is a jiggle cut.
Alex: Your journalism is so phat that you had to get 5000 TB SATA drives to be the scratch disks for your video editing.
Del: Your journalism is so phat your POV pieces are for two people at once.
Alex: Your journalism is so phat that your hyperlinks are coated in myelin.
Alex: Your journalism is so phat that @cjoh had to start running marathons to stay on his information diet.
If you have more reasons your journalism is phat, please add them in the comments.
Filed under blogging, journalism, social media, technology, Twitter
Blogging isn’t dead, influence contests should be, and hyperlinks rock.
My belated wishes for the media in the New Year:
Please stop making generalized statements that “bloggers” are ____.
Blogs, whether they’re written by members of the media, business people or “average” citizens matter in 2011. A blog is a platform. All kinds of people use them. Some are more popular than others. Some are written by subject matter experts. Given the adoption of blogging software at the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and New York Times, the term “blogger” is is more a term of derision that an accurate classification.
The distinction of “blog” versus mainstream publication online has increasingly blurred to become nearly unrecognizable. Go back and read Nick Denton’s post on why Gawker is moving beyond the blog and consider his plan for new media in 2011.
Please stop writing headlines that “[X] is dead” or about “wars” between companies.
Exception: foreign correspondents and war journalists, both of whom exist in decreasing numbers these days. If you’re not covering an actual war, stop using the metaphor. Seriously.
For instance, blogs aren’t dead, though some of the activity and conversation that existed there in 2006 has moved in Facebook or Twitter in 2011. If you go with such a headline, steel yourself for a critical response.
Please link to the outlet and the journalist that broke a story, whether it’s “old media” or a blog.
Hyperlinks are the dendrites of the Internet. Hyperlinks are like a retweet on Twitter: they’re both social currency. Linking up the source for news story or fact with a link is like footnoting a research paper, except that it both helps the reader learn more and provides credit and authority to the site linked. Neither mainstream media nor blogs should be lifting stories without linking in 2011. So stop.
Please stop disparaging the influence of “bloggers.” Or talking about their pajamas.
It really doesn’t matter what I’m wearing when I file, though these days it’s a suit more often than shorts or pajamas.
The argument that one irate customer taking the Internet won’t matter is passe in 2011, as many publicly traded companies have found during online backlashes. A powerful short video and a post can and will go viral online, particularly if it’s a customer service or product issue that resonates widely.
That’s even more true so for blogs and writers at the top of an industry vertical, although Consumer Reports still has plenty of clout. When experts share their views online, they gain algorithmic authority online, which over time leads to influence over a given community. If Louis Gray or Robert Scoble or Mike Arrington cover a startup, it can put them on the map.
There’s no need to ask media critics like Brian Stelter, Felix Salmon, Ken Doctor, David Carr, David Folkenflik or Jay Rosen if they read blogs: they do. So do more “mainstream media influencers” like Katie Couric or the Sunday talk show hosts, along do the top editors of every publication I’ve talked to last year. The Pulitzer Prize now includes online organizations.
Please stop hosting influence contests. Lift up new voices.
Sure, an influence project might have sounded like a good idea in 2010. Many people disagreed. Strongly. Despite the backlash, new social media contests are still coming online for people to game. Predictably, strong critiques emerged, including those that focus on a different kind of digital divide. There is an emerging industry of analytics services that crunch big data and social recommendations to determine online influence or grade social media accounts, although they all have a long journey yet to evolve.
Instead of encouraging a community to engage in a popularity contest, considering using the power of an established media platform to empower new voices, highlighting what’s unique about an area and connect neighbors who might not know one another.
Filed under blogging, journalism, social media, technology, Twitter
Looking Back: The Best Interviews of 2010 [VIDEO]
2010 was full of amazing stories and experiences, both personal and professional. I’m grateful for the many opportunities I had speak to brilliant, fascinating people about technology, government, media and civil society. I’ve learned a tremendous amount from my interviews this year, many of which were captured on video. Some were filmed with my iPhone 4, others with a Canon 110si, others by O’Reilly Media’s professional video team after I joined the company as its new Gov 2.0 Washington Correspondent.
