I just posted Rupert Murdoch vs. The Web, over at Linux Journal. In it I suggest that the Murdoch story (played mostly as Bing vs Google) is a red herring, and that the real challenge is to free the Web and ourselves from dependencies from giant companies I liken to volcanoes:

We’re Pompeians, Krakatoans, Montserratans, building cities and tilling farms on the slopes of active volcanoes. Always suckers for stories, we’d rather take sides in wars between competing volcanoes than build civilization on more flat and solid ground where there’s room enough for everybody.

Google and Bing are both volcanoes. Both grace the Web’s landscape with lots of fresh and fertile ground. They are good to have in many ways. But they are not the Earth below. They are not what gives us gravity.

I think one problem here is a disconnect between belief systems about markets, and the stories that arise from them.

One system believes a free market is Your Choice of Captor. In this camp I put both the make-it/take-it mentality (where “winners” are rewarded and “losers” punished) of the Wall Street Journal (which a few months ago looked upon the regulated duopolies for Internet access as the “free market” at work) and those who see business (or corporations, or capitalism, or all three) as a problem and look to government — another monopoly — for remedy from these evils in the marketplace. In other words, I lump both the left and the right in here, along with the conflicts between them.

The other system sees markets as settings for human activity: the locations, both real and virtual, where people and their organizations meet to do business, make culture, and build civilization. Here I put nearly everybody who contributed the structural agreements that made the Internet possible, and who truly understand what it is and how it works, even if they can’t all agree on what metaphors to use for it. I also include all who have contributed, and continue to contribute, to the free and open code bases with which we are building out our networked world. While political beliefs among members of this system may sort somewhere along the right-vs.-left axis, what they do to build the world is orthogonal to that axis. That’s one big reason why that work escapes notice.

The distinction I see here aligns well with Virginia Postrel’s contrast between “stasists” and “dynamists”. The difference is that much of what gets done to make the networked world (and to support its dynamism) isn’t “dynamic” in the active and dramatic sense of the word — except in its second-order effects. For example, SMTP and IMAP are not dynamic. (Being mannerly technical agreements, protocols don’t do that.) But on those protocols (and related ones) email happened, and the world hasn’t been the same since.

With that distinction in mind, I suggest that too much oxygen suckage is wasted on “wars” between the stasists (some of whom are also into the superficially dynamistic attention-suck of vendor sports — here’s an oldie but goodie that still makes my point), and not enough on constructive work done by geeks and entrepreneurs who quietly build the original and useful stuff that serves as solid infrastructure on which countless public goods (including wealth creation beyond measure) can be generated.

We have the same problem in most net neutrality arguments. The right hates it, the left loves it. One looks to protect the “free market” of phone and cable companies (currently a Your-Choice-of-Captor system) while the other looks to government (meet your new captor) for relief. When in fact the whole thing has happened all along within what Bob Frankston calls The Regultorium.

The primary dynamism of the Internet — what gave us the Net in the first place, and what holds the most promise in the long run — doesn’t just come from those parties, and can’t be found in the arguments they’re having. It comes from low-box-office geekery that supports enormous new business opportunities (along with many public benefits, with or without business).

It’ll take time to see this, I guess. Just hope we don’t drown in lava in the meantime.

Bonus red herring: A lot of news really isn’t.

@robpatrob (Robert Paterson) asks (responding to this tweet and this post) “Why would GBH line up against BUR? Why have a war between 2 Pub stations in same city?” (In this tweet and this one, Dan Kennedy asks pretty much the same thing.)

The short answer is, Because it wouldn’t be a war. Boston is the world’s largest college town. There are already a pile of home-grown radio-ready program-filling goods here, if one bothers to dig and develop. The standard NPR line-up could also use a challenge from other producers. WGBH is already doing that in the mornings by putting The Takeaway up against Morning Edition. That succeeds for me because now I have more choices. I can jump back and forth between those two (which I do, and Howard Stern as well).

The longer answer is that it gives GBH a start on the inevitable replacement of signal-based radio by multiple streams and podcast line-ups. WGBH has an exemplary record as a producer of televsion programming, but it’s not setting the pace in other media, including radio. The story is apparent in the first four paragraphs of its About page (which is sure to change):

WGBH is PBS’s single largest producer of content for television (prime-time and children’s programs) and the Web. Some of your favorite series and websites — Nova, Masterpiece, Frontline, Antiques Roadshow, Curious George, Arthur, and The Victory Garden, to name a few — are produced here in our Boston studios.

WGBH also is a major supplier of programs heard nationally on public radio, including The World. And we’re a pioneer in educational multimedia and in media access technologies for people with hearing or vision loss.

Our community ties run deep. We’re a local public broadcaster serving southern New England, with 11 public television services and three public radio services — and productions (from Greater Boston to Jazz with Eric in the Evening) that reflect the issues and cultural riches of our region. We’re a member station of PBS and an affiliate of both NPR and PRI.

In today’s fast-changing media landscape, we’re making sure you can find our content when and where you choose — on TV, radio, the Web, podcasts, vodcasts, streaming audio and video, iPhone applications, groundbreaking teaching tools, and more. Our reach and impact keep growing.

Note the order: TV first, radio second, the rest of it third. But where WGBH needs to lead in the future is with #3: that last paragraph. Look at WGBH’s annual report. It’s very TV-heavy. Compare its radio productions to those of Chicago Public Radio or WNYC. Very strong in classical music (now moving over to WCRB, at least on the air), and okay-but-not-great in other stuff.

Public TV has already become a ghetto of geezers and kids, while the audience between those extrmes is diffusing across cable TV and other media. An increasingly negligible sum of people watch over-the-air (OTA) TV. Here WGBH lost out too. It’s old signal on Channel 2 was huge, reaching more households than any other in New England. Now it’s just another UHF digital signal — like its own WGBX/44, with no special advantages. Public radio is in better shape, for now, because its band isn’t the ever-growing accordion file that cable TV has become; and because most of it still lives in a regulated protectorate at the bottom fifth of the FM band. It also helps public radio that the rest of both the FM and the AM bands suck so royally. (Only sports and political talk are holding their own. Music programming is losing to file sharing and iPods. All-news stations are yielding to iPhone programs that offer better news, weather and traffic reporting. In Boston WBZ is still a landmark news station, but it has to worry a bit with WGBH going in the same direction.)

So the timing is right. WGBH needs to start sinking new wells into the aquifer of smart, talented and original people and organizations here in the Boston area — and taking the lead in producing great new programming with what they find. I’ll put in another plug for Chris Lydon’s Open Source, which is currently available only in podcast/Web form. And there is much more, including Cambridge-based PRX’s enormous portfolio of goods.  (Disclosure: my work with the Berkman Center is partially funded through PRX — and those folks, like Chris, are good friends.)

In the long run what will matter are sources, listeners, and the finite amount of time the latter can devote to the former. Not old-fashioned signals.

P.S. to Dan Kennedy’s tweeted question, “Is there another city in the country where two big-time public radio stations go head-to-head on news? Can’t think of one.” Here are a few (though I’d broaden the answer beyond “news,” since WBUR isn’t just that):

• Seattle (KUOW and KPLU)
• San Francisco (KQED and KALW)
• Los Angeles (KPPC and KCRW)
• Atlanta (various vs. GBP)
• Minnesota (too many to mention)
• Oregon (JPR and OPB)
  

All with qualifications, of course. In some cases you can add in Pacifica (which, even though my hero Larry Josephson once called it a “foghorn for political correctness,” qualifies as competition). Still, my point is that there is room for more than one mostly-talk (or news) public radio station in most well-populated regions. Even in Boston, where WBUR has been king of the hill for many years. Hey, other things being equal (and they never are), the biggest signal still tends to win. And in Boston, WGBH has a bigger signal than WBUR: almost 100,000 watts vs. 12,000 watts. WBUR radiates from a higher elevaiton, but its signal is directional. On AM that means it’s stronger than the listed power in some directions and weaker in others; but on FM it means no more than the listed power in some directions and weaker in others. See the FCC’s relative field polar plot to see how WBUR’s signal is dented in every direction other than a stretch from just west of North to Southeast. In other words, toward all but about a third of its coverage area. To sum up, WGBH has a much punchier signal. I’m sure the GBH people also have this in mind when they think about how they’ll compete with BUR.

My heart goes out, at least a little, to Tom Bohs, editorial page editor of the Jackson Sun in Tennessee. He is undoubtedly wishing he’d spent a little more time on a column he published this week.

His piece, entitled “Citizen journalist, pick your beat.” featured some standard, boilerplate stereotypes — such as people with mobile-phone cameras who contribute what they shoot to “real” media organizations like, uh, the Sun — with just the barest effort to acknowledge the enormous variety and in some cases quality of non-traditional offerings that are diversifying the media ecosystem. Overall, the column comes off as yet another semi-informed member of the old guard wishing he could turn back the clock. No big deal.

So why am I feeling some sympathy for Bohs? It’s because of his column’s final four paragraphs, which may well have earned him a spot in the Irony Hall of Fame, or at least the Media Criticism wing.

Bohs wrote:

To give you a little perspective, however, the guy who folks say invented modern citizen journalism is former San Jose Mercury News journalist Dan Gilmour. He was a technology columnist for the newspaper which operates deep in the heart of Silicon Valley. He allegedly wrote the first newspaper online blog. Then he wrote a book about citizen journalism titled ‘We the Media.’ Then he got out of the news business.

I’m not sure what that means. Today, Gilmour runs an operation called the Center for Citizen Media at UC Berkely. I guess he figured with all these citizens running around doing his job, he needed to find a new line of work, teaching them to do his former job – for free.

As the news business continues to evolve at the mercy of technology, citizen journalism is going to play a major role. Here is a simple guideline to help you evaluate what you read on the blogs and forums, chats and tweets. It is a guideline old school journalists still live by: If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.

I hope our new era of citizen journalists adopt the standard, as well.

Oh, my, where to begin…

• I don’t know which folks say I invented modern citizen journalism. I’m not one of them. I’ve definitely been among the many people who’ve worked to help it happen, and to make it as good as possible for everyone involved.
• My last name is spelled Gillmor, not Gilmour.
• I “allegedly wrote the first newspaper online blog”? (Copy editors: All blogs are online.) Not sure what the “allegedly” is all about, except possibly to suggest some faint unseemliness or false claim. Who’s alleged to have said it, anyway? Mine may well have been the first blog by a daily newspaper journalist, but that’s all I’ll claim.
• Aha, a true fact: I did write We the Media.
• No, I didn’t then get out of the news business. I started what turned out to be an ill-fated Bay Area news site, Bayosphere, which was definitely part of the news business. I started the Center for Citizen Media (see below for current status), one of the purposes of which was to help extend the news business. I’ve invested in and/or advised a number of enterprises — some for-profit and some not-for-profit — that have been deeply involved in the news and information sphere. I’ve been a paid speaker or consultant for several newspaper companies, and wrote occasional columns for the Financial Times (which I trust Bohs will concede is part of the real News Business) and still contribute periodically to other publications. My current position at Arizona State University is all about the news business: working with students studying journalism, business and other disciplines to help them create what we hope will be some of tomorrow’s lasting local-information enterprises. I’m more in the news business than I ever was as a columnist for a California newspaper.
• The Center for Citizen Media still exists, but is mostly dormant at this point. It was affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley (that’s Berkeley with an “e” between the “l” and “y”), as well as Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and is now affiliated with Arizona State. I haven’t been affiliated in any way with UC Berkeley for almost two years at this point, though I’m still fond of my former colleagues and students.
• At no point in my work on citizen journalism have I pitched it as a replacement for traditional journalism. From the beginning I’ve said it would be a great addition, in its myriad forms, to the ecosystem, and competitive only in some spaces. I’ve also said, again and again in talks and in public writing, that while I hoped citizens would help traditional news organizations by participating in community journalism, I was and remain flatly opposed to business models that assume citizens are offering nothing but free labor for others to monetize.
• Who’s running around doing my old job as a business and technology journalist? Lots of people, including traditional journalists and online-only creative types whose work has greatly increased the amount and in many cases the quality of tech information. Some bloggers are doing it for little or no money, for lots of reasons — they may be in the business; they may be building their brands; they may just love to cover a small niche — while other online journalists are making serious money at it, building important and well-funded new media organizations. The very last thing I figured when I co-taught a course at Berkeley was that I needed the job because citizen journalists had priced me out of the market. (When Bohs says “I guess”, that’s a point I won’t argue.)
• The news business is clearly being affected by technology. It is not at the mercy of technology. Journalists will continue to do journalism, using the evolving tools of the trade in enterprises that adapt to change, long after newspapers have faded from the scene. The only news people at the utter mercy of technology are the ones who have given up on themselves.

And now we come to Bohs’ stern advice — preceded, to be fair, by an acknowledgment that citizen journalism is here to stay — to all those who need to decide what to make of what they find online. Follow the lead of the pros, he says: Don’t trust it unless you’ve checked it out.

Bohs could have checked out everything he said about me and got so absurdly wrong, even without picking up the phone and calling. He could have used that new-fangled Google thing, where typing in “Dan Gillmor” — or even “Dan Gilmour” — returns links to dangillmor.com (the top one with the correct spelling, third on the list for the one Bohs used), where I lay out in some detail exactly what I’ve been doing for the past few years and am doing now, with links to the blogs where I’ve been saying what I actually believe about journalism and its future, not what other people may claim (or imagine) I’ve said. Even my Wikipedia entry, which has some small inaccuracies, has my current gig listed correctly.

This is why Bohs, who clearly cares about journalism, surely must have had a sinking feeling in his gut last night or this morning when he discovered his mistakes. I hope he’ll turn that into a renewed dedication to the principles in which he says he believes.

The Wall Street Journal (story here; subscription needed) reports that Wikipedia is losing editors faster than it is recruiting new ones. Since about the beginning of 2008, departures have exceeded arrivals in the corps of volunteers who contribute to Wikipedia and scour it for accuracy–or in some cases, opportunities for petty vandalism.

It’s hard to know exactly what’s going on, and the Journal raises several possibilities without claiming it knows what is true. The original editors have been at it for almost a decade; perhaps they have burned out. Perhaps all the easy and interesting stories have been written; there isn’t much new to say about Crime and Punishment within Wikipedia’s stylistic strictures. (In fact if you check that entry’s history, it was modified only 10 days ago, but only to reverse some act of vandalism.) Can it be that from the standpoint of the totality of human knowledge, Wikipedia editing has now reached a state of diminishing returns? Also, perhaps, it is not so much fun as it used to be; there are more rules to follow, and more people checking on your edits, than there used to be.

It’s an important question. Wikipedia is one great success of crowdsourcing, of a useful artifact produced using the lunatic fringe of democratic participation. What if the model is unsustainable after awhile, because at some point there are more people who have their fun as trolls than there are as builders?

If you search Google Images for “Michelle Obama” (no quotes), the first image you’ll see is a poorly photoshopped picture of her as an ape.

You’ll also see a Google Ad on that page that links to Google’s explanation of why such a blatantly racist photo is the top-ranked one at Google Images. It says, after assuring us that Google does not endorse such images: “Search engines are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the Internet. A site’s ranking in Google’s search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query.”

