Abuse on Twitter

Back on February 7th, I was quoted in a Tech Times article entitled, Three Immediate Things Twitter Must Do To Curb Online Abuse And Win Back Users, written by Christian de Looper. I had been asked to comment on the problem of abusive tweets and the general issue of online abuse, and on what Twitter needs to do to address the problem, so let me begin by providing you with my full response to the query:

Twitter is not the only social media platform that has a problem with online abuse on the part of its users—YouTube, for example, is notorious for the problem. The fact that it has become a public relations concern for Twitter reflects the fact that it is second only to Facebook when in comes to communication and social interaction on the internet. 

Twitter ought to be concerned, and can learn a lesson from the fall of MySpace, where a sense of "lawlessness" and "anything goes" contributed to the mass migration to Facebook, where controls over user behavior are more stringent, creating a very safe, you might say suburban, white bread kind of environment. First and foremost, to follow Facebook's lead, Twitter would have to become much more responsive to user complaints, essentially issuing warnings and shutting accounts down whenever any user is accused of abusive behavior. 

The problem they face is that Twitter has gained much from its wide open atmosphere, not so much an open frontier like the old MySpace, but more like an urban and urbane melting pot of myriad voices. Crack down too much on offensive tweets, and you lose the open atmosphere that makes Twitter so attractive, and you alienate users who view that sort of activity as censorship. Twitter will need to engage in a very tricky balancing act between the need to provide a safe and attractive environment and otherwise show users they are in control and care about abusive behavior, while maintaining their status as an open and democratic platform. The problem they face in the virtual world is exactly the same problem we face in open societies in real life, between security and freedom, between the needs of the community and the rights of the individual.

Long time readers of Blog Time Passing may find my comparison of Twitter, Facebook, and the old MySpace familiar, expressed for example in my post of March 1, 2009, About Face(book).

Be that as it may, let's turn now to de Looper's recent article about Twitter, which begins with the following introduction:

A memo written by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has been leaked, with Costolo admitting that Twitter "sucks at dealing with trolls."

The memo also resolved that Twitter needs to fight online abuse head-on. But what exactly can Twitter do to put an end to harassment on Twitter?

Now comes those three things Twitter can do to curb online abuse, and the first one is where my quotes, taken out of the larger commentary I provided, comes in:

1. Twitter Needs To Get Ruthless

Twitter has been very passive about its online abuse problem. The company has not made real efforts to combat the issue.

"To follow Facebook's lead, Twitter would have to become much more responsive to user complaints, essentially issuing warnings and shutting accounts down whenever any user is accused of abusive behavior," said Lance Strate, professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University, in an email with Tech Times.

Twitter, however, is in the middle of a balancing act. The service currently has a very "open" vibe about it, and cracking down too hard on users could take away from this.

"The problem they face in the virtual world is exactly the same problem we face in open societies in real life, between security and freedom, the needs of the community and the rights of the individual," continued Strate.

So, now, that's it for me, but let's get the other two bits of advice, shall we?

2. Twitter Needs to Be Public About Its Abuse Battle

Online abuse is not a problem unique to Twitter. YouTube is notorious for Internet trolls that comment on videos with the idea of wanting to take people down a peg. Often comments aren't even related to the videos being posted.

The problem for Twitter, however, is a little different because of the public relations issues involved. If Twitter is going to successfully put an end to abuse on its platform, it needs to be public about it. The issues surrounding public abuse on Twitter could end tomorrow, but that doesn't mean that users will think that it has. Twitter's reputation is important when it comes to gaining users. In fact, many users have left Twitter because of its online abuse problem, and it's likely that they won't come back until Twitter is able to successfully deal with the problem.

3. Twitter Needs To Do It In-House

In the past, Twitter has rather famously left dealing with online abuse to third parties, most notably Women, Action and the Media (WAM!).

The fact that Twitter has not dealt with the problem internally shows a lack of caring from the company. It seems, however, as though the company will finally be stepping up.

Twitter must deal with the problem in-house, and must hire people to deal with it. The tools for the company to be able to combat online abuse have been put in place -- there is a "blocked accounts" page where users can see who has been blocked from their feed, for example, and users can more easily report issues. Now Twitter needs to have employees that deal with those problems.

The conflict between safety and growth lies at the heart of Abraham Maslow's humanistic psychology of motivation,  as famously represented by his Hierarchy of Needs diagram

So, once again, it comes down to a fundamental conflict. Openness is democratic, and facilitates originality, creativity, and growth, but brings with it risk and danger, in this instance the possibility of abuse, as well as scams and spam, and various forms of cybercrime. Closing things off provides more of a margin of safety and security, but at the cost of the ferment that made the platform, group, or society interesting and vibrant in the first place. How to find the balance, to avoid being boring as well as to curb abuse, that is the question. 