Regardless of the quality of light, image or sound, each interview taught me something new, and I’m proud they’re all available on the Web to the public. The list below isn’t exhaustive, either. There are easily a dozen other excellent interviews on my channel on YouTube, O’Reilly Media’s YouTube channel, uStream and Livestream. Thank you to each and every person who took time to talk to me this past year.
20. Professor Fred Cate on electronic privacy protections and email
19. Google Open Advocate Chris Messina on Internet freedom
18. Foursquare Creator Dennis Crowley on the NASA Tweetup and #IVoted
17. Co-Chairman of the Future of Privacy Forum Jules Polonetsky
16. NASA CTO Chris Kemp on cloud computing and open source
15. Portland Mayor Sam Adams on open data
14. Former Xerox Chief Scientist and PARC Director John Seely Brown on education
13. NPR’s Andy Carvin on CrisisWiki
12. ISE Founder Claire Lockhart on government accountability
11. Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior on the evolution of smarter cities
10. Ushahidi Co-Founder Ory Okolloh on crowdsourcing
9. Senator Kate Lundy on Gov 2.0 in Australia
8. Intellipedia: Moving from a culture of “need to know” to “need to share” using wikis
7. ESRI Co-Founder Jack Dangermond on mapping
6. Sunlight Foundation Co-Founder Ellen Miller on Open Government
5. HHS CTO Todd Park on Open Health Data
4. FCC Tech Cast with Expert Lab’s Gina Trapani
3. Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak on the Open Internet
2. United States CTO Aneesh Chopra on Open Government
1. Tim Berners-Lee on Open Linked Data
Filed under cyberlaw, education, government 2.0, journalism, social media, technology, video
28 Tweets about #Newsfoo: Data Journalism, Wikileaks and the Long Form
Last weekend, I was proud to join a fascinating group of people in the first News Foo out in Phoenix, Arizona. I’m still thinking through what it all meant to me. Covering events in Washington has kept me extremely busy from the moment I returned.
Almost by definition, you can’t go to everything at an unconference. And by definition, an unconference is what you make of it, meaning that if you to a session to happen, you need to propose it. If you don’t like the one you’re in, vote with your feet. The open structure means that everyone will have a different experience, a reality that was reflected in the tweets, blogposts and feedback that have emerged in the days since the first News Foo concluded in Phoenix.
Newsfoo is a variant of Tim O’Reilly’s famed Foo camps, which have a wiki unconference format. People create the sessions as they go, and they camp out together. The social + intellectual experience is a bonding opportunity. There is also, for example, a Sci Foo camp which is consponsored by O’Reilly, Nature mag and Google. Now there is a push to do a Newsfoo, which would bring technologists and journalists together in a high-level discussion, that looks forward rather than back. It would tackle cool problems, both content side and business side.
To expand on that concept, posted before the event, News Foo was a collaboration between O’Reilly Media, Google and the Knight Foundation. Each hour or so, four or five sessions frequently competed for attention, along with freewheeling conversations in hallways, tables and in the open spaces of Arizona State University’s beautiful journalism center. As with every unconference, the attendees created the program and decided which sessions to attend, aggregating or disaggregating themselves.
If you’re interested in other reactions to News Foo, several excellent posts have made their way online since Sunday. I’ll be posting more thoughts on Newsfoo soon, along with book recommendations from the science fiction session.
- Fear and Loathing in Phoenix: News Foo
- Post-Newsfoo Meditation on Philosophy and Friction
- Newsoo Camp: Where TBD is Mainstream
For those who were not present, a post by Steve Buttry is particularly worth reading, along with the lively dialogue in the comments: “News Foo Camp: Not fully open, but certainly secret.” Buttry reached out to Sarah Winge, who provided a lengthy, informative comment about what Foos are about and how “Friend D.A.” works. If you’re not familiar with either, go check out Steve’s excellent post.
As he notes there, heavy tweeting was discouraged by the organizers, a request supported by the thinking that being “fully present,” freed of the necessary attention that documenting an event accurately requires of a writer, will result in a richer in-person experience for all involved.
Over the course of the weekend, I certainly tweeted much less than I would at the average conference or unconference. But then foo isn’t either.
I did take a few moments to share resources or stories I heard about at newsfoo with my distributed audience online. Following are 28 tweets, slightly edited (I took out the #Newsfoo hashtag and replies in a few) that did just that, rather like I’d microblogged it. If you’re confused about the “twitterese” below, consult my explainer on the top 50 Twitter acronyms and abbreviations and my thinking on how #hashtags on Twitter are like channels on cable TV. For many more tweets from other attendees, check out “Newsfoo at a Distance,” a Storify curation.