I have mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand, Google is taking a principled stand by not inserting its own political/cultural views into its engine. It’s also avoiding an endless squabble if it were to start hand-manipulating the results.

On the other hand:

1. Google’s algorithms are undoubtedly tuned by looking at the relevancy of the results. If they come up with a new wrinkle, they check it against the results it returns. So, the algorithms are already guided by Google’s own sense of what are good, useful and relevant results. If they tested a tweak of their ranking algorithm and it turned out always to put all the porn and pro-Nazi literature on top, Google would judge that algorithm as faulty. So, Google is already in the business of building algorithms that match its idea of what’s useful and relevant. When those algorithms occasionally turn up racist crap like that photo of Michelle, why not improve the algorithm’s results by intervening manually?

2. Google as a business and as a cultural force aims to give us useful results. That’s more important to the value of Google Search than the purity of its algorithmic approach. A photo of Michelle as an ape cannot reasonably be construed as the most useful result of a search for photos of her. So, fix it. (And, yes, I’d say the same if searches for “George W. Bush” ranked as first a photo of him as a chimp or as Hitler.)

Although the bulk of this post argues against Google’s position, let me say again that I am torn by this issue, and admire Google’s consistency and transparency about it.

You can download a free PDF of a new anthology about egovernment, called State of the eUnion, edited by John Gotze. I haven’t read it, but there are some excellent contributors. (Disclosure: I’m one of the not-so-excellent contributors.)

My colleague Steve Doig captured a truly bizarre chart broadcast today on Fox News. Add the numbers to understand why.

This New York Times piece nicely summarizes recent moves by the Iranian regime and the Revolutionary Guards to further clamp down on Iran’s already tightly controlled information space. The Times argues that the government is stepping up its ’soft war’ in order to “re-educate Iran’s mostly young and restive population” by:

…implanting 6,000 Basij militia centers in elementary schools across Iran to promote the ideals of the Islamic Revolution, and it has created a new police unit to sweep the Internet for dissident voices. A company affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards acquired a majority share in the nation’s telecommunications monopoly this year, giving the Guards de facto control of Iran’s land lines, Internet providers and two cellphone companies. And in the spring, the Revolutionary Guards plan to open a news agency with print, photo and television elements.

As the article notes, these efforts to fight a ’soft war’ seems to indicate the growing influence of the Revolutionary Guards in Iran, which some, like Abbas Milani, argue are more powerful than even the Supreme Leader.

In the end, however, these moves may be futile. The ‘police unit’ to monitor the Internet has only 12 people. Satellite TV has been illegal for years in Iran, and yet by the regime’s own account 40% of households have access to it, twice as many as last year. There are occasional crack downs that try to clear satellite dishes from everyone’s rooftop, but they always go back up eventually. And finally, as NYU’s Mehrzad Boroujerdi says:

By trying to gain more control of the media, to re-Islamize schools, they think they can make a comeback. But the enemy here is Iran’s demographics. The Iranian population is overwhelmingly literate and young, and previous efforts to reinstall orthodoxy have only exacerbated cleavages between citizens and the state.

Last week, I gave a talk at Web2.0 Expo. From my perspective, I did a dreadful job at delivering my message. Yet, the context around my talk sparked a broad conversation about the implications of turning the backchannel into part of the frontchannel. In the last week, I've seen all sorts of blog posts and tweets and news articles about what went down. At this point, the sting has worn off and I feel that it would be responsible to offer my own perspective of what happened.

First, context. Web2.0 Expo is an expensive conference filled with all sorts of webby types, entrepreneurs, and business folks interested in technological development. It's a conference known for great talks by high profile people. Most of the talks are pretty conversational in nature - there are plenty of staged interviews and casual presentations.

Because of the high profile nature of Web2.0 Expo, I decided to write a brand new talk. Personally, I love the challenge and I get bored of giving the same talk over and over and over again. Of course, the stump speech is much more fluid, much more guaranteed. But new talks force folks to think differently and guarantee that I target those who hear me talk often and those who have never seen me talk before.

A week before the conference, I received word from the organizers that I was not going to have my laptop on stage with me. The dirty secret is that I actually read a lot of my talks but the audience doesn't actually realize this because scanning between my computer and the audience is usually pretty easy. So it doesn't look like I'm reading. But without a laptop on stage, I have to rely on paper. I pushed back, asked to get my notes on the screen in front of me, but was told that this wasn't going to be possible. I was told that I was going to have a podium. So I resigned to having a podium. Again, as an academic, I've learned to read from podiums without folks fully realizing that I am reading.

When I showed up at the conference, I realized that the setup was different than I imagined. The podium was not angled, meaning that the paper would lie flat, making it harder to read and get away with it. Not good. But I figured that I knew the talk well enough to not sweat it.

I only learned about the Twitter feed shortly before my talk. I didn't know whether or not it was filtered. I also didn't get to see the talks by the previous speakers so I didn't know anything about what was going up on the screen.

When I walked out on stage, I was also in for a new shock: the lights were painfully bright. The only person I could see in the "audience" was James Duncan Davidson who was taking photographs. Otherwise, it was complete white-out. Taken aback by this, my talk started out rough.

Now, normally, I get into a flow with my talks after about 2 minutes. The first two minutes are usually painfully rushed and have no rhythm as I work out my nerves, but then I start to flow. I've adjusted to this over the years by giving myself 2 minutes of fluff text to begin with, content that sets the stage but can be ignored. And then once I'm into a talk, I gel with the audience. But this assumes one critical thing: that I can see the audience. I'm used to audiences who are staring at their laptops, but I'm not used to being completely blinded.

Well, I started out rough, but I was also totally off-kilter. And then, within the first two minutes, I started hearing rumblings. And then laughter. The sounds were completely irrelevant to what I was saying and I was devastated. I immediately knew that I had lost the audience. Rather than getting into flow and becoming an entertainer, I retreated into myself. I basically decided to read the entire speech instead of deliver it. I counted for the time when I could get off stage. I was reading aloud while thinking all sorts of terrible thoughts about myself and my failures. I wasn't even interested in my talk. All I wanted was to get it over with. I didn't know what was going on but I kept hearing sounds that made it very clear that something was happening behind me that was the focus of everyone's attention. The more people rumbled, the worse my headspace got and the worse my talk became. I fed on the response I got from the audience in the worst possible way. Rather than the audience pushing me to become a better speaker, it was pushing me to get worse. I hated the audience. I hated myself. I hated the situation. I wanted off. And so I talked through my talk, finishing greater than 2 minutes ahead of schedule because all I wanted was to be finished. And then I felt guilty so I made shit up for a whole minute and left the stage with 1 minute to spare.

I walked off stage and immediately went to Brady and asked what on earth was happening. And he gave me a brief rundown. The Twitter stream was initially upset that I was talking too fast. My first response to this was: OMG, seriously? That was it? Cuz that's not how I read the situation on stage. So rather than getting through to me that I should slow down, I was hearing the audience as saying that I sucked. And responding the exact opposite way the audience wanted me to. This pushed the audience to actually start critiquing me in the way that I was imagining it was. And as Brady went on, he said that it started to get really rude so they pulled it to figure out what to do. But this distracted the audience and explains one set of outbursts that I didn't understand from the stage. And then they put it back up and people immediately started swearing. More outbursts and laughter. The Twitter stream had become the center of attention, not the speaker. Not me.

Yes, I cried. Yes, I left Web2.0 Expo devastated. I hate giving a bad talk but I also felt like I was being laughed at. People tried to smooth it over, to tell me that I was OK, that it wouldn't matter, that they liked the talk. But no amount of niceness from friends or strangers could make up for the 20 minutes in which I was misinterpreting the audience and berating myself. Nothing the audience could say could make up for what I was thinking about myself while on stage. So I went for a massage. And I spent 90 minutes trying to tell myself that I am a lovable creature. And when that wasn't working, I told myself to suck it up and deal. I knew that if I could convince myself to look like everything was OK that eventually I would believe it. Or at least that it would all go away.

Being on stage involves raw emotions. I have never gotten over the rawness of it all. I no longer vomit before every talk (although I used to) but my stomach does try to do the macarena. Or, more likely, the ridiculous dance done by 80s hair bands as they thrash about. I can't eat before I give a talk. And I visit the bathroom a bazillion times. Even when I'm brilliant on stage, I'm nervous as hell. But it's also emotionally and physically exhausting. I walk off the stage high as a kite and then, two hours later, crash. Giving talks drains me. It's brutal to try to publicly convey information, to be the center of attention. I much much much prefer to be the one observing than the one speaking. But I feel like giving talks is important. So I speak. But it ain't easy. And so when I walk off a stage not feeling invigorated, all I get is the raw drain, the gut-wrenching, nauseating feeling of pure misery. 20 minutes of being punched in the face, kicked in the stomach, and the shameful sensations one gets when one is forced to watch a Lars von Trier film. That's how I felt at Web2.0 Expo.

So.... the Backchannel?

Now that you've been forced to read my inner neuroses on public display, let's talk about making the backchannel the frontchannel. First off, let's be clear: I could not and did not see the Twitter stream from stage. Nothing was conveyed to me until the end. The stream was not a way for the audience to communicate to the speaker, but for the audience to communicate with itself. Lots of folks have talked about making the stream available to the speaker. Have any of you seen ustream? This is filled with "speakers" reading the stream and it's very choppy. There's no way that a speaker can simultaneously consume a stream and convey a message. Sure, a message every 30 seconds or so, no problem. But a stream? No way. And certainly not a long message... and, on stage, 140 characters is long.

Let me highlight a comment that Dan from HonestlyKid.net left on my blog earlier this week:

It seems that the more subtle the speaker's point, the more impatient and nasty the audience became. While it's easy enough to blame the new tech in the room for this shoddy behavior, I'm not sure we're seeing anything new at all here. It certainly didn't feel new to me from where I sat. Consider the recent Town Hall meetings around health care - substantive discussions of important issues were subsumed in cat calls and shouted rumors.

That said, having participated in this bad behavior, I noticed something else about the way it felt to put something on that wall. The twitterwall subverted twitter's more symmetric conversation model of communication. Posting to the wall was like creating and sharing a public secret about the speaker (a little like political grafiti except it wasn't anonymous).

The wall made a spectacle of the crowd's impatience and anxiety feeding on the speaker's inability to respond. That spectacle united us not as a single group receiving challenging ideas from a thoughtful orator but as quite separate individuals struggling to listen, read, respond, and make sense of the event. We moved from web conference to twitter circus.

I think that Dan nailed it. I think that the backchannel is perfectly reasonable as a frontchannel when the speaker is trying to entertain, but when the goal is to convey something with depth, it encourages people to be impatient and frustrated, to feed on the speaker. There's a least common denominator element to it. I was not at Web2.0 Expo to entertain, but to inform. Yes, I can be an entertaining informant, but there's a huge gap between the kind of information that Baratunde tries to convey in his comedic format and what I'm trying to convey in a more standard one. And there's no doubt I packed too much information into a 20 minute talk, but my role is fundamentally to challenge audiences to think. That's the whole point of bringing a scholar to the stage. But if the audience doesn't want to be challenged, they tune out or walk out. Yet, with a Twitter stream, they have a third option: they can take over.

The problem with a public-facing Twitter stream in events like this is that it FORCES the audience to pay attention the backchannel. So even audience members who want to focus on the content get distracted. Most folks can't multitask that well. And even if I had been slower and less dense, my talks are notoriously too content-filled to make multi-tasking possible for the multi-tasking challenged. This is precisely why I use very simplistic slides that evokes images for the visual types in the room without adding another layer of content. But the Twitter stream fundamentally adds another layer of content that the audience can't ignore, that I can't control. And that I cannot even see.

Now, I'm AOK with not having complete control of the audience during a talk, but it requires a fundamentally different kind of talk. That was not what I prepared for at all. Had I known about the Twitter stream, I would've given a more pop-y talk that would've bored anyone who has heard me speak before and provided maybe 3-4 nuggets of information for folks to chew on. It would've been funny and quotable but it wouldn't have been content-wise memorable. Perhaps that would've made more sense? Realistically though, those kinds of talks bore me at this point. So I probably would've opted not to give a talk at all. Perhaps I'm not the kind of speaker you want if you want a Twitter stream? But regardless, what I do know is that certain kinds of talks do not lend themselves to that kind of dynamic. I would *NEVER* have given my talk on race and class in such a setting. I shudder to think about how the racist language people used when I gave that talk would've been perceived on the big screen.

Speaking of which... what's with the folks who think it's cool to objectify speakers and talk about them as sexual objects? The worst part of backchannels for me is being forced to remember that there are always guys out there who simply see me as a fuckable object. Sure, writing crass crap on public whiteboards is funny... if you're 12. But why why why spend thousands of dollars to publicly objectify women just because you can? This is the part that makes me angry.

Now, I don't mind being critiqued. I think that being a public figure automatically involves that. I've developed a pretty thick skin over the years, but there are still things that get to me. And the situation at Web2.0 Expo was one of those. Part of the problem for me is that, as a speaker, I work hard to try to create a conversation with the audience. When it's not possible or when I do a poor job, it sucks. But it also really sucks to just be the talking head as everyone else is having a conversation literally behind your back. It makes you feel like a marionette. And frankly, if that's what public speaking is going to be like, I'm out.

I don't want to be objectified when I'm speaking - either as a talking head or a sexual toy. I want to inspire, to invite you to think, to spark creative thoughts in your head. At Web2.0 Expo, I failed. And I failed publicly. I'm still licking my wounds. But I can take the fall. I can't take the idea that this is the future.

So I have a favor to ask... I am going to be giving a bunch of public speaking performances at web conferences in the next couple of months: Supernova and Le Web in December, SXSW in March, WWW in April. I will do my darndest to give new, thought-provoking talks that will leave your brain buzzing. I will try really really hard to speak slowly. But in return, please come with some respect. Please treat me like a person, not an object. Come to talk with me, not about me. I'm ready and willing to listen, but I need you to be as well. And if you don't want to listen, fine, don't. But please don't distract your neighbors with crude remarks. Let's make public speaking and public listening an art form. Maybe that's too much to ask for, but really, I need to feel like it's worth it again.

For those looking for the text of my Web2.0 Expo talk, it's here: "Streams of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social Media."

The longest thread in the history of this blog belongs to Why WQXR is better off as a public radio station, which I posted on July 26, and still has comments this month. The post followed a complex deal by which the New York Times divested its legacy classical music station, WQXR — and by which the station’s format, call letters, record library and some of its personnel survived as a noncommercial outlet of WNYC, on a different channel with a weaker signal. From the comments one might gather that more listeners were unhappy than happy with the deal. My post mostly presented the upside.

Now here in Boston a similar move is underway. WGBH, “Boston’s NPR arts and culture station” will go the way of WNYC-FM, which phased out classical music starting in 2002, eventually shunting it to HD side-channels and Internet streams while populating the FM signal (as well as its AM one) with news and information programming, which tends to be more popular and to attract more money in listener contributions. By saving WQXR, WNYC returned classical music to the airwaves (although the city was still down one classical station, or two if you want to go back to the very late WNCN.) WGBH clearly had the same thing in mind when it bought WCRB, which was already weakened in the Boston metro when it moved from its old local channel (102.5) to its current channel (99.5) in Lowell. (Wikipedia has good background poop on WCRB’s own long saga.) While both WCRB signals have about the same range, the old 102.5 signal radiates from the Boston FM and TV antenna farm in nearby Needham, while the new one on 99.5 comes from a hill overlooking the I-495/I93 intersection, far to the north near the New Hampshire border.