Presiding for the Congregation Continued

So, I've been meaning to make a note of this here on my official blog of record, and it's time that I do. As you may recall, if you've been following my activities very closely (ha ha), back in 2012 I was elected as president of Congregation Adas Emuno, a small temple following the tradition of Reform Judaism, located in Leonia, New Jersey. If you somehow missed it, you can read the entry I posted about it back then: Presiding for the Congregation.

So, anyway, my two-year term ended as of July 1st of this year, but back in May I was elected to a second term as president. I want to be clear that this was in no way a function of personal ambition, but rather was due to the fact that there wasn't anyone else willing and able to step in, and because I have not done a completely horrendous job at it, I was asked to continue on in that role.

And I realize that another thing I neglected to share on this blog was the new logo we developed for our congregation. I know you may be saying, logo???? Isn't that a bit too profane and commercial? And what about that thing in the Ten Commandments about graven images? 

Well, you see, what we have been using previously was some fairly generic kinds of symbols and clip art. So, I wanted something distinctive to represent our congregation as letterhead, on flyers, and online. And one of the special things we do is during Sabbath services, when we include a prayer for healing, on behalf of those who are physically, psychologically, or spiritually ill.  And unless there are too many people in attendance, we all hold hands and form a circle to sing the version of the Mi Sheberach prayer composed by the late Debbie Friedman. It's a beautiful song, so let me share that as well:





So, I had this idea about a logo that connected the six-pointed Star of David with six people holding hands, forming a circle (as I recall, Carl Jung identified the Star of David as a variation on the mandala archetype, which usually takes the form of a circle, and denotes wholeness and community). Not being an artist myself, I couldn't quite visualize it, and could only provide a vague, verbal description to one of our board members, Lauren Rowland, a gifted artist and graphic designer, who came up with this image:

Here's another version:

And there are more variations, but you get the idea. I really love it, because it so well captures what our congregation is all about. So, anyway, this was adopted early in my first term, and then came Hurricane Sandy that October, and fortunately our buildings were spared, the only major damage being to the sign outside of our temple:

Far from being a tragedy, the sign was old, unattractive, not in great shape, and in a style that was no longer current, so we were in fact talking about replacing it anyway, which we did early in 2013, and I was so pleased that our new sign was able to incorporate our new logo:

See it up there in the upper left hand corner? 

So, anyway, I don't mean to imply that this is all that went on over the past 2 1/4 years, but this seemed like one item that would be particularly appropriate, being about communication and all. And if you want to know more about my role and about our temple, you can check out our congregational blog (which I set up, as mentioned in my previous post, Adas Emuno Now Blogging, and has so far has been mostly maintained by me), and our website, which we are in the process of updating).

And with that, let me take this opportunity to say, Happy New Year—5775, where does the time go? Me, I'm feeling kinda nostalgic for the 5750s...

Why Tweet?

So, several weeks ago I was interviewed by Tom Stoelker, who writes for Fordham University's newsletter, Inside Fordham.  He was doing a piece about Twitter, and wanted quotes from Fordham faculty who use that social network. 

So I spoke to him on the phone for a bit, and he pulled out some of my comments, wrote them up and included them in the article entitled, Six Faculty and Why They Tweet. Apart from myself, the six include my colleagues in the Department of Communication and Media Studies, Paul Levinson, Beth Knobel, Mike Plugh, and Bob Blechman, as well as a Theology professor, Christiana Peppard. And he introduced the article with the following:

From Russian politics, to basketball, to philosophy, to a murder mystery or two, a sampling of Fordham professors demonstrate that their Twitter approaches are as varied as their interests.

The University’s more active Twitter users spring from the communication and media studies department, though faculty in other disciplines are delving in as well. 

All regular faculty users interviewed have one thing in common: they warily tested the waters before finding their comfort zone. 

To a non-digital native, Twitter can seem like an unwieldy, hungry beast, or worse, a massive party where you can’t find your friends. Interviews with six professors demonstrate how they manage to both find friends and feed the beast.

And you can click on the link to read what the other five had to say, I'll just share my own remarks here on Blog Time Passing, but first, here's how Tom introduced me (my quote came after Paul's, who was introduced as "a direct disciple of the late media ecology theorist Neil Postman":

Strate got onto Twitter in the very early days. Another disciple of Postman, Strate’s Twitter circle includes scholars and practitioners of media ecology. Though he uses the medium proficiently for specific interests, he remains acutely aware of Twitter’s pitfalls.

Now then, here are the words attributed to me. I say attributed, because we had a long telephone conversation, I have no record of what I actually said, and this is what Tom selected out of a much larger volume of remarks, the text of which of course I had a chance to review and approve.

