If you’ve been following the news out of Iran the last few days, odds are you’re following it very differently from even a few years ago. Ten years ago, most of what I would have learned would have come from the TV news or the New York Times the day after. Five years ago, it was the New York Times or other traditonal media websites that I probably would have turned to. Today, however, for me at least, it’s Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia and then the New York Times website. It’s a bit of a different process, I’d say.
While we’ll wait to see how social tools affect the outcome in Iran, we can’t wait to begin to teach ourselves and our kids how to make sense of media that we ourselves have to edit. The complexities here are huge, in both an information and technological context. We’re reading and viewing content created by people whose identities and agendas are unkown to us. While much of it is raw, we can’t know how much of it is made to look raw, how much of it has been edited, how much of it is true. I can read the Tweet above and believe it, or I can wait for confirmation. I can do what all good journalists have done throughout time which is verify and reverify before believing and reporting.
The difference is, obviously, is that I have to do this for myself. I now have access to the raw information, the stuff that I used to pay for someone else to find and sift and synthesize and share. I can choose to continue to take that route, certainly, to only check the reputable media outlets for updates and “news”. But if I do that these days I deny myself a greater understanding of not just how to consume all of this but how to participate in it. I’m not in Iran (thankfully) but I can still share the best of what I find about Iran for others in my network. I don’t take that task lightly, because I want to be a trusted contributor. I want others to share with me so that we can sift and filter and synthesize and contribute the best of our resources and thinking. As Donald Leu writes, these days “we read online as authors, and we write online as readers.” And, I would add, we need to read and write as editors as well.
I know that we should have been teaching these skills and processes all along with every piece of information we read or shared. But the reality is that we as an educational system haven’t been doing a very good job of it. Right now, however, we and our kids simply can’t get away with not having these skills any longer. I know the school year is over for many, but for those that are still in session, welcome to a teachable moment about the world, democracy, technology, media, and most of all, participation.
Twitter seems to have gone dark from Iran the past few hours. Scary. I remember a debate we had in school AFTER 9/11–should we have stopped school and shown the news? Some of the images from Iran are harrowing.
Should we control the broadcast into school or should we encourage all kids to follow tweets from Iran and get the news right away on their phones/accounts?
I started following #IranElections yesterday because of a tweet I read early in the morning. It has been so compelling to read all of the posts. What you have said today really speaks to me as an educator. What can I do to help my students become their own effective editors? I’m still not sure, but I will spend some time over the summer developing some thoughts!
Thank you for this blog post it really says it all.
One of the big lessons I always tried to teach my students was to assess the nature and credibillity of potenial evidence.
By ignoring NYT and other traditional media, you are leaving out a major outlet — one that still carries quite a bit of credibility and authority. Access to more raw data can be great, but makes the burden and challenge of assessing credibilty far far greater.
The critical skill you leave out is judgement. Synthesizing questionable information is not necessarily worth the effort. At what point ought one to take these alternative and raw data seriously enough for it to be worth more than others’ synthesis and analysis, despite the greater effort required of you?
The fact is that you are a consumer of information, not a journalist or expert in Iranian affairs. Why do you think that you are well positioned or able to provide better synthesis or analysis?
(I don’t mean to imply that you don’t. Rather, I mean that you have left this important question out of the discussion. Meta-cognition and self-awareness, judgement about one’s own judgement. Critical stuff.)
Thanks for the comments. I agree that traditional media still has a large role to play here; sorry if that wasn’t clear. My point is that with the immediacy of news now, the different ways that we can consume it as it happens, if we are not engaging with it with some of the best qualities of traditional journalism, we risk being misled or mistaken.
Does the sheer volume of information we consume improve our judgement? Does a journalism degree?
Hey Brandt,
Only if we’ve been taught to use good judgment in the way we consume that information. And again, while the volume is increasing, I think the bigger issue is the speed, the lack of time for reflection and analysis. So little of the news we see has been vetted in the traditional sense. We need to do that now, to make time for it.
Seems that at least part of what’s going on is that it’s not just the media, but the way that we are re-defining what ‘the news’ is. It’s a new recognition of the role we play in filtering out accurate information.
I’ve been running #IranElection through Twitterfall almost constantly since the weekend. And several times I’ve been aware of real news literally hours before it was reported on by the mainstream media (and thereby I assume having been confirmed).
So it starts with the question: What is ‘news’ and how is it changing?
But the bigger picture is: Social media is redefining the filters that we use to get information (whether TV news outlets and newspapers, or whether textbooks and encyclopedias in the classroom).
The new filters are dynamic, exponential, and personalized.
And that has profound implications for the way we go about teaching our students.
Thanks, Shelly. Personalized filters need to be addressed early on, no question. I think the real challenge with most of this is not looking at it as a skill but as a lifestyle, something that even young kids should be helped with.