So now WGBH plans to move its classical programming to WCRB, whch will become a non-commercial station (as did WQXR), and to do more news and information programming on its own home signal (89.7), which is grandfathered at 100,000 watts on Great Blue Hill (hence the call letters) in Milton, on the south side of Boston. In terms of wattage alone, WGBH is New England’s most powerful station. (The largest coverage belongs to WHOM/94.9 on Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, which puts out 49,000 watts from the highest peak in the Northeast.) As a result WGBH can go head-to-head with WBUR/90.9, which is the incumbent public radio leader in Boston. (I’ve looked at the ratings, and WBUR has kicked WGBH’s butt for years — a fact that I am sure has rankled the latter.)

Still, many listeners are not happy. And not just about losing classical music.

WGBH is doing its best to gloss over the signal loss for classical (and other arts & culture) listeners, especially in the southern reaches of Eastern Massachusetts, where WGBH has a very strong signal and WCRB is mostly absent. To demonstrate, here is a comparison of coverage for WGBH, WCRB and WBUR, calculated by Radio-Locator.com:

Click on the image for a legible full-size version.

Still, my own take in the WGBH/WCRB case is the same as it was for WNYC/WQXR: this is the best that could be done for classical music on Boston airwaves — and it offers opportunities not possible for WCRB had it remained a commercial station. Go back to that first link if you want to see what those are.

As for me, I expect to be more likely to listen to a ‘GBH-run noncommercial WCRB than I did to the commercial one. First, the commercials were (and, at this writing, still are) annoying. Second, the WCRB repertoire was pretty close to all-hits, rather than the more varied and challenging fare found on WGBH. There should be a happy medium between the two, and I’m sure ‘GBH will work hard to find it.

But I’m privileged to live on the north side of the metro, so I get WCRB just fine. I think it’s a safe bet that more than one half of WGBH’s listening area won’t get a useful signal out of WCRB. And the area within which listeners can get WGBH’s HD stream is a subset of WGBH’s coverage area.

A digressive word about HD radio. I got one recently — a $99 Teac unit — at Costco. The tuner is remarkably good, and it gets most local stations’ HD side-channels. But “tuning” HD is a counter-intuitive chore. You tune in the partent station, wait for the HD symbol to appear, and then tune to the one or two HD channels of the station. It’s a multi-step selection process, with delays along the way. I’d be curious to know if anybody (beside those who pick a channel and stay put) has had a positive experience with tuning it.

For those who want to compare apples with apples, here’s some data:

• WGBH transmission facility
• WGBH coverage area
• WCRB transmission facility
• WCRB coverage area
• WBUR transmission facility
• WBUR coverage area

One last thing. I for one (and I am sure there are many more) would love to hear Chris Lydon return to Boston’s airwaves. He has been a podcasting pioneer with an outstanding show. But coming on a live station would be fabulous.

Hey, how about Larry Josephson too?

Visualizing empires decline from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

Wait for it. Blobs disgorging.

As mentioned in my previous post “My Game System is My New Cable Box,” the newest system update for the XBox 360 now includes a number of social networking and Internet applications, including Facebook, twitter, last.fm, and Zune (Microsoft’s attempt to compete with the iTunes store).  For me, the integration of these services feels like a kind of weird collision of different neighborhoods and cultures.

The neighborhoods metaphor is apt, in part because of the debate earlier this year about the socioeconomic and race connotations of different social networking sites.  Danah Boyd notably described a “white flight” from MySpace to Facebook (here’s a nice overview article of her point).  Facebook, she argues, has been portrayed as a higher-class, safer place by media coverage.

Eszter Hargittai also published a revealing demographic analysis comparing SNSs two years ago in the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, titled ”Whose Space?“.  She found a number of interesting differentiations among these sites: “different populations select into the use of different services.”  For instance, Asian-Americans are less likely to use MySpace.

So our Internet applications are like demographically distinct neighborhoods of a city.  Of course we know that all kinds of things are differentiated demographically (see: Stuff White People Like).  But the XBox360 merge combines the XBox’s own social networking system (based on Gamertags) with others systems like Twitter and Facebook and this is a different kind of mixing.  Yes these sites can reach different audiences but that they are used by the same audiences for different purposes in different contexts with different interfaces.  It’s not just that different people live in different neighborhoods (MySpace vs. Facebook demographics), but that when I personally visit different neighborhoods I expect them to look different (many people use multiple SNSs).

Everything is suddenly all mixed into the XBox interface. Having some of this stuff on my TV is actually pretty weird.  Adding Zune to the XBox makes a lot of sense — that’s a store to sell a/v products and I want to buy TV shows to watch on my TV.  But the other services are jarring — they echo Don Norman’s point from ten years ago in The Invisible Computer that single-purpose devices are often preferable to multi-purpose ones (here’s an old interview when he makes this point).

No one seems to be listening to him.  The interface is so much more difficult to get right on a multipurpose device.  Rather than a generic menu system that must fit everything, with a specialized device you can have a streamlined interface that helps you do what you are trying to do.  It makes so much sense to just keep each single-purpose device in the place where you want to do that task.

For instance instead of a smartphone to do everything, you might want a dedicated e-mail device like the Peek (pictured above).  A friend of mine keeps both a Palm TX for the calendaring and an iPhone for mobile web surfing (and occastionally, telephoning).  I think this kind of thing is actually quite widespread.  The specialized devices are often so much better at a particular thing while a generalized device is bad at everything (or mediocre at everything).

So now the XBox is kind of a mishmash of Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, gamertags, etc.  Maybe it will grow on me but I doubt it.  For instance, Zune and Netflix now have to share the awkward XBox menuing system and are only differentiated by the fact that their backgrounds are different colors (Netflix is red, Zune is black).  To continue the neighborhoods metaphor, in their wisdom the XBox Live designers have taken all of the neighborhoods you like to visit in Manhattan and relocated their shops to a bland suburban street grid that stretches to infinity in every direction.

In my earlier post I praised the idea of the game console as the new basic entertainment computer in the living room that could handle a variety of video and gaming functions.  Let’s me temper my enthusiasm.  A game console is a good idea for things a gaming console connected to a TV can be good at!  If we try to cram everything else in there too I don’t think the results will be pretty.

The photo at left is from the back cover of Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. It exemplifies much of what can be right with American journalism, and some of what’s wrong, too.

The part to celebrate, of course, is CNN’s decision to highlight some eminently praise-worthy people. Yes, there’s an element of cliche about it — running the show in Thanksgiving — but so what? If we can’t give thanks for (some of) the people who deserve it on our best holiday, when can we?

The best part of the program, at least from the promos and articles about the people being honored,  is that they’re “regular folks” doing out-of-the-ordinary things. (Military personnel seem to be ineligible for these awards, which is an odd omission, but the honorees are certainly impressive in their own right.) You can find instructions on the website on how to donate your own time and/or money to various causes championed by the honorees. All in all, CNN is doing something good for the world with this event.

But look again at this image. Who’s that towering over the honorees? Why, it’s Anderson Cooper, the host of the program. Apparently he and his network are the real heros.

Look, I know this is about promoting an event. And I  know that Cooper is the face people will recognize.

But the way this is framed tells the story of network “journalism” today — a celebrity-infused system that conflates news readers with the people they cover.

Anderson Cooper may well be a fine journalist. I can’t really say, as I’ve given up on CNN and the other U.S. “news” networks for anything but stenography for the rich and powerful, fluff and, occasionally, breaking news where the events tell their own stories.

If Cooper is a indeed good journalist, or even a respectable one, this image should make him cringe. And someday, sooner than later, he should say so out loud.

Three great articles with themes and variations on FOI ideas:

Joe Hewitt, Facebook’s iPhone app developer, has quit developing for the iPhone because he is “philosophically opposed” to Apple’s review policies and their tight control over their platform. But instead of hitching his wagon to Android or some other mobile platform, he’s decided to focus instead on making the mobile web as strong as it can be. He told TechCrunch:

The web is still unrestricted and free, and so I am returning to my roots as a web developer. In the long term, I would like to be able to say that I helped to make the web the best mobile platform available, rather than being part of the transition to a world where every developer must go through a middleman to get their software in the hands of users.

And he says on his blog that we can avoid a world where “the only technologies that matter” are the ones where Apple or some other gatekeeper makes decisions (however irrational or infuriating, as yet another developer has chronicled). I’m not entirely convinced that a vigorous mobile web is enough—for instance, Apple can still disable Flash on its phone, thus crippling many web apps—but it might be, and it’s a valuable complement to more open mobile platforms.

Then we have two people thinking about whether the web itself will remain free. First is Chris Messina on The Death of the URL. Messina writes from the perspective of a user experience designer, who understands why the complexity of the Internet can frighten users (”thar be dragons!”) but thinks that should be a challenge for designers, not a reason to give up on “the infinite organicity of the web” and the structures of “one of the most generative periods in history.”

Second is Tim O’Reilly on The War for the Web. He notes that Facebook and the Apple iPhone require users to play by the company’s rules to some extent, although the web still exists as a partial backstop—e.g., Google Voice is available on the web, if not as a native iPhone app. But he worries that the web itself will become less interoperable and less generative as companies with natural monopolies in one area attempt to gain control in other areas as well. Go read the whole piece; it’s worth it.

JZ argues that the PC and the internet have been the perfect combination for generativity. The internet itself could itself be a solution to the control of mobile platforms. But these pieces point out, yet again, how even that combination isn’t untouchable unless we’re constantly, actively working at it.

—By Elisabeth Oppenheimer

New media generally don’t replace old media, as Marshall McLuhan pointed out. After TV we still have radio. After telephones we had telegrams for a good long while. So what about books? After we have networked digital books, we’ll still have and produce physical books. But will physical books be as ubiquitous and culturally important as radio? Or will they be as cherished but infrequently attended as live theater?

In my interview with Cory Doctorow, I wondered, in the midst of an overly-elaborate three-part question, whether ebooks will provide enough of what we value about physical books (pbooks) that pbooks will lose the historic significance Cory had pointed to.

We won’t know the answer until we invent the future. But, I’m going to hypothesize, predict, or stipulate (pick one) that at some point we will have ebooks (which may be distinct hardware or be software running in something other device we carry around), with paper-quality displays that are full-color and multimedia, that are fully on the Net, with software that lets us interact with the book and with other readers, that are a part of the standard outfitting of citizens, and within a physical environment that provides ubiquitous Net connectivity.

Those are a lot of assumptions, of course, and each and every one of them could be disrupted by some 17 year old at work in her parents’ basement. Nevertheless, if the future is something like that, then what of pbooks’ value will be left unreplaced by ebooks?

Readability. I’m assuming paper-quality displays, which may turn out to be unattainable without having to wheel around batteries the size of suitcases. But, even without that, the ability of ebooks to display text in various fonts and sizes should remove this advantage from pbooks.

Convenience. I am assuming that ebooks will be more convenient than pbooks: as good in sunlight as pbooks, at least as easy to hold and use, easier to use for those with certain disabilities, long enough battery life, possibly self-lit, etc. The biggest open question, I believe, is whether it will be as easy to annotate ebooks…

Annotatability. The current crop of ebooks make highlighting passages and making notes so difficult that you have to take a break from reading to do either of those things. But, that’s one big reason why the current crop of ebooks are pathetic. With a touchscreen and a usable keyboard (or handwriting recognition software), ebooks of the future should be as easy to annotate as a pbook is. And those annotations will then become more useful, since they will be searchable and sharable.

Affordability. The marginal cost of producing ebook content is tiny, which doesn’t mean prices will drop as dramatically as we might like. Nevertheless, it’s hard to imagine a world in which ebook content costs more than pbooks.

Social flags. You probably carefully choose which book you’re going to bring with you on a job interview, and which books get moved to the shelves in your living room. We use the books we own as tribal flags, as Cory points out. Ebooks can serve the same role when introduced into social networks, including social networks explicitly built around books, such as LibraryThing.com. They obviously don’t work in physical space that way; if you want to show off your books to people who visit your home, you’re going to have to get physical copies.

Aesthetic objects. Many of us love the feel and smell of books. While ebooks might be able to simulate that in some way — maybe their page displays could yellow over time — it’d still just be a simulation. While ebooks will undoubtedly develop their own aesthetics, so that we’ll call people over to see how beautiful this or that new ebook is, they can’t replace the particular aesthetics of pbooks. So, those who love pbooks will continue to cherish them.

Sentimental objects. For my bar mitzvah, some friend of my parents gave me a leatherbound copy of A.E. Housman’s “A Shropshire Lad” and other poems. It was a beautiful aesthetic object, but I also understood that it had a personal meaning to the giver. I doubt that that particular copy did — I don’t think it came from his own collection — but the physicality of the book was itself a marker for the personal meaning it had for the giver. As Cory says, the books your father read — the very copies that were in his hands — probably have special meaning to you. It’s hard to see how ebooks could have the same sentimental value, except perhaps if you are reading the highlights and notes left by your father, and even then, it’s not the same.

Historic objects. Likewise, knowing that you’re looking at the very copy that was read by Thomas Jefferson gives a book an historic value that ebook content just can’t have. It’s hard to see how an author could autograph an ebook in any meaningful way.

Historical objects. As John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid have pointed out, as has Anthony Grafton, books as physical objects collect metadata that can be useful to historians, e.g., the smell of vinegar that indicates the book came from a town visited by cholera. Ebooks, however, accumulate and generate far more metadata. So, we will lose some types of metadata but gain much more…maybe more than our current norms of privacy are comfortable with.

Specialized objects. It will take somewhere between an improbably long time and forever for all collections of pbooks to be digitized. Thus, books in special collections are likely to be required well after we can take the presence of ebooks for granted.

Possessions. We are headed towards a model that grants us licenses to read books, but not outright ownership. (This is Cory’s main topic in the interview.) If we lose ownership of ebooks, then they won’t have the sentimental value, they will lose some of their economic value to readers (because we won’t be able to resell them or buy them cheaper used), and we won’t be as invested in them culturally. Whether ebooks will be ownable, and whether that will be the default of the exception, is unresolved.

Single-mindedness. Books are the exemplar in our culture of thinking. We write our best thoughts in books. We engage with the best thoughts of others by reading books. Books encourage and enable long-form thinking. Ebooks, because they are (ex hypothesis) on the Net, are distracting. They string together associated chunks and tempt us with links beyond themselves. It is easy to imagine ebooks providing the singleminded pbook experience: “Press here to remove all links.” But, of course, you could always unpress the button. Besides, since your ebook is on the Net (ex hypothesis), all that’s stopping you from jumping out of the book and into your email or Facebook is self-discipline. So, while ebooks can provide the singledminded experience of pbooks, some of us may prefer the paper version to keep the distraction of the Net at bay.

