Sunday, April 04, 2004
Living in public and "The Kos Scream"
Matt Stollar (via Atrios) has a brilliant post on the "The Kos Scream" (below) . To summarize, Stollar contrasts the (mostly winger) talk show sphere with the (mostly liberal) blogosphere, and points out that unlike radio, blogging creates a history.
The millions of words that Kos has posted over the years are all accessible over the Internet. Those words have gained him the trust of hundreds of thousands of readers.
But they are also targets of opportunity for any winger attack machine with data mining capability: A single ill-considered comment can be taken out of context, distorted, and magnified—just like the SCLM magnified The Dean Scream (and then apologized for pushing a distorted non-story well after the deed, and the damage, were done).
The Dean Scream only happened on TV. By contrast, The Kos Scream happened on the Internet, and so the attack machine was able to go after not only Kos himself, but anyone who is or was linked to him. And, by the "six degrees of separation" anyone is going to be linked to him. Meaning that any degree of distortion and magnification is possible. Talk about handing a winger a loaded gun...
What to do? It's the very strength of blogging—our willingness to put ourselves on the line in public, and to build a community through shared words—that has just been used against us. And it will only get worse, the wingers being who and what they are.
Oddly, when Stollar looks for a solution, he comes up with the following:
Stollar has an interesting idea, but aren't newspapers really too slow for this? And will they defend us?
Since we can take more smears from the wingers for granted, can't the blogosphere come up with an answer on its own? Like an RSS-driven smear alert? Readers?
UPDATE I'm reminded by alert reader MJS to mention that Mr. Stollar oddly omits The Howler from his discussion. Seems to me, though, that Bob Somersby is more about SCLMology than defending the blogosphere from winger attack. Still, he might welcome a new beat.
The millions of words that Kos has posted over the years are all accessible over the Internet. Those words have gained him the trust of hundreds of thousands of readers.
But they are also targets of opportunity for any winger attack machine with data mining capability: A single ill-considered comment can be taken out of context, distorted, and magnified—just like the SCLM magnified The Dean Scream (and then apologized for pushing a distorted non-story well after the deed, and the damage, were done).
The Dean Scream only happened on TV. By contrast, The Kos Scream happened on the Internet, and so the attack machine was able to go after not only Kos himself, but anyone who is or was linked to him. And, by the "six degrees of separation" anyone is going to be linked to him. Meaning that any degree of distortion and magnification is possible. Talk about handing a winger a loaded gun...
What to do? It's the very strength of blogging—our willingness to put ourselves on the line in public, and to build a community through shared words—that has just been used against us. And it will only get worse, the wingers being who and what they are.
Oddly, when Stollar looks for a solution, he comes up with the following:
I don't have an answer to the combination of a reactionary media environment smacking up against an open and free wheeling discussion chamber. It'll probably be solved by a long-term cultural change in the media environment. The best I can do in terms of practical solutions is wonder if it might be a good idea for the major papers to assign someone to a 'smear' beat, so readers can better understand how the manipulation of information pushes the political culture. Because it's clear that smearing someone is now easier than ever, and this increasing ease-of-smear is going to continue to create uncomfortable pressure for all sides.
Stollar has an interesting idea, but aren't newspapers really too slow for this? And will they defend us?
Since we can take more smears from the wingers for granted, can't the blogosphere come up with an answer on its own? Like an RSS-driven smear alert? Readers?
UPDATE I'm reminded by alert reader MJS to mention that Mr. Stollar oddly omits The Howler from his discussion. Seems to me, though, that Bob Somersby is more about SCLMology than defending the blogosphere from winger attack. Still, he might welcome a new beat.