From a critical point of view, Twitter raises a lot of questions. What is the point of this medium? What is it doing? What is it undoing? I see it as abbreviated telegraphic discourse. Electronic media in general undermines the concept and practice of literacy as we’ve known it. It discourages engagement in long, measured discourse and deep reading, and it’s not about following a train of coherent thought. It often trivializes what you’re dealing with. And while it’s common to hear complaints about the ‘What-I-had-for-lunch’ tweets, more importantly, Twitter turns political discourse into slogans, quips, and sound bites. We lose the capacity for careful reasoning and clear thought. That naturally leads to more conflict-oriented communication. So, how do you evaluate that? We evaluate a tweet by how clever and economical it is, how many people it goes out to, and how often it gets re-tweeted. None of that speaks to how well it informs us, educates us, or uplifts us. You know something’s wrong when every television show has a ‘like us on Facebook’ and a ‘follow us on Twitter.’

Now, just to clarify, I did say quite a bit on the positive side about Twitter as well, but Tom said that I was the only one to have anything really critical to say about the medium, so he wanted to feature that part of my remarks.

And I'll add that part of my criticism that he left out was the typical it's not what it used to be kind of commentary. That is, Twitter was a lot more enjoyable when relatively few people were on it, and I was able to actively engage with a small group of folks who I followed and followed me back. It's lost much of its appeal for me as it's become more of a mass medium in many ways, dominated by celebrities, and folks trying to get noticed with all those hashtags and such, rather than just take part in a conversation with others.

The last sentence in my quote actually refers to that point, the perils of becoming so popular that Twitter accounts, along with Facebook pages, are promoted on just about every TV show.

And then there's the story of Justine Sacco's tweet heard 'round the world, how a PR professional made a dumb joke on an account with only 200 followers, which exploded into a firestorm of outrage that she was unable to deal with being offline on a long flight overseas, leading to an extraordinary degree of vituperation, and her losing her job even before she landed. If you don't know what I'm talking about, BuzzFeed provides a pretty good summary: This Is How A Woman’s Offensive Tweet Became The World’s Top Story; I found this piece by someone familiar wth Sacco particularly revealing: Acquaintance Reveals Justine Sacco's Fateful Ideas About Twitter; and you can just Google "Justine Sacco" to read a wide variety of opinion on what happened to her.

If nothing else, her story illustrates the potential danger of Twitter, and all social media. The lesson certainly is, think before you tweet. And the question it raises is why get involved in such activities in the first place. Twitter is pretty amazing after all, but to invoke the title of my forthcoming book, are we in danger of amazing ourselves to death? Why tweet?, indeed!

Professional Studies in New Media

So, back in 2010 I agreed to develop a new program for Fordham University's newly renamed School of Professional and Continuing Studies.  The program is called Professional Studies in New Media, it draws on courses offered by our business school, as well the Department of Computer Science and Information Science, and my own Department of Communication and Media Studies.  

So I prepared the curriculum, which also incorporated some new courses with the PSNM designation, working with Dean Isabelle Frank, and getting feedback from other faculty, and it made it through the gauntlet of administrative hurdles, and received approval from New York State in the fall.  And I was appointed Director of the new program.

The program is being piloted at Fordham's Westchester campus—did you know Fordham has a Westchester campus?—which is near White Plains, in West Harrison, NY, at 400 Westchester Road. And while it was approved this year, the approval came too late to get the program really underway, so its official launch is 2012/2013 school year.  Being part of the School of Professional and Continuing Studies, it's an undergraduate degree for students who never got a BA or BS, or did some work towards the degree but never completed it.  

I think it's a great opportunity for individuals looking to get up to speed and get a background in an area where employments opportunities exist, and are on the rise.  I know there's also great interest in a certificate program, and that should be next on the agenda, but first we want to get this program on the way.  So, if you know of anyone who wants or needs a Bachelors, please let them know.

You can check out the program on the program page on Fordham's website.  Here's some of the write-up:

From surfing the web to social networking to smart phones, we live and work in a world shaped by online communications, electronic media, and digital devices. The media industries in this area are expanding rapidly, and every business and organization today needs individuals who understand the new media environment, and know how to keep up with emerging trends and innovations in this ever-evolving landscape.

The page has a Link to Curriculum that I developed.  I should add that the site itself needs some tweaking, but all of the essential information is up there.

 

And that includes out upcoming launch event, in celebration of this new program. It's coming up fast, this Thursday evening in fact, so please take note!

In case the information isn't clearly visible, you can access the flyer from the box on the lower right of the program page by clicking on it (it will be removed after the event of course).  But the basic information is:

• The event is free and open to all
• There will be refreshments served (that's a biggie, I know)
• We'll have a panel discussion on Working With New Media
• I'll be the moderator and the panelists will include
• Constantin Basturea, Vice-President for Strategy at the social media agency Converseon
• Robin Colner, President and Founder of the digital marketing firm, DigiStar Media
• Chris S. Cornell, Social Media Director at the public relations firm, Thompson & Bender
• Paull Young, Director of Digital Engagement at the nonprofit organization, charity: water
• The event will run from 7:00 to 9:00 PM
• And once again, it's Fordham University on 400 Westchester Avenue in West Harrison, NY

And there you have it, please help us spread the word about the program, and I hope to see you on Thursday evening!