Religious objects. Some books have special meaning within some religions. It’s hard to imagine, for example, that an ebook is going to replace the Torah scrolls in synagogues. In fact, orthodox Jews can’t use electronic devices on the Sabbath, so they are certainly going to continue to buy pbooks. But, this is the very definition of a specialty market.

So, what does all this mean for the future of books? It depends.

First, are there other values of pbooks that I left off the list?

Second, I haven’t listed any unique advantages of ebooks. For example, ebooks will allow social reading: Engaging with others who are reading the book or with the traces left by those who have already it. That’s pretty important. Also, ebooks are likely to radically reduce the cost of reading, especially of some categories of overpriced pbooks (e.g., textbooks). Also, ebooks will make it much easier to understand the content of books through embedded dictionaries, search capabilities, and links to explanatory discussions. Also, as more of the corpus gets digitized, ebooks will make it far easier for scholars to pursue the footnotes (except they’ll be embedded links, not footnotes). Also, ebooks will incorporate multimedia. Also, reading ebooks will build a searchable personal corpus that is far more useful to us than bookcases filled with out conquered pbooks. Also, we’ll always have our entire library with us, ready to be read or reread, which is good news for readers.

I leave it to you to decide how this mix of values is likely to play out. What will be the social role and meaning of pbooks as we go forward into the ebook era? In twenty years — giving ourselves plenty of time to develop usable ebook readers, to digitize most of what we need, and to built an always-available network — will pbooks be used mainly by collectors, and scholars working with unique texts? Will they be sentimental objects? The poor person’s medium? Will physical books be the equivalent of AM radio, of the road company of “Cats,” of quaint objects in book museums — and/or the continuing pinnacle and embodiment of learning?v

I’m back in Boston after a great few days in Utah at the Kynetx Impact conference, where VRM and related stuff was brought up and discussed at length. It was an inaugural effort by Kynetx, which has what I think is a novel and profound take on the future of the Web.

The only bad thing that happened on the trip was a crash on my laptop that trashed my email and some other files. One result is that much of the email sent to my Berkman address  cyber.law.harvard.edu) since late Monday was lost. (Glad I back up almost constantly here at home. I do offsite as well, but lacked the connectivity speed during the trip to fix the problem.)

So if you sent me any email that mattered during that time, please send it again. Thanks.

The shot above was made at the Kynetx Impact conference, which is the first one I’ve been to where VRM was a serious topic on its own — an acronym thrown around by participants, in ways that made clear that they knew what it was. No explanation required.

In other words, this wasn’t a VRM conference, but one where VRM was a central issue. The fact that the 140 people who packed the room included lots of developers, some of whom working right there on all kinds of stuff, including VRM.

I’ll have much more to say about the conference later. Right now I’m waiting for a flight at the airport and wanted to make a post while I had a shot at it, on the one browser that survived a really bad crash a couple days ago that seems to have affected some system libraries.

Still, a great conference. Thanks to the Kynetx folks, and to everybody who contributed. Well done.

I’ve been thinking about what to write in the wake of the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference. One more summary seems unnecessary, since there have been so many good ones already. And the debates are starting to feel a little trumped up and warmed over, and so less fun to wade back into.

And then I got inspiration from Greg Lloyd, President and co-founder of Traction Software and longtime technologist. In addition to running his company Greg finds time to write a great blog, and his post after the conference was called “Enterprise 2.0 Schism.”

In it, he likens the current E2.0 controversies to a religious schism, and divides the community into three sects: Strict Proletarians, who believe it’s all about the people, Strict Technarians, who believe it’s all about the technologies, and Strict Druckerians, who “believe that “2.0″ should be considered a modifier of Enterprise rather than an allusion to mere Web 2.0 technology…”

Lloyd writes with a light touch and is clearly being a bit tongue in cheek, but he’s also making a smart and serious point. Two of them, in fact. The first is that advocates of Enterprise 2.0 really do believe different things about the phenomenon, and these differences matter. His second point is an argument for the Druckerian point of view: that the use of emergent social software platforms (ESSPs) is going to change organizations so much that a new version number is warranted.

This got me thinking about what I believed. I’ve been using “Enterprise 2.0” in Lloyd’s Technarian sense — as a reference to the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies and approaches by enterprises. And do I also believe that such adoption is going to change companies? Sure –    virtually all technology adoptions do, to some extent. Do I believe that it’s going to change them enough to require a new version number?

Nope. I just think that’s too strong a claim. Let me try to explain why.

I yield to almost no one in my belief about the power and utility of ESSPs, but I just don’t think they’re going to transform the structure or purpose of the enterprise. As I wrote earlier, I don’t see E2.0’s tools, approaches, and philosophies making obsolete managers, hierarchies, org charts, and formal cross functional business processes.

It’s a rainy fall day in Boston, and after a wet walk into work I’m sitting here realizing that I need new boots. So maybe later today I’ll call up L.L. Bean and order a pair of Maine Hunting Shoes (Suave? No. Dry?  Yes.). I’ll talk to a customer service rep who will enter my order into an enterprise system. This system spans the call center, the warehouse, the credit card company and, in all likelihood, the marketing department. The people working in each of these areas have relatively stable job titles and descriptions that are tied to pay and benefits. And they all have bosses who manage and develop people, put together plans and budgets, and take responsibility for performance and improvement.

None of this is going to be swept away or rendered obsolete by the advent of ESSPs, even after they’re fully deployed and embraced. We can tell stories about how the new tools enable amorphous / gestalt / collectivist forms of organization that have no set structures and make their way through the environment much like slime molds do, but these stories are pure speculation, grounded in hope rather than reality or experience. They’re a type of cyberpunk science fiction (as an aside, I find it really interesting and telling that the best cyberpunk, like Neuromancer and Snow Crash, conjures up worlds where big formal organizations are more dominant, not less.).

I want to be clear: Lloyd’s post is fantastic: grounded and very thoughtful. He’s not in the enterprise-as-slime-mold camp. And I definitely agree with him that Enterprise 2.0 is a big deal. So what’s the right way to describe its impact?

Here’s my take: ESSPs will have about as big an impact on the informal processes of the organization as large-scale commercial enterprise systems (ERP, CRM, Supply Chain, etc.) have had on the formal processes.

This is not a conservative statement. Enterprise systems have been a huge deal for organizations. They’ve turned reengineering from a whiteboard exercise into an unignorable reality for many, many companies. And Drucker was right when he said that “Reengineering is new, and it has to be done.”

It’s not a coincidence that productivity in the US really accelerated starting in the mid 1990s, just as enterprise systems started spreading, and accelerated most in the industries that spent the most on IT. And a great study by Erik Brynjolfsson, DJ Wu, and Sinan Aral which I wrote about here, found strong evidence that ERP adoption leads to performance improvement.

I believe that Enterprise 2.0 will be as big a deal for corporate performance and productivity. I believe this because I believe that the informal organization is as important as the formal one for getting work done (do you agree?) and that we have historically had lousy technologies for supporting the work of the informal organization (especially outside our immediate circle of strong ties). With the arrival of ESSPs, the tools available to the informal / emergent organization have gone from lousy to excellent, just like commercial enterprise systems advanced the formal organization’s toolkit from lousy to excellent.

So while I don’t think that the impact of ESSP’s is profound enough to warrant a new version number for the enterprise, I do think that we’re on the brink of a sustained period of corporate innovation, improvement, and productivity growth enabled by these new tools. I take some comfort from the fact that some very sharp and experienced corporate leaders like Cisco’s John Chambers seem to feel the same.

Do you?  In your opinion, what’s the right way to think about the broad impact of ESSPs? Will they lead to Enterprise, version 2.0, or just to Enterprise 2.0? Leave a comment, please, and let us know.

The wildly popularly Russian search engine Yandex has released another useful report on the Russian blogosphere based on its search data. While it is nearly silent on methods, it is nonetheless helpful to have another data point out there on the Russian blogosphere, which we’ve also been digging into at the Berkman Center following our Iranian and Arabic blogosphere research. Yandex finds the following on the Russian blogosphere (pdf), as of spring 2009:

The ‘average’ Russian blogger is a 22 year old woman who lives in Moscow and posts on LiveInternet or Diary.ru (this is the first blogosphere we’ve looked at in detail where female bloggers are in the majority, and about 20% to 30% more females than we find in Middle Eastern blogospheres we’ve studied). Women write more often, and also comment more frequently on others’ blogs, than men in Russia.

LiveJournal, which we are focusing on at the moment, has the most active traditional bloggers in Russia, and this platform also hosts more men and older bloggers than the rest of the blogosphere. Seventy-six percent of active Russian blogs are hosted on just four blog services (LiveJournal, blogs.mail.ru, ya.ru and liveinternet.ru.) Liveinternet has the most blogs, but 96% have not been updated in the last three months.

Russian bloggers are posting less often than in the past:

Active blogs (those with at least five entries and that have been
updated at least once in the past three months) continue to decrease –
currently totaling to 12 %. While two years ago every second blog was
getting regular updates, last year only one out of five blogs was regularly
updated.

Perhaps because they are to busy Twittering: Twitter has grown in popularity, as has the Jabber-based Juick.com, but still there are only 7,000 Russian users according to Yandex. At 80%, its users post more frequently than any other traditional blog service, though.

London has the most active Russian bloggers outside of the former Soviet Union, followed by New York.

Unfortunately, the report doesn’t go into any topical or political issues that bloggers discuss, and they also recently decided to stop listing the most popular daily topics on their blog data site, perhaps to avoid the same fate as mainstream media in Russia. More Yandex research here (in English), although the Russian research page is much richer (I’ve got my eye on the Ukrainian blogosphere report next).

In this edition of Radio Berkman, Cory Doctorow argues in favor of copyright … the part of copyright that protects the rights of readers to own (and not just license) books.

It being Cory, the discussion covers topics such as the way in which books are like dogs and his sentimental attachment to his digital collection.

Evidence-based medicine is gaining momentum in the US, which is a good thing. What's EBM? It's an approach to delivering health care with two identifying characteristics. One: Analysis of all available data, especially data from clinical trials and other rigorous studies, to determine the best course of treatment (this is the 'evidence-based' part). Two: Creation of protocols--standardized processes that describe the course of treatment in detail.

For example, a hospital could adopt a process checklist listing five steps that every ICU doctor should take before inserting an IV line.

Few if any health care professionals have a problem with conducting studies and analyzing data. And yet, many of them don't like being asked to follow standardized protocols that are based on this data. They prefer instead to follow their intuition. It's probably safe to posit that the more education, experience, and authority health care workers have, the less willing they'll be to set aside their intuition and abide by some procedure developed by others.

Resistance isn't surprising; autonomous and experienced craft workers have always resented more systematic approaches to getting work done, and have warned that such approaches would lead to inferior outcomes. Take away the master's discretion and devalue his intuition and experience, the argument goes, and bad results will ensue. And medicine in particular is too important, and too unpredictable, to be constrained by rigid protocols. As physician Jerome Groopman writes in his book How Doctors Think "... today's rigid reliance on evidence-based medicine risks having the doctor choose care passively, solely by the numbers...Numbers can only complement a physician's personal experience with the drug or a procedure..."

So what makes me say that evidence-based medicine is a good thing? Just the facts. Three separate sets of findings strongly suggest that we need more, not less, standardized medicine. First, there's a massive amount of variation in health care delivery, most of which is pointless and much of which is harmful. The Pronovost checklist for inserting an IV line mentioned above, for example, was shown to reduce infection rates to almost zero at 108 hospitals where it was introduced. Yet according to a great recent article in the New York Times magazine by David Leonhardt , it's still not the norm; ICU doctors continue to believe in their intuition and experience.

Second, there's ample evidence that standardization improves outcomes, and that health care is not any exception to this general rule. Joseph Hallinan describes in his book Why We Make Mistakes that as recently as the 1980s, one in every 5,000 recipients of anesthesia died. Standardization of machines and reliance on airline industry-type checklists has helped reduce this tragic incidence by a factor of 40, to one in 200,000.

Third, it's abundantly clear by now that human intuition has some serious flaws , and that we should relegate it to the sidelines as better decision-making methods become available. Daniel Kahneman , the first psychologist to win the Nobel Prize in economics, is quoted in the Times article saying that as more and more data become available, intuition beats out systematic analysis less and less often.

So what's all this got to do with information technology, the subject of my research and this blog? A few things. First, IT can obviously help accumulate and analyze data , and so tip the scales in Kahneman's direction--away from intuition and toward empiricism. Second, technology can also be used to digitize the protocols of evidence-based medicine. Many of these are now kept in three-ring binders, which are inconvenient to consult and easy to overlook. Standardized procedures can be embedded in applications and delivered to providers via the desktops, PDAs, and "app phones " that are increasingly part of health care delivery.

Finally, technology can be used to monitor compliance with protocols. This can be as simple as displaying the Pronovost checklist, then asking doctors whether they followed it. Compliance tracking can also be more detailed. Computerized Physician Order Entry systems keep track of all medications ordered by doctors in a hospital, and the more advanced applications alert users when a prescription exceeds recommended dosage levels or interacts harmfully with another drug. Physicians can override these warnings, but these exceptions can be tracked.

In both of these scenarios the goal is not to force adherence to the protocol, but rather to gather data on departures from it. If I were running an unit or a hospital I'd really want to know which of my people were ignoring evidence-based medicine most often and why--it's another important type of health care data.

Health care delivery is a deeply human process, and should remain so. I don't want robots listening to me describe symptoms or operating on me any time soon. But this doesn't mean that it should be a technology-free process, or that we can't use computers to improve what doctors do. Medicine is experiencing a deep shift. It's moving from a craft-based industry--the largest one left in the world--to a science-based one. As customers of that industry, we should applaud that shift, and also applaud innovators who are using data and technology to overcome the biases and limitations of intuition. It's a healthy development.

Es ist eine interessante Frage, ob Sarah Palin als role model für die Frauenfrage taugt. Newsweek findet nach dem neuesten Titelbild zu urteilen eindeutig: nein! Damit hat das Magazin vermutlich Recht, denn Palin tut viel für die eigene Sache, aber wenig für die der Frauen. Wenn das schon “going rogue” ist, dann war die Frauenbewegung immer eine Tsunami gesellschaftlicher Unangepasstheit. Dennoch: Was geschehen ist, hat Frauen gestärkt, aber es reicht nicht. Wir müssen noch mehr tun für eine echte Gleichberechtigung von Frauen und Männern in allen gesellschaftlichen Bereichen. Und die Frauen müssen wieder mutiger sein, ihre Interessen klar und unzweideutig zu vertreten.

Rede zum Jahrestreffen der ARD-/ZDF-/ORF-Medienfrauen, November 2009, Baden-Baden

Es war irgendwann im Frühsommer 2002, dass ich das Vergnügen hatte, bei einem Mittagessen in Düsseldorf neben dem damaligen schwedischen Botschafter in Deutschland, Carl Tham, platziert zu werden. Wir haben uns gut über Gott und die Welt unterhalten – und schliesslich auch über die Frauen. Carl Tham lehnte sich nämlich plötzlich zu mir und sagte: “Sie haben doch da diese Talk-Show am Sonntagabend. So etwas wäre bei uns unvorstellbar.”