1. #Newsfoo is an unconference in Phoenix, AZ this weekend. Technologists & journalists talking about “what’s next.”
2. Foo Camp is about “making new synapses in the global brain,” says @TimOReilly. And being present. Here. http://twitpic.com/3cnxcl
3. ASU Cronkite School of Journalism. Beautiful. http://instagr.am/p/dLie/
4. Loving session on context with @mthomps @adamdangelo & @tristanharris. Some context: http://futureofcontext.com #meta
On the long form
5. In #longform discussion. Love this topic: http://longform.org | http://longreads.com | @NiemanLab: http://j.mp/9X9Php
6. More on #longform at @Guardian: http://j.mp/d5lhF5 @longreads @TheAwl @somethingtoread @longformorg @thelonggoodread
7. “Final Salute” http://j.mp/px3Vk Pulitzer Prize-winning story by @jimsheeler. @TheRocky closed last October.
8. Readability changed how I read #longform journalism online: http://readability.com @Pogue: http://nyti.ms/3Yu9KD
9. Learned about @audiopress from @wroush. Roll your own podcast playlists. @Xconomy: http://bit.ly/cuBm1G #longform
Data Journalism
10. Good ooVoo test with @kmcurry. Virtual session with @jeanneholm& @davidherzog on data journalism at 1:45 MST http://bit.ly/etWw7R
11. Data tools at http://opendataday.org being used at #rhok & #odhd hackathons: http://oreil.ly/g4ibiF #opengov #gov20
12. There’s someone from http://scraperwiki.com at #newsfoo.
Wikileaks
13. Moved to #Wikileaks session. Wonderfully deep. Useful take on #cablegate at @TheEconomist: http://econ.st/hyD7kM
14. “Former #WikiLeaks activists to launch new whistleblowing site”-Der Spiegel http://bit.ly/f4iP6Q #cablegate
15. Talking about #COICA: http://act.ly/S3804 http://eff.org/coica #ACTA & DNS issues. Important: http://nyti.ms/evvl6u
Trust and the media
16. Thinking about trust in institutions & the media. See: http://reportanerror.org & @ChangeTracker: http://j.mp/dEzAQw
17. RT @acarvin Same at NPR RT @drcarp Journalist participation in comments leads to reduced moderation and improved tone http://bit.ly/ex9FUx
Newsfoo Ignite
18. Inspired again by @acarvin at Ignite. http://crisiscommons.org http://twitpic.com/3d15em http://twitpic.com/3d15q2
19. You can watch @acarvin do an Ignite on the same topic/preso here now: http://oreil.ly/9ZIEMs
20. Great Ignite on Twitter metrics by @zseward. Bad: http://twitpic.com/3d1qtz Better: http://twitpic.com/3d1qzz
21. Interesting Ignite from the CEO of @peoplebrowsr. Another tool to try: http://research.ly http://twitpic.com/3d1w93
22. “Curiousity is the cartography that allows you to see more finely grained maps of the world”-@tristanharris
Sunday sessions
23. Good morning! Talking how media biz models might work in with FTC #DNTrack. Context: http://oreil.ly/igZJso
24. Reminded of how ugly black hat SEO spammers & fraudsters act online after disasters. http://usat.ly/88pYMk
25. Absolutely geeking out in this #scifi news session. @GreatDismal & Douglas Adams would dig. Geektastic: http://looxcie.com
26. Wonderful moment: “Let me plug a book: “The Victorian Internet'”-@sbma44 “I wrote it”-@tomstandage http://j.mp/QX4tS
27. Yes. @NiemanLab: http://bit.ly/9xFLft RT @tomstandage: Anyone else at #newsfoo interested in the Gutenberg Parenthesis?
28. Bit hard to leave the warm sun of Phoenix & brilliance of the #newsfoo community for DC. Good to debrief with @jsb @rbole @Hari & @pergam.
Filed under blogging, friends, government 2.0, journalism, microsharing, photography, scifi, social media, technology, Twitter, video
On Wikileaks, government 2.0, open government and new media hurricanes
The war logs from Afghanistan may well be the biggest intelligence leak ever. Wikileaks represents a watershed in the difficult challenge of of information control that the Internet represents for every government.
