Politics & Language: Political Abuse and the Web – Shelley Gare

Shelley Gare is the founding editor of The Australian Review of Books, columnist and author of The Triumph of Airheads. On Tuesday 15 March 2011, The Sydney Institute held a discussion on the use of language in political debate developing with a multi-media world, the free use of the web and 24-hour news outlets. Shelley Gare joined Bernard Keane, Canberra correspondent for Crikey.com., and Tom Switzer, editor of the Spectator Australia, to consider what might be happening to public discourse and the use of language.

POLITICS AND LANGUAGE: POLITICAL ABUSE AND THE WEB

SHELLEY GARE

I’ve only been blogging since last November – and then only in three blogs – but I have been writing columns for various newspapers since the late 1990s. I also took an early interest in the Internet, paying for myself to go to Harvard for an internet conference in early 1996. What fascinated me then, about the world wide web, was the notion that you could put a story up on-line and it could be accompanied by video and audio, it could link to other articles and background, and stories would not have to be jammed into the space allotted on printed pages.

That’s what I thought the web was going to be about. I had no idea we would be where we are now: with all the social networking sites, the blogging, the group threads, the non-stop and all too often anonymous comments attached to anything from on-line newspaper articles to blogs that encourage them, wikileaks…

I want to step back a little bit and instead of zeroing in on blogs and blogging, the good and the bad, I want to look at the bigger picture which I reckon has brought us to where we are right now. And I’d say that where we are is in a state of confusion, irritation, uncertainty and deep unease. A state where people are easily angered by others

and where to disagree with someone is the equivalent of a medieval knight throwing down his gauntlet.

In times like these, any tactics seem approved. Hence what we saw last night with the Prime Minister on the ABC’s Monday night programme Q and A – and what we often see on Q and A. Doe anyone seriously think that’s the way to treat a Prime Minister? Does anyone seriously think this had anything to do with devising the best policies for our country’s future?

So how did we get to here? Here’s one theory. I read the other day that in 1844, when Samuel Morse sent the first public long distance telegraph message, from Washington to Baltimore, he and his friends were awe-struck by the experience. The line chosen for the telegraph message was: “What has God wrought?” Physiologists were just as awed. They compared the transmitters of the electrical telegraph to human nerve endings. They thought of the messages as human thoughts and they decided that the entire telegraph network was a new kind of central nervous system. Of course, it wasn’t. It just was a way of sending messages. And unless humans did things at either end and along the way, the messages didn’t get sent or didn’t get read.

I don’t know what it is about us humans. We are so ready to take the miracle of the human-being for granted – we don’t cherish young brains; we don’t nurture every child on earth so it grows up capable of using all its human abilities and talents to the full – but we are ready to marvel with dropped jaws about anything that smacks of technology and complex theory.

(And, incidentally, anything that also seems capable of making piles of money, for at least some canny people.)

I found the tale of Samuel Morse and the physiologists in a 2009 book called Cyburbia by a British social forecaster, James Harkin. The book’s sub-title is: The Dangerous Idea That’s Changing How We Live and Who We Are. He writes, “Much of the rapturous confusion between man and electrical machine explains the phantoms that have grown up around our new communications technology.” The internet and the web are amazing inventions which have changed our lives dramatically, made many things easier and, in many other cases, made things possible for the first time.

But there’s so much rapture surrounding the internet – and in particular the global communication and swapping of information on the web that – shades of Samuel Morse and Co – we are falling to our knees in front of this technological breakthrough as if it has outstripped the human beings who created it. This is a dicey time for journalists. And, unfortunately, during my working life I forgot to learn how to do anything-else except journalism and so now I have a keen and necessary interest in what the internet is doing to the art of communication, to story-telling, to research and to commentary. I want to keep that baby in the bathwater.

Whenever I’m asked if I tweet, I say no, and then I try to explain that I like to have at least some time away from my computer and email, when I can think, day-dream, ponder, use my imagination, blank out and just generally catch up with what my brain is already processing. (There’s a reason why so many of us say we get our best ideas – or crack a problem – when we’re in the shower: we’ve given the brain downtime to get itself into top gear.)

But when I admit this to people who do tweet, it’s as if I’m admitting something shameful – that yes, I’m human; I like this old fashioned thing I call a body and brain; I’m in awe of my synapses and neural pathways – and I treat them with respect. Much as I am grateful to the internet and web for where they have helped me – especially with email, research, checking facts and also in having my stories, and now my blog up on-line so my writing can be read around the world by people who have never even visited Australia – I am wary of the disjuncts I keep seeing opening up around me like chasms. I’m especially wary of the way I see us humans discounting our own innate abilities in order to prostrate ourselves in front of something which – in many cases – is actively working against those abilities.