“Wieso unvorstellbar?” fragte ich irritiert nach, hatte ich doch im ersten Anlauf verstanden, das Talk-Show-Format an sich sei in Schweden unvorstellbar. “Die Männerriege, die dort jeden Sonntag Platz nimmt und eine einzige Frau, die Moderatorin, umrundet, das wäre in Schweden heute unvorstellbar. Die Menschen würden lauthals protestieren.”

Ich fand diesen Einwurf bemerkenswert. Zum einen, weil der Botschafter natürlich auf das noch immer währende Defizit von Frauenvorbildern in Medien und Gesellschaft anspielte. Zum anderen, weil es offenbar Gesellschaften gibt, die diese Tatsache nicht einfach als gottgegeben hinnehmen, sondern dagegen aufbegehren. Insofern ist es auch nicht verwunderlich, dass wir bei der Frage nach der Gleichberechtigung von Frauen und Männern mit Blick auf die skandinavischen Länder ein etwas anderes Bild erhalten, als es sich noch heute im Jahr 2009 in Deutschland und vielen anderen europäischen Ländern offenbart.

Nun leben wir nicht mehr im Jahr 2002  sondern im Jahr 2009, und inzwischen hat sich durchaus Einiges getan. Wenn ich heute die Sonntagabend-Talk Show von Anne Will anschaue, dann sehe ich ziemlich regelmässig Frauen als Gäste dort sitzen. Aber ich weiss auch, wie schwierig es immer wieder ist, Frauen für dieses Format zu gewinnen. Zum einen, weil sie tatsächlich noch immer in der Gesellschaft unterrepräsentiert sind und man deshalb bei vielen thematischen Schwerpunkten nicht naheliegend auf eine Frau als Repräsentantin eines gewissen Standpunkts kommt. Zum anderen, weil natürlich immer noch in vielen Köpfen von Journalisten und sogar Journalistinnen der Suchmodus “Frau” immer noch nicht richtig verankert ist. Und dann gibt es einen dritten Grund: Tatsächlich sind viele Frauen noch immer zögerlich, sich der öffentlichen Diskussion auszusetzen, sich zu präsentieren in einem medialen Umfeld, in dem ihnen die Aufmerksamkeit und damit womöglich auch die kritische Auseinandersetzung sicher ist.

Eine Talk-Show, wie das Format am Sonntagabend, sei es bei Sabine Christiansen, sei es bei Anne Will, ist ein Spiegel der Gesellschaft. Gelegentlich ist sie auch ein Zerrspiegel der Gesellschaft. Nicht alles, was wir dort sehen, können wir 1:1 als Realität interpretieren. Aber vieles gibt uns doch einen Hinweis darauf, wie es um die soziale Ordnung unserer Gesellschaft, und dazu gehört wesentlich die “Geschlechterfrage”, heute bestellt ist. Und dort zeigen sich auch immer wieder die Defizite, die in der Gleichberechtigung der Geschlechter noch immer auszumachen sind. Drei Aspekte sind aus meiner Betrachtung dabei besonders auffällig:

1. Es gibt noch immer zu wenig Frauen, die in Politik, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft eine Führungsrolle übernehmen;

2. Es gibt zwar viele Frauen in den Medien, aber viele von ihnen übernehmen noch immer ganz bestimmte, nämlich Repräsentationsrollen;

3. Es ist schwer, Frauen zu finden und sie zur aktiveren gesellschaftlichen Teilnahme zu ermutigen, weil viele sich weniger zutrauen als Männer und weniger machtbewusst ihren Weg gehen.

1. Frauen und Führungsrollen

Wir haben eine Bundeskanzlerin. Das hat in Deutschland viel verändert, wenngleich es lange gedauert hat, bis diese Veränderungen in den Köpfen der Menschen angekommen sind. Welche Wirkung das hatte, zeigt sich zum Beispiel an der Wahl von Christine Lieberknecht zur Ministerpräsidentin Thüringens. Die Wahl hat in Hinblick auf den Frauenfaktor kaum noch Aufsehen erregt. Eine Frau in einer politischen Spitzenposition ist also ein Stück Normalität geworden.

Ich erinnere mich aber sehr gut, wie lange Angela Merkel gebraucht hat, bis sie ihre Form der politischen Machtrepräsentation gefunden hat, ihre Haltungsfrage, im physischen ebenso wie im übergeordneten Sinne, beantwortet hatte. Das liegt einfach daran, dass unsere Repräsentationsrituale vordringlich männlich besetzt sind und Frauen es daher schwer haben, für sich neue und adäquate Repräsentationsmodi zu entwickeln.

Eine Frau als Bundeskanzlerin kann sich nicht das Jackett vom Leib reissen und mit verschwitztem Hemd oder mit verschwitzter Bluse am Pult stehen, die Arme zum Himmel erhoben und gegen den politischen Gegner wetternd. Es würde als unweiblich, unhöflich und in der Form unangemessen empfunden. Inzwischen hat Angela Merkel diese Herausforderung für sich in ihrer ganz individuellen Art und Weise gelöst, und sie hat damit einige sehr entspannende und doch gleichzeitig durchaus machtbewusste Akzente in der öffentlichen und medialen Repräsentation von Frauen gesetzt. Wenn wir sonst in der Politik uns umschauen, dann ist das neue Bundeskabinett wahrlich kein Ausdruck der Frauenbewegung, die in den Spitzen der Politik angekommen wäre. Gut ein Viertel der Kabinettsposten werden von Frauen besetzt. Ein Viertel der Repräsentation einer Gesellschaft, die zur Hälfte weiblich ist.

In den Parlamenten sieht es nicht sehr viel besser aus. Zwar ist der Anteil der weiblichen Abgeordneten im Deutschen Bundestag seit Einführung der Quotenregelung sichtbar gestiegen. Immerhin, gut 32 Prozent der Parlamentssitze gehören Frauen (das ist ein unfassbarer Anstieg des Frauenanteils um ein Prozent!). Im Europäischen Parlament sieht es noch etwas besser aus, dort sind derzeit 36 Prozent der Abgeordneten Frauen. Etwa ein Drittel der Mandate als Volksvertreter haben also Frauen. Ein Drittel der Mandate für eine Gesellschaft, die zur Hälfte aus Frauen besteht.

Wenn wir uns in der Wirtschaft umschauen, wird es deutlich düsterer. Das Deutsche Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW) hat kürzlich festgestellt, dass Frauen in den 200 grössten deutschen Unternehmen gerade einmal 2,5 Prozent der Vorstandsposten innehaben. In der Schweiz sieht es übrigens ähnlich aus: Gerade einmal drei Frauen sitzen auf dem Stuhl eines CEO, das sind bei den 100 grössten Firmen in der Schweiz fünf Prozent. Nur 4 von 10 Firmengründern sind Frauen, das vermeldet die KFW-Bankengruppe. Bei uns sitzt genau eine Frau im Vorstand eines DAX-Unternehmens, nämlich Barbara Kux bei Siemens. Und in den deutschen Aufsichtsräten waren 2008 auf Seiten der Kapitalgeber von 2811 Personen 113 Frauen – das sind vier Prozent). Insofern ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass Karrieren wie die von Barbara Kux bei Siemens oder von Simone Bagel-Trah, neue Aufsichtsratsvorsitzende bei Henkel eine enorme mediale Aufmerksamkeit erzielen. Die Ausnahme ist die Berichterstattung wert, das wissen wir aus der Nachrichtenfaktoren-Forschung. Und diese Gesetzmässigkeit funktioniert bei Genderfragen aufgrund der weiterbestehenden Ungleichverhältnisse hervorragend.

Ist das also die Regel, weil es anders nicht geht? Nein, so einfach lässt sich diese Frage nicht beantworten. Wenn wir beispielsweise beim Thema Aufsichtsrat uns die Arbeitnehmerseite anschauen, dann stellen wir fest, dass der Frauenanteil hier zumindest bei 20 Prozent liegt. Das ist immerhin vier Mal so viel wie auf Arbeitgeberseite. Wenn wir einen Blick in die nordischen Länger, von denen eben schon die Rede war, werfen, dann ergibt sich folgendes Bild: der Frauenanteil in Geschäftsleitungen in europäischen  Topfirmen beträgt in Finnland 19 Prozent, in Litauen 21 Prozent, in Schweden 24 Prozent und in Norwegen 32 Prozent.

Gehen wir einmal davon aus, dass weder auf Arbeitnehmerseite in den Aufsichtsräten noch im nordischen Europa die Frauen grundsätzlich klüger, selbstbewusster oder in grösserer Zahl vorhanden sind, dann sind diese Zahlen schon erstaunlich. Dann muss es einen anderen Grund für diese Diskrepanz geben. Meine These lautet: In den klassischen Wirtschafts- und Politikzirkeln der deutschen Gesellschaft herrscht noch immer ein defizitärer Diskurs, der nach den Regeln des meist männlich geprägten Establishments verläuft, die damit verbundenen Machtstrukturen und -positionen fortschreibt und es so Frauen schwermacht, sich zu behaupten.

Für dieses Argument spricht beispielsweise, dass Frauen in Deutschland im Durchschnitt noch immer für dieselbe Arbeit 23 Prozent weniger verdienen als ihre männlichen Kollegen. Eine ähnliche Statistik können wir in verschiedenen anderen europäischen Ländern auftun. Europaweit werden Frauen um 17 Prozent schlechter bezahlt als Männer. Leider ist Deutschland in diesem Zusammenhang also auch noch negativer Spitzenreiter: Bei uns werden Frauen im Vergleich zu anderen europäischen Ländern weit überdurchschnittlich unterdurchschnittlich bezahlt. Und während sich in vielen europäischen Ländern die Gehaltsschere in den neunziger Jahren wenigstens um einige Prozentpunkte geschlossen hat, ist sie in Deutschland sogar noch weiter auseinander gegangen.

Das ist Retro-Sciene-Fiction: Wir schreiben das Jahr 2009. In einer Gesellschaft, die zur Hälfte aus Frauen besteht, haben wir nicht mal ein Viertel der Führungspositionen mit Frauen besetzt. Dafür verdienen die aber fast ein Viertel weniger als ihre männlichen Kollegen.

Noch wilder wird es, wenn wir zur Kenntnis nehmen, dass empirische Forschungsergebnisse uns längst zeigen, wie wichtig Frauen in Führungspositionen sind. So lässt sich feststellen, dass heterogen geführte Teams erfolgreicher sind. Nicht allein im Sinne eines besseren Arbeitsklimas (Frauen haben ja diese sozialen und kommunikativen Kompetenzen, die immer sofort angeführt werden, wenn Mann Frauen loben und hervorheben möchte),. Erfolgreicher heisst: ökonomisch erfolgreicher. Die amerikanische Nonprofitagentur Catalyst hat in einer Untersuchung der 500 grössten Aktiengesellschaften der USA festgestellt, dass Firmen mit Frauen im Vorstand eine bis zu 53 Prozent höhere Eigenkapitalrendite erzielen als solche Firmen, die keine Frauen in ihrer Führungsetage aufweisen. Eine aktuelle Studie der Unternehmensberatung McKinsey hat herausgefunden: Firmen, die mindestens drei Frauen im Vorstand haben, können ihre Erträge nachweislich steigern.

Man muss schon blind und taub sein, um angesichts solcher Ergebnisse noch immer zu behaupten, die Situation in deutschen Führungsetagen sei gleichberechtigt oder es gäbe einen guten Grund dafür, dass sie eben nicht gleichberechtigt sei. Vorübergehend sprachlos wird man angesichts der Tatsache, dass wir bei diesen Zahlen über das Ende des ersten Jahrzehnts des neuen Jahrtausends sprechen. Ich muss ganz offen gestehen: Frauen, die heute im Brustton der Überzeugung behaupten, sie lebten in einer vollständig durch Gleichberechtigung gekennzeichneten Gesellschaft, lösen bei mir nicht nur Kopfschütteln aus. Ich kann darüber gelegentlich auch wirklich wütend werden.

2. Die Frauenfrage und die Medien

Warum spielen diese Daten und Fakten, diese noch immer kritikwürdigen Zusammenhänge in unserer öffentlichen Diskussion, auch in den Medien, nur noch eine untergeordnete Rolle? Weil es gerade in den Medien so scheint, als hätten Frauen den Zustand der vollkommenen Gleichberechtigung längst erreicht. In Deutschland liegt der Anteil der Frauen im Journalismus bei 37 Prozent, in Österreich sogar bei mehr als 40 Prozent. Immer mehr Frauen steigen in den Beruf “Journalismus” ein – und dann steigen sie wieder aus, bevor sie auf die echten Entscheiderpositionen kommen.

Wie die jüngste repräsentative Journalistenstudie der Universität Hamburg zeigt, sind Journalistinnen in der Altersgruppe ab Mitte 30 wieder auf dem Rückzug. Offenkundig passen dann Familienmodelle und berufliche Karriere nicht mehr recht zusammen. Diese Erkenntnis wird konterkariert, dass wir im Fernsehen immer mehr Frauen sehen, die Sendungen moderieren und uns dabei als Rolemodels für die Gleichberechtigung der Frau im Journalismus ins Wohnzimmer gesendet werden. Natürlich ist das eine Form von Gleichberechtigung und es liegt mir absolut fern, die Moderatorinnen wichtiger Sendungen im deutschen Fernsehen, wie Maybrit Illner, Sandra Maischberger oder Anne Will als Sprechpuppen zu denunzieren. Sie sind es nicht, weil sie ihre Sendung redaktionell gestalten, ihre Moderation schreiben, ja oft sogar gleichzeitig in einer Managementfunktion das produzierende Unternehmen leiten. Dass wir die Vorurteile über eine Talkshow als „Sendung mit der Maus“, wie Sabine Christiansen sie sich immer wieder anhören musste, auch heute noch in veränderter Form in der Medienkritik finden, zeigt alleine eins: Die Betrachtung von „Vorzeigefrauen“ in den Medien löst Kritikerreflexe aus, die oft sehr viel stärker durch Geschlechtervorurteile geprägt sind als durch Kriterien einer professionellen Medienkritik.

Ich will aber auch hier wieder auf die Machtstrukturen in den Führungsetagen deutscher Medien hinaus. Die ARD hat inzwischen immerhin zwei Intendantinnen vorzuweisen, das hat lange genug gedauert. In den Entscheiderposten sind Frauen dennoch weiterhin vollständig unterrepräsentiert. Und wenn ich mich daran erinnere, dass ich vor wenigen Wochen auf dem Printgipfel der Münchner Medientage wieder als einzige Frau in einer Runde älterer Herren mitdiskutiert habe, dann zeigt das: es sind nicht nur die Fernsehanstalten, die hier noch immer ein Defizit haben.

Frauen können also einsteigen und ein bisschen aufsteigen, aber bitte nicht ganz. Und dann steigen sie oft wieder aus dem beruflichen Karriereweg aus, weil die private Lebensplanung seine Weiterverfolgung nicht zulässt. Das ist nicht nur individuell für jede Frau sehr schade, sondern hindert eben auch den Prozess der gesellschaftlichen Gleichberechtigung in einer wichtigen Branche, der Medienbranche, die Multiplikatoren- und Vorbildfunktion hat.

