Discourse in the blogosphere and the protest effect

The lowest and most debased modes of blog communication might be called the protest effect.

A few observations about protests:

1. Protests are neither personal nor individualistic (duh!).  There are "signs" and "ideas" and "crowds" and  
    "the opposing team."

2. The content of the protest signs is not intended to be rationally persuasive.

3. The content of the man's speech who holds the megaphone is not intended to be rationally persuasive.
    Perhaps if two opposing men hold a megaphone, they might exchange some rhetorical volleys.

Now imagine that every man is given a megaphone, and you'll understand the level of communication happening on some forums and blogs.  This is especially true of apologetics blogs, where even a post about ice cream is bound to end in the classic show down between "your world view led to Hitler!" and "you believe bronze age fairy tales!"

One thing is for sure, once a blog has a large group of disagreeing readers...it can be a big problem.   The blog administrator has to decide whether to invest time deleting or moderating comments, or just disable them completely.  Perhaps in a future post I will develop some more thoughts on debating in the comment box.

Whack-a-mole Polemics (part 3)

"The present age… may be styled, with great propriety, the Age of Authors; for, perhaps, there was never a time when men of all degrees of ability, of every kind of education, of every profession and employment were posting with ardour so general to the press…"(Samuel Johnson, The Adventurer, 1753)

Fleshing out my ideas on blogging and public discourse has proven challenging, because the arguments intersect with debates about the Information Age and technology.  A strict series of post will only keep me anxious to make progress quickly; but if blogging has taught me anything it is this: the desire to publish quickly should be met with the stronger desire to write well.

Regardless, here is a conclusion I'm toying around with:
Typing on a computer tends to elicit a "think as as you go" mentality that normally characterizes verbal communication.  As mentioned in my recent poem: before the backspace key, writers were more apt to fully conceive of a thought before recording it.  Being 27 years old, I can't conceive of a world without word processors so this is a difficult thing to consider.  What role does the conscious and subconscious play in these activities (in short, I believe written communication requires more attentiveness than verbal communication)?  Does the speed with which we can record thoughts affect the quality of our thinking?  Regardless, it seems that blog activities (such as the predictable rhetorical volleys in the comment box) are closer to verbal dialog than traditional written exchange.  The urgency to respond to anything on the internet is much more immediate than with other written media.  Of course, what tends to be the case is not always the case.  Many blogs out there contradict these assumptions.

Whack-a-mole Polemics (part 2)

This is the second post in a series that explores blogging as a medium of public discourse.  Some terms need to be defined, but hopefully I can avoid being pelted by featherless bipeds.

Whack-a-mole Polemics (part 1)

The blogosphere abounds with polemics. That is, many blogs are authored by persons whose primary purpose is to dispute views in opposition to their own.

Neil Postman wrote a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business in which he argues that the mediums of public discourse (such as television and printed text) shape the content of that discourse.  I won't dissect his arguments here, but here is the basic idea:

"...every technology has a philosophy which is given expression in how the technology makes people use their minds, in what it makes us do with our bodies, in how it codifies the world, in which of our senses it amplifies, in which of our emotional and intellectual tendencies it disregards. This idea is the sum and substance of what the great Catholic prophet, Marshall McLuhan meant when he coined the famous sentence, 'The medium is the message.'"[1]

Most of his analysis of television's shortcomings revolve around the non-propositional nature of television's content.  Images flash on the screen with no relevance to what appeared before them (consider the average fast paced news program with commercial breaks).  With a medium so rich in imagery, the overriding goal can become entertainment and amusement.  This outcome alarms Postman for many reasons.  For instance, when the public is expected to hold informed opinions about current political issues yet they rely on television for the majority of their information.  On the other hand, printed text is held in high regard by Postman, since it facilitates rational discourse.  "In a culture dominated by print, public discourse tends to be characterized by a coherent, orderly arrangement of facts and ideas." [2]

Let's assume his thesis is correct.  How can we apply his analysis to public discourse in the blogosphere?  One philosopher and blogger made the Shakespearean observation that "brevity is the soul of blogging."  I would agree.  Over the next series of posts, I will briefly jot down my thoughts on public discourse in the blogosphere.


[1] Postman, Neil. "Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change." The New Technologies and the Human Person: Communicating the Faith in the New Millennium. Colorado, Denver. 1998. Address. (online transcript)
[2] Ibid. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. 20th An. Ed. Penguin (Non-Classics), 2005. 51. Print.