When I switched on the ABC’s Q and A last night, to watch Julia Gillard, I thought for a few blessed minutes – thank goodness – no twitter feed. Obviously, the powers that be – either at the ABC or in the Prime Minister’s office – had decreed that the PM would be able to speak and answer questions without a stream of ticker-tape commentary underneath her face. But it was not to be. Either the tweeters were a little awed – or perhaps the ABC’s moderators were being super-cautious – but it took a minute or so before the tweets started. “The red fox meets the silver fox – tonight’s Q and A is going to be awesome!” And: “I’ve got my fanciest pyjamas on for Julia!”

There were a couple of pertinent comments about the carbon tax but mostly the tweets fell into either the jokey camp or they told us how we should be feeling. Even commentator Leslie Cannold – or someone with that handle – tweeted to inform me that Q&A is no longer a viewing choice, it is a civic duty. And at the very end, Laurie Oakes – or someone with the same name as the Nine pundit – tweeted: “Agree with her or not, this a pretty impressive performance.” Thanks Leslie and Laurie. What drives this? It makes me want to clutch my head.  That twitter feed on Q and A demonstrates to me the worst of what our amazing new world of information and interactive communication, of commentary and blogging, is all about. The twitter feed is mostly facile and frivolous and sometimes snarky. It too often demonstrates a lack of respect for both the people on the panel and the viewing audience’s intelligence. It also displays the kind of rampant narcissism that you just know is bellowing – hey look, that’s my tweet up there on national TV!

But the main thing is: it’s not needed. And yet … I admit, the program would be very different without it. For a start, it would require more concentration. The tweets are the equivalent of distracting sugar cubes to make the medicine go down. In the event of the panelists getting serious – too serious – well, the ABC producers can always rely on the tweets to supply some light relief. This kind of stuff is addictive. We get used to it. And then we miss it when it isn’t there.

When I started my blog for The Sydney Institute late last year, a friend wrote in saying that I would get more readers if the site allowed comments. He’s probably right. It can feel odd to read opinion pieces and blogs – even features – on-line when they don’t have a string of comments at the end. Even I notice that when I’m engrossed. But what I also notice is that without the pages of comments, rattling away, ranging from invective to smart-ass to occasionally thoughtful to plain off the air, I am left in peace to think about the actual article. The problem with the internet, with blogging, tweeting, commenting, is not those things in isolation – it’s their effect on everything else we do.

Every revolution – whether it’s French, Russian or now, technological – is pushed along by fanatics who claim that the revolution signifies there is now a whole new world order. That all the things that used to matter, no longer do. And that anyone who doesn’t believe this – and understand this – is doomed. Doomed to live in the past; doomed not to be part of a bright new future that promises opportunity, excitement and a soft feathered bed forever. And this very act of chucking away all that has mattered in the past, including codes of conduct and long held beliefs – wisdom indeed – ends up subverting the very aims of the original revolution.

Bonjour M’sier Robespierre. Welcome Comrade Stalin. With the technological revolution or the information revolution, here we are all over again, being persuaded, nudged, pushed, and bullied into believing we need to turn our back on the past. Totally. I’m often exhausted after I read The Australian’s Media section on Monday because of its numerous breathless stories about the latest internet breakthrough, latest gadget, latest techo bizo whizzo web deal…

Then I realise to my delight that I have the rest of the newspaper in my hands and I can read it. And the newspaper only works because it carries stories about the world and human-beings and it needs human-beings to write those stories… And human-beings who know how to spell, use grammar, check facts and communicate stories and opinion clearly and vividly.

This last weekend, in The Weekend Australian, I read an extract from Niall Ferguson’s new book Civilisation: The West and the Rest. His argument is that the rise of the West is the pre-eminent historical phenomenon of the second half of the second millennium after Christ … but western civilization appears to have lost confidence in itself. He says, “The grand narrative of Western ascent has fallen out of fashion.” The greatest threat to western civilization, he says, is our own faint-heartedness and the historical ignorance that fuels that.

The piece made me go away and think. It made me get up and dig out other books on my bookshelf in which other writers have questioned where western civilization is heading. I discussed it with another friend. And at no stage, did I wish, that instead of reading Ferguson’s extract in the newspaper, in hard copy, that I had instead read it on-line with 346 or so attached disputatious comments.