Und schliesslich hat es Konsequenzen, die zwei Forscherinnen der Warthon-School an der Universität Pennsylvania gerade in einer Studie umfänglich untersucht haben und unter dem Titel “The paradox of declining female happiness” veröffentlicht haben. Das Ergebnis: Seit 35 Jahren hat das Glücklichsein der Frauen kontinuierlich abgenommen. Das subjektive Gefühl, glücklich zu sein, hat sich von den Frauen weg hin zu den Männern verlagert. Das gilt unabhängig davon, ob beide Geschlechter sich insgesamt eher glücklicher, weniger glücklich oder gleich glücklich fühlen. Wie kann das bloss sein? Seit Jahren bemühen sich viele Menschen, Frauen wie Männer, in dieser Gesellschaft um mehr Gleichberechtigung. Seit Jahren diskutiert diese Gesellschaft Sinn und Zweck von Gleichberechtigung sowie ihre Notwendigkeit intensiv, sie macht dabei Fortschritte, auch wenn sie manchmal eher klein sind. Und bei alledem werden Frauen nicht glücklicher, sondern unglücklicher.

Ich glaube, das lässt sich durchaus erklären, wenn man Emanzipation nicht allein als Gleichberechtigungsprozess, sondern als Prozess der Selbstwahrnehmung, Selbstreflektion und eines sich verändernden Selbstverständnisses von Frauen, aber auch von Männern, begreift. Dann bedeutet der Gleichberechtigungsprozess der vergangenen Jahrzehnte nämlich auch, dass Frauen sich ihrer Rolle immer bewusster werden, ebenso wie der Rolle ihrer Lebensgefährten, Partner, Ehemänner. Und dann sind sie auch immer stärker in der Lage und willens, festzustellen, wie schwer feministische Ideale mit klassischen Familienbildern zu vereinbaren sind, wie oft sie Rückschläge im eigentlich gewünschten Emanzipationsprozess hinnehmen müssen, wie viele Abstriche das wirkliche Leben am eigenen Selbstverwirklichungsideal verlangt, ja, wie wenig Freiheit und Glück einander eigentlich bedingen.

Dieses Phänomen spielt natürlich auch all den Reaktionären in die Hände, die allemal glauben, Gleichberechtigung mache Frauen nicht glücklich, sondern unglücklich und Frauen seien ehe mit ihren Kindern zuhause am besten aufgehoben.

Vor diesem Hintergrund ist es dann auch fast ein bisschen tragisch, wie wenig Frauen selber wirklich aktiv und provokativ dazu beitragen, das Anliegen einer Gleichberechtigung der Geschlechter auf der politischen Agenda zu halten und wie viele gerade jüngere Frauen Emanzipation statt dessen zum grossen Spassprojekt der Moderne machen.

Grundsätzlich gilt natürlich: je mehr Frauen sich überhaupt bei diesem Thema engagieren, desto besser. Je grösser der Varianten- und Facettenreichtum in der öffentlichen Diskussion ist, desto anregender und anschlussfähiger ist die Diskussion für viele Menschen, über diese Fragen weiter nachzudenken und sie zu einem Lebensthema zu machen, das auch den eigenen Alltag und das eigene Handeln betrifft. Und natürlich haben sich auch die Themen der Frauenbewegung verändert.

Während wir – zumindest in Westdeutschland – in den 70-iger Jahren über sexuelle Selbstbestimmung, zum Beispiel über den Paragraphen 218 diskutiert und für ihn protestiert haben, während es in den Anfängen um konkrete Rechtsgleichsetzungen von Frauen und Männern ging, die erst einmal zu erreichen waren, so geht es heute um das konkrete Zusammenleben der Geschlechter, zum Beispiel in Familie und Beruf. Das allerdings ist nicht allein ein privates, sondern es bleibt ein politisches Thema. Die Autorin Maria Sveland hat das in ihrem Buch “Bitterfotze” sehr schön in dieser Frage formuliert: “Wie sollen wir jemals zu einer gleichberechtigten Gesellschaft kommen, wenn es uns nicht einmal gelingt, mit demjenigen gleichberechtigt zu leben, den wir lieben?”

Maria Sveland ist 1974 geboren. Sie gehört also zu den jüngeren Vertreterinnen des Feminismus und ist damit ein Hoffnungsschimmer dafür, dass es auch in dieser Generation noch politische Denkerinnen gibt. Wenn ich an die “Alpha-Mädchen” denke oder an die neuen Eroberungen eines Handlungsspielraumes namens “Feuchtgebiete”, dann frage ich mich gelegentlich schon, ob das eigentlich der Feminismus ist, den wir heute haben wollen, und ob das eigentlich das politische Denken ist, zudem junge Frauen heute fähig und entschlossen sind? Ich finde den weiblichen Orgasmus auch wichtig und möchte nicht auf ihn verzichten. Aber ich bin ziemlich sicher, dass er nicht automatisch in eine Führungsposition führt.

Natürlich gibt es den Feminismus auch nicht nur in westdeutscher Sicht, wie ich sie hier aus Mangel an eigener Erfahrung anwende. Frauen aus dem Osten Deutschlands haben sich über manche Frauenfragen im Westen kaputtgelacht. Man kann durchaus die Frage stellen, ob es in Sachen Gleichberechtigung nicht der Westen ist, der vom Osten eine Menge hätte lernen können. So zeigt zum Beispiel der „Sozialreport“ Anfang dieses Jahrtausends, dass 75 Prozent der befragten ostdeutschen Frauen der Auffassung sind, sie seien in der DDR den Männern gegenüber gleichgestellt gewesen. Nur 10 Prozent meinen, dass sie benachteiligt waren. Demgegenüber glaubten 72 Prozent, dass Frauen im vereinigten Deutschland gegenüber Männern benachteiligt seien; nur 18 Prozent waren überzeugt, gleichgestellt zu sein.

Und natürlich ist Feminismus auch nicht mehr allein Alice Schwarzer, auch wenn man gelegentlich in den Medien den Eindruck bekommen kann. Und natürlich mögen heute manche Fragestellungen, mit denen sich Alice Schwarzer weiterhin beschäftigt, für junge Frauen nicht vordringlich scheinen. Aber auch in diesem Zusammenhang finde ich: Ein wenig kontextuelle Einordnung und Reflexion wäre hier angemessen. Wer die vergangenen Jahrzehnte einmal Revue passieren lässt und dabei bedenkt, was Alice Schwarzer für die Gleichberechtigung der Frau in Deutschland erreicht hat, der muss zu dem Ergebnis kommen: das war sehr, sehr viel. Und wer sich darüber hinaus einmal anschaut, was sie in diesem Zusammenhang hat ertragen müssen, der kommt weiterhin zu dem Ergebnis: das war eine sehr, sehr grosse Zumutung.

Wer in den 70-iger Jahren im Westen für den Feminismus an die Öffentlichkeit und auf die Strasse gegangen ist, hat sich im Establishment der Gesellschaft zur Persona non grata gemacht. Und so ist Alice Schwarzer auch behandelt worden. Die Berichterstattung über sie ist gelegentlich zur modernen Form der Hexenverbrennung geworden. Der Scheiterhaufen wird nicht mehr auf dem Marktplatz vorm Rathaus errichtet, sondern auf dem virtuellen Marktplatz der öffentlichen Meinung.

3. Mehr Selbstbewusstsein von Frauen für Frauen

Es bleibt ein dritter Aspekt, der uns Frauen den Weg Richtung Gleichberechtigung nicht leicht macht. Und das sind wir selbst. Frauen sind noch immer nicht bereit oder in der Lage, sich mit Volldampf auf die Chefetagen in Politik, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft zuzubewegen. Sie sind zuweilen nicht bereit, das für sich einzufordern, was Männer für das eigene Geschlecht als selbstverständlich betrachten. Sie sind noch immer nicht bereit, die gleiche Bezahlung für die gleiche Arbeit zu verlangen.

Das sind keine losen Annahmen, die ich hier formuliere, sondern ebenfalls durch empirische Studien gestützte Erkenntnisse. Das Unternehmen Hewlett Packard hat zum Beispiel festgestellt, dass Frauen sich nur auf Stellenausschreibungen bewerben, wenn sie glauben, dem ausgeschriebenen Stellenprofil zu 100 Prozent zu entsprechen. Männern reichen auch 60 Prozent. Frauen tendieren dazu, ihre Leistungen eher klein zu reden. 70 Prozent der Frauen geben in einer Umfrage unter MBA-Studentinnen und Studenten in der Schweiz an, ihr Anteil an der Gruppenarbeit sei gleichwertig wie jener der anderen Kollegen. Bei den Männern glauben 70 Prozent, sie hätten mehr geleistet als die anderen. Wenn wir also einen Aufruf wie den des CEO von Siemens, Peter Löscher, hören, die Welt müsse weiblicher werden, dann ist damit ganz sicher nicht gemeint, dass wir alle jetzt beginnen sollen, diese Selbstunterschätzung der Frauen in unserer Gesellschaft um- und durchzusetzen. Vielmehr braucht unsere Gesellschaft die Diversität im Denken und Handeln, die Frauen einbringen. Dabei dürfen sie selbstbewusster sein, denn sie leisten viel, sind hervorragend ausgebildet, oft sogar besser als Männer.

Vor dem Hintergrund dieser drei Aspekte – immer noch zu wenig Frauen an Führungspositionen in wichtigen, gesellschaftlichen Bereichen, eine zuweilen falsch geführte öffentliche und mediale Diskussion über den Feminismus und die Gleichberechtigung von Frauen sowie die Unterschätzung der eigenen Fähigkeiten und Leistungen von Frauen – ist es erstaunlich, dass viele Frauen auf die Frage nach ihrer eigenen Situation eine positive Antwort geben. Gerade jüngere Frauen beschreiben ihre Lebenssituation oft als gleichberechtigt, als angemessen und unproblematisch. Es mag sein, dass diese Wahrnehmung einfach stimmt. Dann ist vieles von dem, was ich hier gesagt habe, einfach falsch und dann nehme ich das auch gerne zur Kenntnis. Das glaube ich aber nicht. Ich glaube, aus eigener Erfahrung, aber auch aus intensiven Gesprächen mit Frauen, die irgendwann aus ihrer Selbstrepräsentationsrolle heraus fallen und in eine wahre, offene Diskussion übergehen, dass es anders aussieht. Ich glaube, dass viele Frauen sich sehr bewusst sind, wie weit der Weg bis zur echten Gleichberechtigung unserer Gesellschaft noch immer ist, wie viel Arbeit, wie viel Kampf und wie viel Unbehagen auf der Strecke auf sie wartet.

Ich will diese Feststellung daher auch gar nicht als Vorwurf formulieren, sondern wieder versuchen, herauszufinden, woran das liegt. Und ich glaube, auch diese Erscheinungsform von Selbstverleugnung der Defizite in der eigenen Gleichberechtigung hat eine Ursache. Leon Festinger hat sie uns theoretisch mit seinem Ansatz der kognitiven Dissonanz erklärt. Danach empfinden Menschen dissonante Wahrnehmungen als unangenehm. Sie lösen Spannungszustände und Druck aus. Daher neigen Menschen in solchen Situationen zu selektiver Wahrnehmung: Sie nehmen eher die Informationen zur Kenntnis, die den Druck reduzieren, und meiden solche Informationen, die den Druck weiter erhöhen.

Im Marketing können wir das am Beispiel von Autokauf-Situationen verdeutlichen. Wenn man ein Auto gekauft hat, verschmäht man alle weiteren Prospekte und Informationen über alternative Modelle, um ja nicht in die Situation zu geraten, die eigene Entscheidung neu reflektieren oder gar in Frage stellen zu müssen. Der Mensch neigt also dazu, kognitive Dissonanzen, die er nicht aushalten kann, einfach wegzudenken und wegzureden. Wenn das beim Autokauf schon so ist, wie stark muss dieses Moment bei einer der wichtigsten und weitreichendsten Lebenssituationen des Menschen gelten – der Gleichberechtigung?

Will eine Frau wirklich zugeben, dass sie immer noch nicht gleichberechtigt mit ihrem Partner lebt? Will sie zur Kenntnis nehmen, dass sie selbst als Teil der weiblichen Hälfte unserer Gesellschaft nur im niedrigen Prozentbereich durch Führungsfrauen repräsentiert wird? Will sie akzeptieren, dass sie etwa ein Viertel weniger verdient für die gleiche Arbeit, die Männer machen? Ich finde es eine grosse und schwierige Zumutung, diese Fakten vor sich selber einzugestehen. Noch schwieriger wird es in der öffentlichen Diskussion.

Ich erinnere mich an viele Situationen, zum Beispiel in meiner Zeit als Staatssekretärin in der Düsseldorfer Landesregierung, als die Begrüßungsfomel lautete: „Sehr geehrte Frau Meckel, meine sehr geehrten Herren.“ Was habe ich da gemacht? Ich habe gelächelt, gute Miene zur schlechten Situation gemacht. Die Situation als junge Frau allein unter Männern war manchmal schon unangenehm genug. Es braucht enorme Kraft, das auch noch zum Thema zu machen. Stellen Sie sich vor, ich wäre am Tisch aufgestanden und hätte gesagt: „Meine Herren, wir sind mit der Gleichberichtigung wirklich noch nicht weit gekommen. Guten Appetit!“ Man kann eine solche Situation natürlich auch aus dem Alleinstellungsmerkmal in einen Vorteil verwandeln. Aber das Alleinstellungsmerkmal zeigt, dass eben keine Gleichheit herrscht.

Ich kann deshalb verstehen, dass Frauen zurückhaltend sind und andere Wege suchen, das Thema Feminismus und Gleichberechtigung umzusetzen. Politisch werden wir damit allerdings irgendwann in eine Zeitschleife hineingeraten, die immer nur das reproduziert, was wir schon erreicht haben, aber keine neuen Akzente mehr setzt. Ich glaube, es muss und es kann Einiges geschehen, um Frauen den Weg zu echter, vollendeter Gleichberechtigung zu eröffnen.

Dafür müssen Frauen mutiger werden. Sie müssen NEIN sagen lernen und lernen, Forderungen zu stellen. Dazu müssen Frauen konsequenter werden und den Finger in die Wunde legen. Ich erlebe immer wieder Situationen – auch solche, zu denen ich selber eingeladen oder aufgefordert werde -  wo ich als Frau Moderatorin spielen soll in einer reinen Männerrunde. Und ich finde immer wieder Beispiele, bei denen auch Kolleginnen die gleiche Problematik erleben (zum Beispiel Tissy Bruns bei den Schönhauser Gesprächen des Bankenverbands). Solche Anfragen lehne ich ab. Ich sitze gerne als einzige Frau auf dem Podium, wenn es denn sein muss, weil ich dort inhaltliche Positionen vertreten kann, aber ich lasse mich nicht mehr als Frau auf die Vermittlerrolle reduzieren, während die inhaltlichen Positionen von Männern vertreten werden.