Ad-ding Interactivity

In a previous post, Everywhere a Sign, I mentioned how, as literates, we wrote over our environment with signs, and otherwise remade our world in the image of the written and printed word, and how we are doing the same sort of thing now, coating and revising our environment via the electronic media.

In a sense, we already accomplished this early in the 20th century, as our environment is permeated by radio waves, so that almost anywhere we go, we can pick up a broadcast signal.  Mobile telephony adds an interactive dimension to the ether, making it possible not only to have two-way communications (which was always an option, after all, through amateur radio, Ham, CB, walkie-talkies, etc.), but interactive data transmission.

So, through mobile devices, we turn a non-electronic environment into an electronic one (and again, this began with the transistor radio, but becomes fully realized with the cell phone).  This realizes the goal of ubiquitous computing, not by embedding computer technology into the environment as was previously imagined, but by the combination of an environment permeated by the software of wireless signals rather than the hardware of gadgets, and by embedding computer technology in us, ourselves.  After all, we are our environment, in the sense that all we know of our environment is the internal map that we construct, not what's actually out there.  That was Korzybski's main argument, after all.

Perception is a response to a stimulus that we mistake for the stimulus itself.

But, back to the main point.  We may not have our personal technologies literally embedded and merged into our bodies in the manner of science fiction cyborgs, not quite, and not yet, but many of us keep our devices with us at all times, walking around with blue tooth devices on our ears, essentially treating them as appendages to our body.  Of course this brings to mind McLuhan's emphasis on media as extensions of the body.  It's just a matter of how we frame things to refer as to whether we refer to media as extensions or environments.  As I like to point out, whatever extends our bodies comes between our bodies and our environment, and whatever comes between our bodies and our environment becomes our new environment.

So, the point is that mobile devices are transforming our environment.  This is happening, in part, through augmented reality programs and technologies, but here I just want to point out how mobile devices allow us to add an electronic overlay to print media.  

QR codes constitute a simple example of this.  In one sense, they are a new kind of bar code, one that's more robust--we've all encountered bar codes that are a little worn and won't scan, QR codes don't degrade so easily.  But mobile devices can read QR codes via their cameras--remember when adding cameras to cell phones seemed like an unnecessary extravagance?--the QR code can represent a URL, and mobile devices use their browsers to go to that web page.  This is old news to many, I know, and I apologize if this seems obvious, but I know it isn't to some folks reading this blog.  Anyway, here's a QR code for Blog Time Passing:

If you click on it, it'll just take you to a page with the same QR code, but if you scan it with a mobile device it'll bring you back to this blog.

But I want to point to a couple of sophisticated and creative examples of how mobile devices can turn print media into interactive media.  First here's one that has great relevance, given the current victory of the rebellion in Libya:

This ad taken out by Reporters Without Borders, really more of a public interest message about freedom of the press than a commercial advertisement, is quite creative, entertaining, and dramatic in making its point.  It uses a QR code to get to the video mouth, which is placed over the mouth of the dictator in the print image, to add animation and give voice to the journalists whose voices were otherwise stilled by the leaders of repressive regimes.

And now for something much less serious, indeed, a bit of childlike play:

This Norwegian ad is certainly an app-ed expression of the potential merging of print and electronics.  While the idea of an electronics-based form of smart paper is still in the works, and may one day supersede print, this demonstrates how mobile devices can make any dumb, old print medium into a smart one.  Shades of the Scarecrow in the Wizard of the Oz!

Well, if all this seems too much like the weird virtual world of the Disney film Tron, just keep in mind that no matter how hi-tech we get, we'll always need duct tape!

quack quack!

Digital Damage Control

So, last month I appeared on a local TV news segment about "Digital Damage Control," to use the dramatic title they gave to the story.  It's all about what to do when something negative pops up in the search results for your name, or organization, or product for that matter.  How do you address the problem of bad Google publicity?

You would think that if it's something false, or blatantly offensive, you could just appeal to the better natures of the site owner, or blogger, or internet provider for that matter, but no, that doesn't work very well.  Often you'll get no response whatsoever, or maybe a shrug of the shoulders.  So, what can you do, who can you call?  Not Roto-Rooter, that's for sure.

Well, why don't you check out the segment, which originally aired on the 11:00 PM news on November 11th (that's 11/11 at 11, but who's counting?).  And note that the sound is a little on the low side, so you may have to turn your volume up a bit.  After you're done, meet me back here so I can correct a few errors.

So, yes, I confess, somewhere on the internet there is a listing for Sex Vixens from Outer Space, and my name is attached to it as the author.  But it is not in fact a movie, which would be a more serious matter, what it is, is a Commodore 64 text adventure game from the 80s.  And frankly, I wish I had the programming skills to create a game like that, I really wanted to make my own text adventures back in those early days of the personal computer revolution, but I never got past the basics of BASIC.  Anyway, I had an Atari 800, not a Commodore, and let me tell you, that Atari was a great little machine.  But I digress.  The point is, whoever the author was, it wasn't me.