Journalists learn how to assess different sources and how to consider different points of view, especially in the context of contested and/or high stakes issues. A journalism degree does not guaranty that these skills have been mastered, but it makes it a lot more likely that some degree of proficiency has been developed.
I would not say that the volume of information that we consume improves our judgment at all. In fact, it might even have the opposite influence. Without time to consider and think, it is hard to develop judgment. Furthermore, the nature of the information we consumer, the nature of of the volume of information we consume (e.g. is it one-sided? Does it include context? etc.) probably matters a lot more than the volume itself.
That is, I can recommend ten low quality books about schools from one think tank, or one high quality book. Which will do a better job of developing your judgment?
@ceolaf
You bring up important points.
Question: have you been following the #IranElection feed?
Shelly
@Shelly,
I’ve looked from time to time, but it is a ton of noise, from which it is impossible to find distinguish real information.
I am more interested in particular sources, especially those who have gained some sort of credibility. Some of those have been raw feed from twitter, others from new media blog, older media’s blogs and even print media (though online, of course). And NPR. Always NPR.
Frankly, though I am obsessed with this story — as I was with China 241 months ago — I do have other work do to, as well. There’s a limit to how many hours I can spend reading through the enormous volume of verbiage out there, especially that in 140 character chunks of unknown legitimacy.
Mostly, I am worried. Very very worried. Prague in 1968 comes to mind. Tiananman Square in 1989 does as well. Berlin in 1989 still strikes me as the exception, and tanks — literal or metaphorical — the rule.
@ceolaf
It’s interesting you mention NPR.
At least twice yesterday, I had real actionable news via the #IranElection feed that only hours later was reported by NPR.
Three things the feed has done that MSM can’t keep up with:
1) Immediate video… from cell phones, etc. Millions of cellphones in Tehran means millions of eyes watching exactly what’s happening.
2) Coordination of information and organization. This is something the trained journalists are not meant to do. It’s not their job and it would be unprofessional. But that doesn’t mean it’s not reality. The students and Twitterers are the ones shaking up the system. Of course it’s not pretty. Of course it’s not following the rules. But it’s happening.
3) Personal voices. I listened to an interview broadcast on MSM yesterday afternoon with ‘experts’ here in the States and for all you’d know in passing, they were discussing new ways of making sealing wax. Again: not the domain of professional journalists. And again: exactly why it’s so important.
I totally agree with you that there is a place — a vitally important place — for professional journalism. But that doesn’t change the fact that folks armed with nothing more than a cellphone and pure guts are in Tehran right now changing the way future generations will think back to how the consumption of news changed in the early 21st century.
This is, in terms of a revolution in the way we understand the power of media, analogous to the 1776 and the British vs. the Colonists. And CNN is walking in straight lines wearing the Red Coats.
@shelly
A bit over the top, wouldn’t you say?
This gets at a issue I have with many technology in education advocates. Some technology DOES release revolutionary change, but most does not. Most technology is evolutionary, and when revolutions *do* happen, they are not universal.
Looking at your analogy: 1776/1812 marked the beginning of the end of a world order, but it took far more than a century finish. The Brits did not hand over rule of India until the middle of the 20th Century. It took until….1931(?) for Canada and Australia to gain their independence. European colonial powers didn’t pull out of Africa until the 1960’s, for the most part. And today, the old colonial powers remain among the strongest militaries in the world, certainly greater than almost all of their former colonies.
You think that CNN is wearing Red Coats? Well, today the Red Coats are still a top 5 military power (as judged by military expenditures). You gonna mess with them?
So, excuse me if I don’t think that CNN is a dinosaur. Heck, CNN could be 1776. The web might be 1789 and Twitter might be 1812. There’s a long way to go before old school journalism loses its importance.
Look, I don’t need immediate video, and I cannot make sense of it. I don’t know if it is representative of what is going on around the corner, let alone around the city or around the nation. I need experts to help me to understand that. And I can wait a couple hours for them to report to me about it.
I’m not sure what you are referring to by “coordination of information and organization.” Does you mean as a tool for revolution? That doesn’t change the value of trained journalists and content experts. I don’t know what you mean by your #3, either. Have you been reading Juan Cole? He’s an expert and he’s not talking about wax.
Given the surplus of points of view and information coming from Iran, I need help in understanding Iran, Tehran and what is happening there right now. I need help in understanding the politics and dynamics of the Iranian establishment. I am not so arrogant as to think that I can understand it based on a few weeks’ reading, anymore than I expect that any smart person can walk into a classroom and become master teacher simply with a summer boot camp.
So let’s bring this back to education.
Giving kids computers and access to the internet does not lessen the need for good teaching. Heck, it INCREASES it. With so much more information available than in times past, developing the ability to interpret, evaluate, analyze, synthesize and judge are more important than ever. But so is understanding one’s own limits and the importance of trusting others to lend their different abilities, and the ability to figure out when and with whom that is appropriate.