Aeschylus wrote nearly 2500 years ago that “in war, truth is the first casualty.” His words are no doubt known to a wise man, whose strategic “maneuvers within a changing information environment” would not be an utterly foreign concept to the Greeks in the Peloponnesian War. Aeschylus and Thucydides would no doubt wonder at the capacity of the Information Age to spread truth and disinformation alike.
In considering the shifting landscape above, Mark Drapeau has asserted that “government 2.0” is the “newest reality of new media.” I’m not convinced by his assertion that “no one is answering” the call to engage on that information battlefield. Given constant answers from various spokesmen over the past week, or this afternoon as the war logs leak breaks, that doesn’t appear accurate.
It’s similarly unclear to me that, were government agencies to develop a more agile media culture, it would sustain a more informed electorate. It’s not clear that it would lead to more effective data-driven policy, nor the transparency that a healthy representative democracy needs to thrive.
More nimble use of new media is important, particularly for the armed services, but given the existential challenges posed by energy, education, healthcare, environment, unemployment and the long war it’s hard to support the content that it should be the focus of open government efforts.
As for his consignment of “journalistic standards” to the company of “other quaint attitudes,” I’d posit that differentiating between propaganda, agitprop and factual journalism matters even more today.
I don’t see standards for separating fact from fiction as quaint at all; if anything, the new media environment makes that ability more essential than ever, particularly in the context of the “first stateless news organization” Jay Rosen has described.
There’s a new kind of alliance behind the War Logs, as David Carr wrote in the New York Times.
That reality reinforces that fact that information literacy is a paramount concern for citizens in the digital age. As danah boyd has eloquently pointed out, transparency is not enough.
What is the essence of open government?
Governments that invest in more capacity to maneuver in this new media environment (the theater of public affairs officers and mainstream media now occupied by the folks formerly known as the audience) might well fare better in information warfare.
Open government is a mindset, but not simply a matter of new media literacy. To suggest that the “essence of open government” is to adopt a workplace environment that both accepts the power of new media and adapts to it seems reductive. I’m unconvinced that it is the fundamental element of open government, as least as proposed by the architects of that policy in Washington now.
It would also seem to have little to do with what research suggests citizens expect of government, even those of a libertarian bent.
Citizens are turning to the Internet for data, policy and services.
Given an estimated 1.47 trillion dollar budget gap estimated for next year, I wonder whether citizens might prefer a leaner, more agile government that leverages technology, citizen participation and civic hacking than a more new media-savvy culture. Those are, after all, the elements of social government or government 2.0 that I’ve heard about from him for years.
There’s also the question of fully addressing the reality that in a time of war, some information can and will have to remain classified for years if those fighting are to have any realistic chances of winning. Asymmetries of information between combatants are, after all, essential to winning maneuvers on the battlefields of the 21st century.
There’s no doubt that government is playing catchup given the changed media environment, supercharged by the power of the Internet, broadband and smartphones. This week we’ve seen a tipping point in the relationship of government, media and techology. Comparing the Wikileaks War Logs to the Pentagon Papers is inevitable and not valid, as ProPublica reported
It’s not at all clear to me, however, how the military would win battles, much less wars, without control over situational awareness, operational information or effective counterintelligence. Given the importance of the ENIGMA machine or intercepts of Japanese intel in WWII, or damage caused by subsequent counterintelligence leaks from the FBI and elsewhere, I question the veracity of the contention that “controlling information better” to limit intelligence leaks that damage ongoing ops will not continue to be vitally important to the military for as long as we have one.
More transparency and accountability regarding our wars to the nation, Congress and president are both desirable and a bedrock principle in a representative democracy, not least because of the vast amounts of spending that has been outlaid since 9/11 in the shadow government that Dana Priest reported out in “Top Secret America” in the Washington Post.
Wikileaks and the Internet add the concept of asymmetric journalism to the lexicon of government 2.0 to the more traditional accountability journalism of Priest or database journalism of the new media crew online at Sunlight and elsewhere. Fortunately for their readers, many of those folks continue to “adhere to journalistic standards and other quaint attitudes and rule sets and guidelines.”
Filed under government 2.0, journalism, social media, technology
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