And in case you're wondering if there might be someone else out there with the same name as me, well, it's highly unlikely, as that is the only listing that has ever come up on any search engine under my name that is not me.  As far as I know, I am the only Lance Strate on the planet.  It's interesting to think about that sort of thing, by the way, that is maybe, in the future, people will be given or create for themselves unique names, perhaps by using one or more middle names, and maybe titles, to make it possible to find them without confusion on search engines.

So anyway, what I figure happened is that, back in the 80s, someone used my name as a pseudonym in this one instance.  My guess is that it wasn't someone that I knew very well, although I could be wrong, but I don't recall knowing anyone who knew how to write code for the Commodore, and I think it more likely that it was somebody not too close, maybe even one degree of separation removed, who heard my name and liked the sound of it, or thought it would be funny to use.

Hey, if anyone out there has any idea of who the actual author of Sex Vixens from Outer Space might be, or if the real author is out there, let me know.  I bear no grudges, I'm just curious at this point.

When I first started to check up on myself via search engines (back before google was a verb), this item came up in the first ten rankings, at one point even as the first!  And I admit to being taken aback, feeling uncomfortable, both for the association with this kind of content (obviously, the real author did as well, which is why a pseudonym was used), and for the fact that it is, essentially, a false attribution.  A me that is not me.

I was uncomfortable, but the news report is incorrect in saying that I deliberately tried to bury it with all of my digital activity.  First of all, while feeling uncomfortable, it just didn't bother me all that much.  Second, I had no idea what to do about it, so I just ignored it.  And as more and more pages listing my name appeared on the web, e.g., my online publications, citations of my work in other publications, listings on various sites, sites selling my books, web pages at Fordham and elsewhere, and eventually social media profiles, my blog posts, etc., it just naturally got pushed further down and down and out of awareness.

And I had no intention of ever bringing it up, until Andrew Siff contacted me about doing this story, explaining that a friend of his (Alan Gottlob I presume) had developed this sort of search engine problem.  So we met at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus for the interview.  Andrew was interested in seeing my own Google search results, so I decided to share this example with him, which proved to be a very useful illustration.  But obviously, it's more dramatic to say that I used a deliberate strategy, rather than to say that it just happened naturally, as a result of being active online.

But hey, I got some really good face time on this story, don't you think?  Name time as well, but well, that I take for granted.  But it was also great to see Fordham University get some good publicity out of it.

Anyway, there's also a text version of the story online, under the title of Undoing Digital Damage: How To Write Your Way Out Of Trouble, filed by Andrew Siff on the station's website.  And I got a Google alert last month that pointed to the same story appearing on the MSNBC website, I'm not sure if that means it also aired on that cable news channel or not, but it's since disappeared from there.  Anyway, the story has a tag line, "The keyboard may be mightier than the sword -- If used properly."  And then it begins,

Fordham University Technology Professor Lance Strate couldn't help but laugh when he googled himself -- and saw a surprising hit.

And let me stop right there, I can't help but laugh, and note that I'm not a Technology Professor, as you probably know, I'm a Professor of Communication and Media Studies.  Okay, continue please,

"Somebody claimed I'd written this soft-core film for a Commodore 64," said Strate, who pointed to the link on projection screen inside a classroom on the school's Manhattan campus. The film he supposedly wrote was called Sex Vixens From Space. But the professor never wrote such a script, and never even owned a Commodore 64. Strate laughed it off, assuming some mischievous blogger had co-opted his name for some reason. Then, he happened on a pretty good strategy to abolish the fictional shout-out.

He wrote some real stuff.

Okay, you remember from a few paragraphs above, it was a text adventure, not a film.  Not as sexy as they made it out to be, no.  And there were no bloggers back in the 80s.  But, hey, details, details.  Let's move on,

His blog, Lance Strate's Blog Time Passing, advises the young, the old, and the in-between to write, write, and write some more. And by keeping it clean you'll gradually earn a good reputation, impervious to any search engine. After all, Google and other navigators tend to rank searches by the age of a post. And recent writings register higher. So, you can also tweet your way to a clean rep.

Check it out, dear friends.  Blog Time Passing has made the news!!!!  We are the story!!!  And so what if I never actually advised anyone "to write, write, and write some more" before.  By quoting this here and now in Blog Time Passing, I've made it so!  A self-fulfilling professy, don't you know?  So get to it, boys and girls.  Write away!  And yes, keep it clean!  And thank you so much, Andrew, for the great publicity!

But wait, there's more,

Of course, it's not always so easy. Financial advisor Alan Gottlob was horrified to see the words "insurance scam" only a few hits from the top when he entered his name into Google. The phrase came from an article he insists was totally false. But his attempts to reach the author, the editor, and Google itself have proven unsuccessful.

