How Do We Stop the Web Conversation Becoming Monotonous?

Posted on September 7, 2006
Filed Under For Argument's Sake, People's Web 2.0 |

I had a mail from Gabe Rivera. memeorandum designer, today on the issue of how blogs and posts are selected on memeorandum and techmeme. Gabe’s response highlights a problem that is not being addressed in any apparent way so let’s address it. Here is the snip from Memeorandum:

(Memeorandum of course is one of the most successful buzz trackers on the web and highlights blogs and posts that are attracting attention).

“If you’re a publisher and want to be included, the best thing you can do is engage other writers in your topic area. Write things in response to what they write, or things that just interest them. And having done this, ask your peers for links.”

Q: Who’s included? - blog.memeorandum.com

Why do I think this is a problem? One of the issues we face writing for papers in the old media is that editors are typically conservative. When I worked in television, you’d see editors scour the front pages of all the newspapers before going into an editorial meeting (journalists too).

When I’ve worked in print I’ve noticed the TV rolling news is always on. And all those editors (print, new, current affairs) listen to radio news and “agenda setting” radio shows.

What they’re doing is shaping their content around what other people are saying. They do this because they fear alienating any part of the audience, so keep things tight. By and large it is a business decision that has some journalists tearing their hair out. Many editors are wedded to consensus politics.

You can quickly surmise that the technology that logs the web buzz encourages pretty much the same kind of formula.

Write around topics other people are discussing is what editors already do on TV, in print and on radio. It’s a disappointment to see it being integral to the way web 2.0 works but it seems inevitable.

I discussed these issues a couple of times lately, by mail and phone, with Ted Shelton over at Personalbee. Personalbee will be launching a suite of make-you-own online magazine tools next week. Personalbee is in effect a kind of blog aggregator tool.

Now, I think Ted has a great product and I intend using it but once again it automatically highlights blog aggregators that are most popular and has no way to automatically turn the spotlight on dissenting voices or marginalised voices.

Netvibes, to date the most popular start page (another form of blog aggregator) provides blogs on its default start page that are the widely acknowledged popular blogs. Webwag does the same, with some modification and a little daring.

Two things are happening here though. Sites focus on popularity because it guarantees them the attention of the popular vote, so to speak. It makes business sense.

But by doing so they consolidate rather than diversify debate in the sense that the most trafficked sites will be dealing with similar subjects, and new writers are encouraged by the system to engage with those subjects, and it consolidates the stuff that will be debated - at a time when we need to diversify what we think and care about.

The new system is building the old consensus and in my view it is doing so too quickly. It is designed to do so, which is worse.

Many of the journalists who feel frustration with traditional media feel it because there’s no way to crack the consensus and move the discussion (any discussion) on.

If we were living in a happy, just world then you’d probably put your feet up and say, who cares? As it is we have many, many marginalised voices and we only pay lip service to that marginalisation when segments of our society (local, global, glocal) erupt in protest or when they are engulfed in scandal or when we’re confronted with gross examples of maltreatment. In other words when “things” have gone too far.

Fairness itself is now a taboo area for public debate which shows how far things have gone. As George Clooney recently asked what’s wrong with being liberal, in the old fashioned sense. But how do we reignite the old liberal humanist agenda?

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