Just as the twitter-feed on Q and A distracts the audience and undermines what is being said, simply by being distracting, on-line comments all too often dwarf and overshadow the original article, often making it seemingly redundant or irrelevant as post-ers rush to use it simply as a convenient leaping off point for their own arguments.

Read all the comments on a blog that has dealt with something controversial and you’ll mostly end up with long versions of “he says, she says, he says, she says”. In your brain, it turns to sludge. (In fact, because of tonight’s debate, I did check out an interview with Niall Ferguson on The Guardian’s website and that attracted 125 comments. The first one was a criticism, the second told the first to bone up, and the third wrote: “A final flatulent fanfare from a world order that is collapsing before our eyes.
Predictable,
Boring,
Wrong.” The fourth gave Ferguson a boot. The fifth gave him reserved praise but told him how he could have improved the ending of his other book, The Ascent of Money ...

By now I was cross-eyed. I looked through the other 121 comments and ironically, most bore out Niall Ferguson’s argument. If western civilisation is relying on this lot to save it, or even defend it, God help it. Earlier I mentioned disjuncts. By that I meant, the disjunct between what we are told about the internet and what is actually happening.

For instance, the web is supposed to be about communication. But it is actually devaluing communication because there are simply too many voices demanding to be heard, and not enough thought going into what is being communicated as articles are pasted willy-nilly without the benefit of editors or filters of any kind.

It is supposed to be about sharing knowledge. And yet the web – as it exists today – challenges the very idea that there is a hierarchy of knowledge and that one person may have a greater right to express themselves than another on a certain subject. Everything is flattened to the status of “that person’s opinion” no matter how much or how little research and analysis has been done. It is supposed to be about the world having a conversation. But true conversation requires listening.

It is supposed to be about efficiency and saving time… Hah! Hollow laugh. How many hours do we all lose each week reading blogs, emails, internet sites …? Drafting comments? And how much of that activity achieves anything? When Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals came out in 2009, I was impressed by the thousands of comments that it attracted on The Huffington Post website. It’s a compelling indictment of factory farming. But since then I’ve thought, what if – instead of commenting – those people had instead bestirred themselves to write original letters – that is, not form letters – to their local congressman or woman, telling him or her about the book, and quoting its arguments.

Well, it would have been very nice for Mr Foer’s sales, of course – but I bet it would have helped make things a helluva lot nicer for chickens, pigs and cows than all that commentary. Do we blog and comment to make a difference – or just to keep in with our mates and reassure ourselves? Is anyone telling? The web is supposed to be about community and collaboration, according to Time magazine.

But even The Australian’s redoubtable columnist Emma Jane – formerly Emma Tom – cracked the week before last, tired of internet venom. She wrote – and it’s a very good piece, check it out if you can – “What used to be called ‘hate speech’ is now a run-of the-mill online article comment section.” By the way, the article appeared on The Punch website and attracted 78 comments most of which were jeering … Nice.

(On that note, let me read you out guidelines for commentary from the political group blog Larvatus Prodeo. “Please keep discussion civilized …” The site provides a precise list of unacceptable behaviour – but Andrew Bolt still gets called a racist lying bigot.)

Miranda Devine, now back at The Daily Telegraph, tells me she no longer uses that delightful device – hyperbole – when she writes her columns because it gets wilfully quoted out of context. Wherever there are huge crowds and confusion – as there are on the internet and on the web – and when there is uncertainty, as there is now, it’s the bullying voices that often triumph in the end.

As every dictator knows, human beings can be horrible. It’s indeed the very trait that every dictator depends upon. Whether it was Hitler’s regime or the East German regime policed by the Stasi, they survived because of huge networks of informers, ready to dob in anyone if it was to their own advantage or safety. People, if encouraged and given licence, will do horrible things to other human-beings. The more we tolerate the vitriol and verbal violence on the net; the more we say to people that this behaviour is okay, the more of this behaviour we will see. Any tactic becomes permissible. It is even worse when we seem to be saying that such behaviour is hip, cool, the New Way.

It’s not. There’s a very easy solution to all this. Believe that humans are mightier than machines. Certainly believe that revolutions are part of human progress – but yes, keep the baby in the bathwater. Harness the internet and the web, just as we’ve harnessed – or should have harnessed – every other breakthrough invention. The idea is that the web should take us further towards civilization. Not backwards.