"Makes you feel angry," said Gottlob. "Makes you feel like you can't get the truth out there."

And let's get some more Fordham in there, if you don't mind,

The truth, say young Web-surfers, is that the Internet tends to be written in permanent ink. Rebecca Bates, a student at Fordham said it's all about knowing the risks before you even log on for the night.

"You're putting yourself out there," she said. "You should have the knowledge that anything you put out there, anyone can see."

But wait, what about me, me, me? 

Professor Strate offered other advice. Use an alias, or alternate screen name, if you plan to post anything too controversial. That way, it won't show up in a search for your name.

Yes!  I get the last word in, sort of.  Use an alias.  Like the author of Sex Vixens from Outer Space did, ha ha.  Ah, the irony of it all!

So, all in all, this was a good story, and great fun, and maybe did somebody some good somewhere.  And you can go check out the video on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A80eS9qA26w and like it or comment or whatever it is that people are doing nowadays.

Or just go google yourself.  I mean it.

Oh, and stay tuned for more on this subject later on, including something big coming up a few months from now.  No, I can't tell you now, you'll just have to wait.  But when the time comes, I may call upon you to do a service for me...  And I'm not talking google here.

And Vice Versa

Neil Postman began his book, Teaching as a Conserving Activity, by saying that he and Charlie Weingartner should have ended their popular co-authored volume, Teaching as a Subversive Activity, by saying, or vice versa, because the argument that they were making was true in the context of its times, but could be wrong at a different time (and in fact was wrong a decade later when he wrote the Conserving book).  And true to this principle, he ended Teaching as a Conserving Activity by saying, or vice versa! 

At least, that's the memory that was triggered when I saw the following video, The Future of Publishing, which begins with the standard notion that the age of print is dead, and halfway through provides the vice versa in a very creative manner.   There's no real argument being made here, it's just a clever way to show how you can frame your view on the future of publishing in a positive or negative way, and has nothing to do with the reality of book sales, consumer research for the publishing industry, or the evolving electronic media environment.  

Anyway, it's fun to watch.  Here, take a look, but be sure to watch and read the whole thing:

The description for the video over on YouTube reads:

This video was prepared by the UK branch of Dorling Kindersley Books and produced by Khaki Films (http://www.thekhakigroup.com/). Originally meant solely for a DK sales conference, the video was such a hit internally that it is now being shared externally. We hope you enjoy it (and make sure you watch it up to at least the halfway point, there's a surprise!).

 As it turns out, The Future of Publishing was inspired by another video that I had seen on YouTube a while ago, Lost Generation.  Here it is:

The description for this video explains that it "was created for the AARP U@50 video contest and placed second," and that it's "based on the Argentinian Political Advertisement "The Truth" by RECREAR."  So, that's where this all started.  And thanks to YouTube, we can take a look at it as well.  Here's the original, Spanish version:

And the description listed the following:

Title: TRUTH
Advertiser: RECREAR
Product or Service: POLITICAL MESSAGE
Entrant Company, City: SAVAGLIO\TBWA, Buenos Aires
Country: ARGENTINA
Advertising Agency, City: SAVAGLIO\TBWA, Buenos Aires
Country: ARG This excellent political advertisement, it won the silver lion in the Cannes Lions Contest 2006.

And there's even an English translation available on YouTube:

And there you have it, and vice versa brought to life, or at least turned into an audiovisual reversi!

The irony in all this is that the Penguin version that I began with, The Future of Publishing, is an attempt to argue for the continued appeal of book publishing by presenting text in a way that print media cannot, as a moving image.

The Scoop About Social Media

It was great having social media PR maven Paull Young visit my class at Fordham University today, he's always a big hit with the students, and not just because of his Aussie accent.  Anyway, he used a YouTube video in his presentation that I don't recall seeing before, one that provides a basic explanation of social media (which is the focus of my class, after all).  It's called Social Media in Plain English.  And here it is:

It's a sweet metaphor for relaying the scoop about social media, to be sure, and clearly, it's an explanation geared towards the business sector more so than it's aimed at us intellectual and creative types, not to mention your basic amateur social mediator.   And, as they explain it, it's a "simple story that illustrates the forces shaping social media. This video comes in an unbranded 'presentation quality' version that can be licensed for use in the workplace."  

If you're interested, go check out the website for CommonCraft, where they say, "our product is explanation."  In this instance, at least, I say, kudos for their production values.

The Word and the Nonverbal

It's been over 35 years since I took my first, introductory course on Communication, taught by Jack Barwind, in the first semester of my freshman year at Cornell University (and all the rest, you might say, is history, after a fashion).  That course introduced me to many key ideas and theorists, including general semantics, general systems theory, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, cognitive dissonance theory, Aristotle's rhetoric, Paul Watzlawick, Daniel Boorstin, Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis, Jacques Ellul, and much more.