Frauen müssen sich besser und stärker vernetzen. Das tun Männer sehr konsequent, viel konsequenter als Frauen, aber Frauen können es auch. Und hierbei spielen die neuen, sozialen Medien eine wesentliche Rolle. Ich bin in verschiedenen Frauennetzwerken aktiv, die sich zum Teil international zusammensetzen und über Facebook eine Möglichkeit der regelmässigen Information und Kommunikation, des Austauschs von wichtigen Ideen und Dokumenten ermöglichen. Man muss nicht jede Nacht bis zwei Uhr Uhr in einer verrauchten Kneipe sitzen und sich betrinken, um das Networking zu betreiben, was uns in Politik und zuweilen auch in Wirtschaft von Männern vorgelebt wird. Wir können das anders machen und dafür gibt es die Instrumente, die wir nutzen können. Aber wir müssen uns vernetzen. Wir müssen lernen, einander noch stärker zu unterstützen. Wir müssen auch lernen, den “Zicken-Faktor” aus unserem Verhalten möglichst weitgehend auszublenden. Wenn Frauen Frauen nicht unterstützen, wie sollen sie dann von Männern verlangen, dies zu tun?

Und ein letzter Aspekt: wir müssen auch etwas kreativer werden, unser eigenes Anliegen in ansprechender Form zu kommunizieren und für weite Bereiche der Gesellschaft anschlussfähig zu machen. Das heißt eben nicht, die Frauenfrage leicht zu nehmen und als Spaßfaktor zu kommunizieren. Aber es heißt schon, neue kreative Wege zu finden, auf die immer noch bestehenden Ungleichheiten hinzuweisen. Wenn ich mir beispielsweise die alljährliche Verleihung der “Sauren Gurke” anschaue, dann finde ich es grundsätzlich eine gute Idee, auch medial auf die Frage der Gleichberechtigung und ihrer Vermittlung zu achten und diesen Umgang öffentlich zu thematisieren. Ob das aber über das vermeintlich schlimmste Negativbeispiel sein muss, weiss ich nicht. Möglicherweise sind positive Vorbilder anschlussfähiger und werden freundlicher aufgenommen und wahrgenommen. Die “Saure Gurke” bleibt in der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung meiner Beobachtung nach immer eher als „Spaßverderberaktion“ an den Frauen selber hängen, als dass sie denjenigen trifft, der sie entgegennehmen muss.

Es ist mehr als dreißig Jahre her, dass die amerikanische Wissenschaftlerin Gaye Tuchman einen international viel beachteten Aufsatz über „the symbolic annihilation of women by the mass media“ schrieb, über die „symbolische Verleugnung“ von Frauen in den Medien. Missachtung, Trivialisierung und Ausgrenzung, so die Soziologin, prägten den Umgang mit Frauen in der Öffentlichkeit. „From children’s shows to commercials to prime-time adventures and situation comedies, television proclaims that women don’t count for much.”

Das ist heute anders. Und damit ist viel erreicht. Frauen zählen in den Medien und sie zählen in unserer Gesellschaft. Aber sie sind noch immer in der Unterzahl, wenn es um Führungs- und Entscheidungspositionen geht. Um das zu ändern, brauchen wir einen zeitgemäßen Genderdiskurs, der die aktuellen Fragen der Gleichberechtigung mit aktuellen Themen und Stilmitteln der öffentlichen Diskussion verbindet. Wir brauchen mehr rolemodels für junge Mädchen, die als nächste Generation vielleicht noch selbstverständlicher ihren Anteil an gesellschaftlicher Entscheidung und Macht einfordern. Vor allem aber brauchen wir Frauen, die diesen öffentlichen Diskurs hartnäckig und dabei nicht humorlos vorantreiben.

Die größte Gefahr ist heute nicht mehr die symbolische Verleugnung der Frauen durch die Medien. Die größte Gefahr liegt in der symbolischen Selbstverleugnung ihrer Situation durch die Frauen selbst. Daran können vor allem Medienfrauen, Journalistinnen und Publizistinnen etwas ändern, indem sie Akzente in der Diskussion setzen.

In diesem Sinne bedanke ich mich sehr herzlich für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit!

Foto: Matthias Lüdecke – FAZ

Was in diesem Tresor wohl drin ist? Ein Schatz aus alten Goldmünzen? Das geheime Coca Cola Rezept? Die Erkenntnisse und Einsichten eines Berufspolitikers?

Vielleicht liegen einfach die drei Zettel darin, die Peer Steinbrück seinem Nachfolger Wolfgang Schäuble zur Amtsübergabe im Finanzministerium anempfohlen hat. Auf dem ersten Zettel steht: “Schiebe alles auf Deinen Vorgänger.” Auf dem zweiten steht: “Schiebe alles auf das geringe Wirtschaftswachstum und die geringen Staatseinnahmen.” Auf dem dritten steht: “Schreibe drei Zettel.” Ach nein, angesichts der derzeitigen Lage und der Steuersenkungsplänen der schwarz-gelben Koalition steht da auf dem dritten Zettel wahrscheinlich: “Ein Zettel hilft jetzt auch nicht mehr …”

Wir wissen das alles nicht. Der Tresor ist hart und verschlossen. Er steht im Museum für Kommunikation in Berlin und ist Teil der Ausstellung “Die Sprache des Geldes.” Da die in heutigen Zeiten manchmal wichtiger scheint als die Sprache der Worte, wäre es konsequent, wenn ein paar beschriebene Zettel in dem Tresor lägen, der in der Ausstellung als “Geldschrank” beschrieben wird. Sozusagen als virtuelle Goldstücke der Zukunft, mit denen wir uns künftig an Vergangenes erinnern können.

Falls dann irgendwann jemand den Tresor öffnen kann …

Ethan Zuckerman ponders what good is knowing if it doesn’t lead to effective action…and he isn’t asking this rhetorically. You want to read this because Ethan himself is an extreme knower, an extreme care-er, and a full time agent of change. I found that this post caused me to have an internal dialogue in which I kept interrupting myself. The world is just so hard to change, even when the need is so obvious and urgent, and yet we can’t let ourselves believe that knowing and caring can make no difference at all. What’s at issue here (at least in my internal dialogue) is that the model of knowing, caring, and acting isn’t explaining our experience. Or our hope.

Then there’s Evgeny Morozov’s review of Andrew Lih’s The Wikipedia Revolution in the Boston Review. Evgeny likes Andrew’s book although he thinks it doesn’t explain enough about why Wikipedians wikipede. The comment thread is also well worth reading.

I’ve opened a lot of lectures lately – presentations about our Media Cloud research at Berkman – by complaining about the New York Times’s Africa coverage. I cite the fact that Japan tends to average roughly 8-10 times as many mentions in the paper of record than Nigeria in any given year, which is odd, given their comparable population size and importance. (I also mention that the Times is not alone – all US media outlets I’ve studied closely show this pattern – and that the Africa stories the Times runs are frequently excellent.)

If the Times is undercovering Nigeria, the same can’t be said for their recent coverage of Equatorial Guinea. One of the most fascinating and dysfunctional corners of the African continent, Equatorial Guinea is a couple of tiny islands and stretch of coastline between Gabon and Cameroon slightly smaller than the state of Maryland. The country is occupied by roughly half a million people, most of them extremely poor and a small number who are obscenely wealthy, as the islands of Equatorial Guinea sit atop massive oil fields. Much of Equatorial Guinea’s oil output is exported to the US – 132,000 barrels a day – making Equatorial Guinea the third-largest sub-Saharan exporter of oil to the US (behind Nigeria and Angola).

While oil wealth may help explain the Times’s interest in Equatorial Guinea (six stories this year, as compared to two this year on its vastly larger neighbor, Cameroon) – I’ve made the case in the past that American media attention tracks national GDP more closely than population – the Times’s focus may have more to do with another natural resource: absurdity.

Equatorial Guinea is, simply put, one of the most absurd nations on the planet. It’s not just a kleptocratic dictatorship run by a man who is arguably Africa’s worst ruler – it’s a staggeringly wealthy kleptocratic dictatorship. The CIA’s world factbook estimates per capita income for 2008 at $37,300, making the average Equatorial Guinean wealthier than the average Dane.

This wealth doesn’t seem to make the lives of the nation’s citizens much better. The image above is from Hans Rosling’s amazing Gapminder, and it shows the “development” of the country over the past two decades. The nation’s gotten dramatically wealthier in those years – the GDP per capita has increased by a factor of ten – and infant mortality has increased. Generally speaking, this doesn’t happen – infant mortality is much lower in wealthy nations than in poor nations. But Equatorial Guinea isn’t rich – it’s a nation where most citizens are desperately poor and a very small number are staggeringly rich.

Because there’s so much oil money in Equatorial Guinea, people periodically have the clever idea of overthrowing the government and installing a new one that would, gratefully, share future oil profits. Frederick Forsyth wrote a gripping novel that reads, more or less, as a blueprint for overthrowing Equatorial Guinea with a small force of professional missionaries. Some have alleged that Forsyth’s book was the result of his involvement in planning an attempted coup in 1973 – Forsyth admits he knew the coup plotters and that he passed money to them, but claims that his involvement with the plans were merely “research”. A more recent coup – The Wonga Coup in 2004 – allegedly used Forsyth’s novel as a planning document. The Wonga Coup involved South African mercenaries, Zimbabwean arms dealers and Mark Thatcher, the son of Britain’s former prime minister. It was one of the more absurd stories of the past decade, and it’s possible that we’ll finally get the complete story of the coup attempt now that the organizer, Simon Mann, was released from an Equatorial Guinean jail. (Not all the coups are quite this literary in nature. There’s no evidence that the 16 coup plotters arrested earlier this year were Forsyth fans – more likely, they were members of the Niger Delta resistance movement, MEND.)

A rich country with radical underdevelopment, a country so ripe for plunder that people read novels to plan coups? Not absurd enough for you? Okay, so here’s this – Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue is Britney Spears’s neighbor. Mr. Obiang is the son of the aforementioned kleptocratic dictator, and his shrewd management of his $4000 a month salary as Equatorial Guinea’s minister of agriculture and forests has allowed him to purchase a $35 million estate in Malibu, California, a Gulfstream V jet and a fleet of luxury cars and speedboats. The US Justice department reports that Obiang the younger pilfered an estimated $73 million from the EG treasury between 2005 and 2006 and moved it into the US.

As the New York Times reported this weekend, the strong evidence that Obiang is systematically looting his nation’s treasury hasn’t prevented him from getting US visas and visiting his estate several times a year. So why does Obiang get to play in Malibu while Robert Mugabe is forced to live it up in Hong Kong? According to the US State Department officials quoted in Ian Urbina’s New York Times story, the answer is simple: Zimbabwe doesn’t have oil, while Equatorial Guinea does.

Urbina’s story is an example of advocacy journalism at its best. Armed with research conducted by Global Witness, a leading pressure group focused on increasing transparency in resource-rich countries, Urbina points to rules bent or ignored by two US government departments, the possible complicity of two US oil companies and the role played by a prominent Washington PR firm as the EG government’s paid apologists.

So what?

When I started working with Open Society Institute, I was introduced to the phrase “theory of change” by a colleague who persistently (and, usually, very helpfully) insisted we unpack the logic behind any project we were considering funding. What did we want to accomplish, in the long run, and how would this project advance those goals?

So what’s the theory of change behind Urbina’s story? There may not be one – Urbina saw a fascinating and provocative story and used the platform provided by the New York Times to share the tale. Even if that’s true, the folks at Global Witness who provided Urbina with the documents to make this case had a theory of change – a belief that a story in a prominent newspaper would lead towards a policy change in the US government, or increased support for their campaigns for transparency in resource-extracting nations.

Perhaps the US State Department will be sufficiently embarrassed by the Times story to change their visa issuing practices. Perhaps some of the readers of the Times story will be grateful for Global Witness’s research and support their work. (You should – they’re an extremely responsible and credible organization doing important work.) I’m interested in the question of how a New York Times reader, agitated and motivated by Urbina’s story, would take the information she received in the story and move towards constructive action.

Global Witness doesn’t make it especially easy for individuals to involve themselves with campaigns, except as donors. Their webpages on corruption in oil, gas and mining and on banks and corruption include lists of the organization’s laudable achievements, their publications and their partners in advocacy. They don’t include a call or action or participation beyond encouragement to donate.

Would Global Witness benefit from a Facebook group dedicated to convincing Secretary Clinton to deny Obiang a visa? A petition demanding that Equatorial Guinea hold free and open elections? Probably not. They’re making a bet that the way to influence a government like Obiang’s is to operate at intergovernmental levels, providing actors within the State department with information and impetus to act.

Here’s the rub: information alone is insufficient to provoke action. In “A Problem from Hell“, Samantha Power unpacks the history of genocides in the 20th century and the reaction of governments to these systematic mass killings. Pointing out that Clinton administration wasn’t unaware of the genocide taking place in Rwanda, just unwilling to act, Power argues that governments only act to prevent genocide in reaction to consistent, relentless citizen pressure. Given the reasons not to act against Equatorial Guinea (the fear of driving EG to oust US oil companies and invite in Chinese ones, for instance), it’s reasonable to believe that merely informing and embarrassing the State Department won’t accomplish anything, without building accompanying citizen pressure.

So let’s reexamine the idea of the anti-Obieng Facebook group. My friend Evgeny Morozov argues that a great deal of online activism can be best characterized as “slacktivism” – it’s a symbolic gesture, a fashion statement, not an action that could lead towards real change. The examples he offered at a talk at Ars Electronica were, to me, compelling ones – a Facebook group dedicated to “saving the children of Africa” with 1.5 million members and a total of $8,449 in donations; a psychology experiment in Denmark that demonstrated people’s willingness to sign onto an online protest against an imaginary injustice. Evgeny worries that such online activism isn’t just ineffective – it leads to social loafing, where people get less involved with actually saving the children of Africa because they see a group of likeminded individuals and assume the collective effort will solve the problem.

While I find Evgeny’s argument compelling, I’m starting to wonder whether there’s countervailing dynamic at work. During the June 2009 protests over the Iranian elections, there was a burst of online activity as people moved by accounts of the protests looked for ways to offer solidarity and support for the activists on the ground. Twitter users turned their avatars green and changed their location information and time zone to suggest that they were in Tehran. They joined Facebook groups, shared links to the Neda Agha-Soltan video, donated USB keys to load with censorship circumvention software and send to activists, and opened proxy servers to offer Iranians an uncensored path to the internet.

These efforts weren’t effective in overturning the Iranian election results or leading to a popular revolution in the country. That might reflect their ineffectiveness – it’s unclear that the greening of Twitter would strike fear into Ahmedinejad’s heart – or the fact that the current Iranian state is powerful, well-organized, controls an experienced security apparatus, and has support from many Iranian citizens. I’m wondering if they were effective in another way – they allowed people with no personal connection to Iran to feel like they were part of the events. This feeling, in turn, may have encouraged individuals to pay closer attention to the news in Iran than if they’d been non-participants.

I’ve got no data to support this theory, just an anecdote or two about friends who compulsively aggregated Iran information on twitter, and a quote from Susan Sontag’s recent book, Regarding the Pain of Others:

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing “we” can do – but who is that “we”? – and nothing “they” can do either – and who are “they” – then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.

If the inability to act makes us bored, cynical and apathetic, is it possible that doing something – even something that’s ultimately ineffective – could keep us engaged and compassionate? If so, is there an interplay between action and information-gathering that could turn a story into a movement that builds public will?

I read Urbina’s story. I get pissed off, and start researching other articles on Equatorial Guinea, which I post to Twitter and Facebook under the #eqguin tag. I encourage others to do likewise and to propose actions we might take to persuade the State Department to ban senior Obiang regime officials from traveling to the US. We start online petitions, a postcard campaign to the State Department and keep twittering links to the #eqguin tag… which becomes a trending topic, prompting journalists to declare a Twitter revolution in Equatorial Guinea. Witnessing our vast public will, Secretary Clinton declares that the State Department will enforce anti-corruption legislation and stop issuing visas to Obiang’s family. We promptly start a campaign to pressure CNOOC not to take over the leases that Obiang cancels with Exxon and Marathon in response to Clinton’s decisions.

A blueprint for turning knowledge into action and into will, or a fantasy? I’m not sure. (I am sure that it’s a blueprint that smart advocacy organizations are starting to try to implement, which makes the efficacy of the strategy an important topic to study.) I’m watching a debate between Evgeny and academic/activist Patrick Philippe Meier on this topic, centering around Evgeny’s recent article in Prospect magazine, “How dictators watch us on the web“. Evgeny makes the case that the rise of participatory web technologies has benefitted repressive governments as much as activists, who often aren’t able to use these technologies effectively; Patrick respondsby repeatedly asking “so what?”, arguing that Evgeny doesn’t have the data to prove that online activism is effective or ineffective. (Evgeny’s response to Patrick seems to agree on only one point – no one’s got the data to answer these questions effectively.)

Here’s my question: does it matter if action is effective or ineffective if we can demonstrate that action leads to more interest in a topic and more knowledge acquisition? I’ve been making the case for years that Americans (and likely people in many developed nations) don’t get enough information about the developing world, and that this lack of attention has consequences for developed and developing nations. If Americans don’t hear about an economic boom in Ghana, they don’t invest… which slows the boom, costing Ghanaians growth and costing Americans business opportunities in a growing economy. Similar dynamics apply around aid, humanitarian and security intervention, export of physical and cultural products.

A couple of years back, I realized that this was a supply problem, as much as a demand problem – journalists want to write about the developing world, but they and their publications have little evidence that their audience wants to hear these stories. Without evidence of reader interest in the developing world, it’s hard for most publications to support the research and travel that goes into creating these stories. If action (useful or otherwise) and newsseeking behaviors are linked, starting a movement may be a way to aggregate demand for a story, and encourage more reporting like Urbina’s story.

So get pissed off and start a Facebook group. Launch a Twitter hashtag. Translate compassion into action. But realize that the most effective action probably involves aggregating and disseminating information, building knowledge and awareness that’s an asset even if it doesn’t lead directly to political change.

And help us – me, Evgeny, Patrick, the Berkman Center, and everyone else studying this phenomenon – think about how we can bring data to the table and test some of these questions. Is online activism effective in bringing about political change? What mechanisms and tools are effective? Does the ability to take action increase and sustain interest in a topic? Does action need to have political effect to sustain interest? Does increased interest lead to increased media attention, and does that attention lead to real-world change? What sort of data and experiments do we need to move these questions beyond anecdote and theory and into testable propositions?

The Berkman Center has announced the Online Media Legal Network that networks lawyers willing to provide free services with online journalists and other creators of online works who need legal advice for free or for cheap. It could be anything from helping to legally create a company to representing you in court when you are accused of infringing someone else’s tender copyright. This builds on the work that the Citizen Media Law Project at the center.

If you need some legal help, go to the OMLN.org website. If you are a lawyer who wants to volunteer to help, sign up at the website.

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Hi PRX Producer, You might have noticed we just made some significant changes to PRX.org. Based on your suggestions and ideas, the updated piece page is designed to help stations find what they need on your pieces more quickly. We also created a friendlier, faster way to upload audio through the browser. 3.9 has more than sixty other enhancements and bug fixes, including more visible membership information. Thanks for pushing good changes at PRX! -Genevieve Member Support & Editorial Associate Welcome PRX 3.9 New piece page highlights: More visible piece data including the audio player, length, timing, cues, news holes, production date and content advisories above the fold. Do your part: add this key info to your pieces! We show more of your pieces on each piece page, right below the audio player. A more concise piece summary, plus a producer contact button next to the photo. Now you can see station carriage reports on both the piece page and My PRX. If your piece gets licensed and the station doesn’t fill out carriage info, please contact them from their PRX profile. Our new browser uploader lets you select and upload all your files for a piece at once. Learn more. Do you have more ideas of what we need next on PRX.org to make it work better for you? Let us know! Tips & Resources Want your work in a podcast? Several PRX producers’ pieces have already been featured in EconomyBeat. Let us know if you have a piece you want us to consider for it: add the piece to PRX and give it the tag “ebpodcast” or email Roman Mars. Updated: An Ideal Piece Page Have you filled out all the useful info that makes your pieces attractive to stations? Learn how. Fan us on Facebook! We share cool pieces (maybe one of yours!), the latest PRX news and more on our page. Opportunities Did you start in youth radio? PRX’s YouthCast host, Molly Adams, is producing a new Web segment interviewing adults who found their passion for media when they joined a youth radio group. Email Molly if this is you — share your story with the country’s youngest producers! Science Literacy Training SoundVision Productions is presenting Science Literacy Training for public radio reporters and producers in the Bay Area, April 11-17. The workshop includes sessions on science journalism, reporting science for radio and more. Applicants receive no-cost tuition, free board, a stipend toward transportation and some meals. Applications are due by 5 p.m. PST on Dec. 10. November 2009 Welcome PRX 3.9 Tips & Resources Opportunities Programming Hooks Stations will be programming around these events and subjects. Tell us what you have that fits! Native American Heritage Month – Nov. Thanksgiving World AIDS Day – Dec. 1 UN Climate Conference – Dec. 7-18 Hanukkah Christmas The New Year MLK Day – Jan. 18 Black History Month – Feb. Public Radio Player iPhone App Generation PRX — Connecting and supporting youth producers Our Podcasts Playlists of Producer Pieces Third Coast Winners Housing and Real Estate Jobs and Unemployment More… What stations are buying Recently added pieces – New feed! PRX Stats ‘n’ Facts We paid producers… $39,725 in 3rd quarter of 2009 And over $1 million in our six years! As of November 2009 PRX has… 23,700+ published audio pieces 89,600+ listeners and producers Our Pals Unsubscribe Click to instantly unsubscribe from this mailing list. Send to a friend Know someone who would like producer updates from PRX? PRX, Inc. is a non-profit corporation based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. PRX was created through a collaboration of the Station Resource Group and Atlantic Public Media, and continues to receive support from public radio stations and producers, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Surdna Foundation and Google Grants. Headphone image by Pedro Vasquez Colmenares. Science image by Mario Caruso.

Brian Lehrer, the moderator of WNYC’s excellent morning show, has been kind enough to invite me onto his show all month long, appearing every Thursday morning. It’s been a somewhat insane month for me to participate. As Rachel explained on her blog, the last few weeks of her pregnancy have been a little tricky and scary, and I ended up doing one of our interviews from the parking lot of the local hospital. Rachel’s well and home today, and I have high hopes of broadcasting shows with Brian today and this coming Wednesday before she goes into labor!

When we discussed what we might want to cover in our segments, we outlined half a dozen topics in international development. But as we’ve started talking on air, we’re hovering around my topic du jour – how the Internet can help make the world a smaller place. After looking at Meedan, a wonderful project designed to enable conversation between English and Arabic speakers (disclosure – I’m an advisor to the project) during last week’s show, we’re going to look closely at Roland Soong’s EastSouthWestNorth blog today and how Obama’s visit to China was covered in the Chinese blogosphere.

Eldoret, Kenya at night. Photo by Joshua Wanyama

Brian has asked me to give his listeners homework assignments, asking them to look at sites before the next show. Next week’s conversation is going to be about dialogs regarding rebranding Africa, and the homework assignment will be Joseph Wanyama and Sheila Ochugboju’s remarkable site, AfricaKnows.com. Joseph is a brilliant photojournalist and many of his photos of contemporary life in Kenya are complemented with poems from Sheila. Collectively they give a picture of Africa that’s likely to surprise and challenge people who don’t know the continent well.

Hope you’ll tune in. And thanks for the opportunity to engage with your listeners, Brian.

The Berkman Center’s Citizen Media Law Project has launched the Online Media Legal Network (OMLN):

a new pro bono initiative that connects lawyers and law school clinics from across the country with online journalists and digital media creators who need legal help. Lawyers participating in OMLN will provide qualifying online publishers with pro bono and reduced fee legal assistance on a broad range of legal issues, including business formation and governance, copyright licensing and fair use, employment and freelancer agreements, access to government information, pre-publication review of content, and representation in litigation.

This is a valuable initiative. It will help many more people than the individuals who receive assistance from volunteer lawyers and law students in specific cases.

One of the common misconceptions in digital media over the past few years has been the notion that bloggers may be somehow exempt from the laws that apply to other forms of publishing. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The laws aren’t only about defamation, though that’s where the biggest threats to independent journalists can be found — in part because the independents don’t have legal teams at their disposal. Some plaintiffs have sued or threatened to sue largely to shut down criticism, not because they’ve actually been defamed, and just the threat of a lawsuit is often enough to shut down legitimate speech.

There are lots of other legal issues you need to think about if you publish on the Web, including fair use, freelance agreements, setting up businesses and the like. The new network will help with those issues, too, among others.

The CMLP has lined up an impressive collection of lawyers and law clinics for this initiative. They all deserve thanks as well.

(Note: I’m a CMLP co-founder and advisor.)

The Risky Behaviors and Online Safety track of Harvard University Berkman Center’s Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative is creating a Compendium of youth-based Internet safety programs and interventions. We are requesting organizations, institutions, and individuals working in online youth safety to share descriptions of their effective programs and interventions that address risky behavior by youth online. We are particularly interested in endeavors that involve educators, social services, mentors and coaches, youth workers, religious leaders, law enforcement, mental health professionals, and those working in the field of public or adolescent health.

Program descriptions will be made publicly available. Exemplary programs will be spotlighted to policy makers, educators, and the public so that they too can learn about different approaches being tried and tested. Submissions also will be used to inform recommendations for future research and program opportunities.

Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, is launching a for-profit news startup in Hawaii, where he and his family live. This is important news, and not just because he’s involved.

A few months ago Pierre and Randy Ching founded Peer News. Their first project was a Twitter-related experiment called Ginx, which didn’t get critical mass and is being closed.

Now they’ve announced Peer News’ more important move — a project aimed at creating the kind of local journalism that brings accountability and value to a community.

Pierre, in a note on the company blog, says he and his team are launching — they aim for early 2010 — based on deep research: “talking to a lot of people in the industry about journalism and how we might be able to have an impact, listening and learning as much as we can.”

I’m one of the people Pierre has talked with, but I’m not privy to the details of the new venture. In a conversation last evening, he did say this will be service combining professional journalists and citizen journalists in “a commercial model that hasn’t been tried yet.”

Tantalizing, no? Let’s focus for a second on the word “commercial,” because Pierre and team are going for something that seems to have fallen somewhat out of favor for local news startups, the notion that they can and should be profitable. Not-for-profits are springing up in various places, and while Pierre is happy to see them he also believes it’s essential to find solid for-profit models for sustainable media.

One message is for the local newspapers: Watch out. Pierre has analyzed the Hawaii media market and sees enough advertising money is going toward journalism in Honolulu “to fund a high quality operation” — but clearly not the kind that dominates the revenue stream today, namely the local newspapers.

Peer News will operate in the leanest possible way compatible with doing solid journalism and community information. It will involve social media in a big way as well. (The Omidyar Network, the investing and charitable arm of Pierre and his wife, Pam, has been deep into socially valuable media for a long time. Count on them bringing what they’ve learned into Peer News.)

Plainly, the Hawaii launch is a test bed, in part. If it works, expect more local versions in other places.

Peer News is looking for a founding editor. My advice has been to find someone local, if at all possible, but especially to find someone excellent. If you’re interested, here’s where you can find out more.

One of the people who’ll be talking to editorial candidates is Howard Weaver, a former vice president of news at McClatchy. Howard has been consulting with Peer News and offers some perspective on his own blog, including this:

I’m interested for a lot of reasons, but I’d sum it up this way: the new venture intends to demonstrate that a digitally native, technologically fluent web organization can profitably serve targeted readers who want sophisticated journalism focused on local civic affairs.

Maybe Pierre and his team have cracked part of the code for sustainable digital journalism. Maybe not. But the fact that they’re going to try, with some serious resources behind the effort, is great news.

So I’m looking forward to following the progress of Peer News. So should anyone who’s interested in the future of journalism.

(Note: The Omidyar Network was a seed funder of my long-ago Grassroots Media (Bayosphere) project. It lost money.)

The Risky Behaviors and Online Safety track of the Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is creating a Compendium of youth-based Internet safety programs and interventions. We are requesting organizations, institutions, and individuals working in online youth safety to share descriptions of their effective programs and interventions that address risky behavior by youth online. We are particularly interested in endeavors that involve educators, social services, mentors and coaches, youth workers, religious leaders, law enforcement, mental health professionals, and those working in the field of public or adolescent health.

• More information can be found at: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/research/digitalnatives/policy/safetycfp
• Submission Deadline: December 21, 2009
• Submission Length: 2-5 pages
• Send Submission to: ymps-submissions@cyber.law.harvard.edu

Program descriptions will be made publicly available. Exemplary programs will be spotlighted to policy makers, educators, and the public so that they too can learn about different approaches being tried and tested. Submissions also will be used to inform recommendations for future research and program opportunities.
Submissions should be documentations of solutions, projects, or initiatives that address at least one of the following four areas being addressed:

• Sexual solicitation of and sex crimes involving minors
  
• Bullying or harassment of minors
  
• Access to problematic or illegal content (including pornographic and violent content)
  
• Youth-generated problematic or illegal content (including sexting and self-harm sites)

We are especially keen to highlight projects that focus on underlying problems, risky youth behavior, and settings where parents cannot be relied upon to help youth. The ideal solution, project, or initiative will be grounded in research-driven knowledge about the risks youth face rather than generalized beliefs about online risks. Successful endeavors will most likely recognize that youth cannot simply be protected, but must be engaged as active agents in any endeavor that seeks to help youth.

Please forward this call along to any organizations and individuals you think would be able to share information about their successful experiences and programs.

Should you have any questions, please contact us: ymps-submissions@cyber.law.harvard.edu.

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The Chronicle Review — the longer-format magazine that occasionally accompanies the Chronicle of Higher Education — is this week about the decline of journalism. One of the pieces asks a number of scholars whether the decline of the news media had important implications for universities. Here is a link to the answers — including my own. I decided to take a rather utilitarian tack — that universities will become even more mysterious and mistrusted institutions if we don’t have journalists touting our good works every now and then. There are lots of interesting answers to the question — I agree with my colleague Jill Lepore’s characterization of students, by the way. And she is not the only one worried about the increasing superficiality of thought, and the increasing difficulty in encouraging people to drill down and think deeply (see Ted Gup’s, for example).