One of the topics covered was nonverbal communication, and it was then that I was first introduced to the "fact" that 93% of all communication is nonverbal.  I put "fact" in quotation marks in this instance because that particular fact is in dispute, and that dispute is the subject of this blog.  But in fact, all facts are at best tentative, and technically are not necessarily true--a statement of fact is a descriptive statement (also known as a proposition) that is subject to verification or refutation.  If it's specific, for example if I say it is raining at Fordham University's Rose Hill campus in the Bronx right now (say, 10 AM on February 18, 2010), it's possible to check it out and determine whether the statement is true.  If it's general, for example, if I say that whenever dark clouds gather, rain will follow, we are incapable of checking every possible instance that fits the generalization, past, present, and future, and so we can never prove it true, but according to Karl Popper we can prove it false by finding just one example that doesn't fit (although even that possibility is subject to falsification).

The facts about facts is one of the topics covered in general semantics, and it's also the case that in general semantics the term nonverbal is often used to refer to perception, what we abstract out of events in spacetime (aka reality) through our senses, before applying verbal names to our perceptions and categorizing them with labels.  This usage goes back to a time before the concept of nonverbal communication became commonplace (some at first wrote it as non-verbal).

But in the field of communication, drawing on behavioral studies from researchers trained in psychology, nonverbal communication has been established as an area of study since the 60s.  Defined negatively, by what it is not rather than what it is, nonverbal communication refers to all forms of communicative behavior except for our words.  Nonverbal communication is typically divided into a number of subfields, including

• Kinesics (more popularly known as body language, although calling it a "language" is considered a misnomer, this is all about body movements, including gestures, posture, facial expressions, and eye gaze)

• Haptics (the use of touch)

• Proxemics (the use of space, including the distances between us, use of furniture, interior design, architecture, even city planning)

• Chronemics (the use of time)

• Paralanguage (tone of voice and other vocal characteristics and sounds that we make other than our words)

• Object language (it includes clothing, even hairstyle, and any physical object whose display or use communicates something, such as a wedding ring, or a fancy car used as a status symbol)

This list could be expanded, and the territory could be, and has been, divided up in different ways, but this is the way I used to present it when I taught introductory communication classes, and my goal here is to simply provide a sense of the kinds of phenomena that are covered under this heading. 

I should note that apart from studying these aspects of nonverbal communication separately, they can and have been studied in combination with each other, and in their interaction with verbal communication.  One of the practical applications of nonverbal communication is in the detection of deception, lying in other words, and the expert in the field, who I recall hearing about back in my freshman year, is Paul Ekman.  I highly recommend his book Telling Lies.  And if you've seen, or heard of the Fox network TV show Lie to Me, the lead character, Cal Lightman, is based on Professor Ekman.

One of the pioneers in nonverbal communication, and intercultural communication, Edward T. Hall, is considered foundational in the field of media ecology, his fellow anthropologist, Ray Birdwhistell, was also on the original media ecology reading list.  Both are considered part of the Palo Alto Group, a loose coalition of scholars associated with Gregory Bateson, following up on the groundbreaking work of Norbert Wiener (who coined the term cybernetics), which also included Paul Watzlawick, and Erving Goffman.  I previously posted a tribute to Hall, who passed away last summer (see Hall of Fame)--Hall coined the term proxemics, and while he didn't coin the corresponding term chronemics, he pioneered the study of the human use of time as well as space.  Birdwhistell coined the term kinesics.  Ekman's work, I should add, was also recommended for anyone interested in this area back when Neil Postman and his colleagues had their media ecology doctoral program, and I continue to recommend him to this day.

Another pioneer in nonverbal research who figured prominently in the field of communication (but not in media ecology) is Albert Mehrabian.  And certainly one of his claims to fame is the fact that most textbook discussions of nonverbal communication begin with the fact that 93% of all communication is nonverbal, a fact that I remember from my freshman communication class, a fact that originates with research conduced by Mehrabian. 

So, now, this past summer, there was a video that came to my attention, circulated by some of the public relations people I'm in touch with on Twitter and other social media, that claims to bust the Mehrabian myth.  And I've been meaning to put up a post about it, so here it is:

Now, I have no problem with the point that these folks at CreativityWorks, which apparently consists of two British communication professionals, Martin Shovel and Martha Leyton, are making.  I've seen more than enough presentations by folks, including communication scholars, who seem to think that a snazzy PowerPoint presentation is more important than any content that they have to present, or that it can mask their apparent lack of content.  

But I do find the video overly dramatic, in that I never felt that the "Mehrabian myth" really dominated people's thinking all that much.  It just struck me as a way to make the point that nonverbal communication plays an important role in interaction, and that something that we tend not to pay attention to at all is in fact something that we ought to pay some attention to.  As an undergraduate, I didn't think much of the 93% figure one way or another, except insofar as it might be the answer to a question on a test.  As a graduate student and professor, I treated it as a metaphor, a way of saying that "a lot" of our communication is nonverbal, noting that the use of a statistic was an example of scientism, trying to sound scientific in order to make the claim more persuasive than it would otherwise be.  

I mean, how can you measure how much communication occurs in any given situation.  Sure, you can set up operational definitions and conduct research, but communication is, in my view, a qualitative phenomenon that cannot be quantified.  And that is even more true for meaning, whatever I. A. Richards's well intentioned efforts to apply scientific method to literary study in the early 20th century.  I just never took the figure of 93% seriously, and I'm surprised that anyone else did, although I guess I shouldn't be.

A related analogy is that of the tip of the iceberg, the point being that the communication that we are aware of is just the tip of the iceberg, the majority of our communication going on below the level of our awareness.  The point being made is that human communication is subtle and pervasive, understanding communication is not obvious, even though we engage in communication constantly, and that's why we need to study the topic.  A further analogy could be made to the psychoanalytic notion of the unconscious mind, which nonverbal communication is largely analogous to.  You might say that 93% of mental activity is unconscious, and that would be consistent with a Freudian view, and perhaps also line up fairly well with research in neuroscience.  And again, the point really is that we are unconscious in regard to the much of our communication behavior, and we could become aware of more of it than we otherwise are.


In any event, as a graduate student I also eventually learned that, while the scientistic "fact" of 93% was generally accepted by communication theorists, whose social/behavioral science approach dominated the northeast region of the United States, which is where I did all of my studies, scholars in the related area of rhetorical criticism, who were strongest in the south and midwest, objected vehemently to the inclusion of nonverbal behavior under the heading of communication.  Coming from a tradition of speech and rhetoric, they believed that words were the only true concern for our field, that other forms of behavior should be left to the psychologists, that nonverbal expression typically occurred without conscious purpose and therefore was not part of their humanistic focus.  I found this line of thinking quite interesting, even if I did not agree with it.


The significance of nonverbal communication, though, would be in its role as metacommunication, to use Watzlawick's term, communication about communication, communication that tells us how to interpret the content (which is mostly verbal) and also establishes and maintains how we relate to one another.  The same words mean very different things if my tone of voice and facial expression indicate that I am angry, or sad, or calm, or sarcastic, or asking a question as opposed to making an authoritative statement.  

Essentially, it is difficult if not impossible to establish effective communication unless we first establish some kind of relationship, and at least have an intuitive understanding of its nature.  On a somewhat different but related note, if you want to see if a television comedian is really funny or not, turn off the sound.  If you watch, say, Seinfeld that way, you can see how the facial expressions, gestures, and actions of Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer are still extremely humorous.  This also accounts for the great success that Monty Python's Flying Circus enjoyed in the United States.  American viewers of the British sketch show did not get any of the topical references, and we couldn't understand what the hell they were saying for much of the time, but their behavior and voices were (and continue to be), simply stated, hilarious.


The Mehrabian myth about nonverbal communication only makes sense when you include an understanding of metacommunication.  To use a verbal example, if I call you a jerk, that's communication, that's content.  If I then say, I'm just kidding, that's a verbal form of metacommunication, telling you something about how to interpret the content, and also about how we relate to each other (on a friendly basis).  If I just said I'm just kidding,though, without the content, it would have no meaning, it only works when it modifies a content-level message.  This is the point that the video makes when it shows you the cartoon guy talking without hearing his words.


But we should also recall that animals communicate entirely through nonverbal communication.  If a strange dog growls at you and bares his teeth, there are no words, but I think you get the message.  Babies also communicate in this way.  When a baby cries, we know that he or she wants something, and then we proceed to see if it's milk, or a diaper change, or just some company.


This all relates, in media ecology terms, to McLuhan's saying that the medium is the message.  Animals and babies communicate through the medium of nonverbal communication, and so do we as adults.  The medium of language is also the content of speech, and writing (McLuhan noted that the content of a medium includes another medium), the medium of spoken language is the content of our bodies (produced by the human body), and in this sense our words are powerfully influenced by the nonverbal.  

The technologizing of the word means that other nonverbal factors play a part as well, such as the choice of writing system, use of spaces between words, line breaks, paragraphing, punctuation marks, capitalization, handwriting, typeface and font, type of writing surface, other physical characteristics of the print medium, and other display, transmission, and storage characteristics of the electronic medium.  This aspect of the nonverbal goes far beyond the issue of snazzy PowerPoints, or dramatic delivery.


And that brings me back to the point made by CreativityWorks, and I want to conclude by saying that they are absolutely right, content counts, words are our most important form of communication.  The medium is the message does not mean that we should ignore content, and as Neil Postman has made clear, words and language, as a medium, can be characterized as content-centered, in fact.  So, bravo to Mr. Shovel and Ms. Leyton, I wish you the best of success with your consulting, and I add my endorsement 100% to your message, but only 93% to your nonverbals.