(And another important lesson here: Be careful with your analogies, or they might come back an bite you in the ass.)
A very interesting and important post and discussion. Unfortunately, in today’s emerging media world, we supposedly don’t need journalists, professors and other professionals because information is now accessible by all. Gen Y members in particular promote such opinions. But I’ll hold to Herbert Gans definition of news 30 years ago: news is information analyzed by journalists, who belong to a profession. Emerging media and the world’s appetite for it has messed up this working definition of news. Your post and the comments here prove the definition. I don’t need to add to the discussion of why all this real-time information is unfiltered and without context and analysis. Personally, I still rely on the NYT, LAT, NPR and Newsweek while also reading some online blogs. Thank you for this post!
Great posting – I particularly liked the final paragraph about “a great teaching moment” for all the reasons you describe.
“Journalists” by and large did not get the lead up to the Iraq War right. “Journalists” by and large did not get the stats leading up to the last presidential campaign right. “Journalists” by and large did not get the lead up to the recession right.
By and large bloggers did. Nate Silver, et al.
Maybe “journalists” could learn something from the bloggers. We need them to.
As for Red Coats analogy… that was an allusion to the old Bill Cosby joke. Google it.
Yes, the best learning occurs when it’s relevant and timely – a teachable moment. One of the most important lessons for students is to acquire the skills of critical thinking, omnipresent editors on the fly.
@Shelly
1) You’ve got to realize that that neither you nor I were going to take the raw data and predict our last presidential election. It took a statistics expert with keen knowledge of how our elections actually work to do that. And then journalists started quoting him, bringing him to a wider audience than he was already reaching. (Of course, I’ve been reading his work since last century, relying on him and his expertise to take raw data and make it more useful to me.)
2) There were many journalists who DID get the Iraq war right. You’ve got to develop the judgment to figure out which are credible/add value, and which don’t. Of course, there were many bloggers who got it wrong, too.
3) There were journalist and economist who got the financial collapse right, too. And I don’t know any non-journalist and non-expert was able to take raw data figure that out for themselves.
4) As for blogging, I’m a big fan of the medium. Some journalists use it quite well, and some experts do as well. We have no disagreement there.
What we’ve been talking about — before you changed the topic — was how well consumers can make use of raw data, as compared to the value added by having intermediaries (i.e. journalists and experts) report on their conclusions from the data. I maintain that that raw data that technology newly gives us access to is not as valuable or useful as the work that real experts do on it, which can include journalists and can still be brought to us otherwise by journalists. There are times when the raw data itself is not so useful.
As for the alleged Bill Cosby joke, I couldn’t find it. Can you offer a link or some direction other than just “Google it.”
Thanks for keeping the conversation civil. ;0)
The interesting thing here to me, and what I think you and Shelly are dancing around, is the definition of expertise. And not only what defines an expert, but how do I find the best ones. Pre-Web, I was limited to the TV channels on my dial, the newspapers in my locality or the books in the library. You figured the authors of all of that stuff had passed some type of credibility test somewhere along the line. Now, where is that test? Chris Dede says “Validity of knowledge in Web 2.0 environments is established through peer review in an engaged community, and expertise entails understanding disputes and offering syntheses widely accepted by the community.” That process has to start somewhere, with individual Tweets, videos, the “raw data.” Again, the difference now is that we all have access to it. Theoretically, we can all be experts depending on our ability to synthesize and communicate those ideas. Many of the experts who I trust today have no traditional creds. None. Is that bad?
My point is those are some of the complexities we need to begin to sift through.
(Btw, here’s the redcoats ref.)
This argument about journalists is getting a bit too much for me. So some thoughts.
I would not take it for granted that a journalism degree means that the reported news is unbiased or informed. Too many journalists have let down their profession through laziness, editorial pressure, advertising pressure, overwork, being asked for too much too quickly, etc. Who are the experts in a subject field? Not journalists who may have analysis skills, but so do many other professionals/consumers. To really analyse a raw data on a subject, in the context of the history, they need to go to more than one expert in that field. Do they have time to do this with the deadlines they work to?
So journalists are reporting things as they see them, as the information comes to them. Their information is as good as their sources. Again who decides that emphasis or bias? There are as many viewpoints as there are observers. What makes these sources reliable or not?
Good journalists, with the right support, can be an immensely important to their readers/listeners whilst they are trying to understand an issue but, for example, a quick grab from a longer interview, can completely change the ideas that the reader/listener gets because the context has changed.
So the merit of one information source to the detriment of another is not a useful argument. A good observer and commentator is a good observer and commentator, not because, or in spite, of a degree. Everyone should be very aware of the pitfalls of using intermediaries when deciding anything. This is where education is so important. The art of questioning, using a variety of sources for information and the skills of interpretation and analysis needs to be cultivated in everyone, as well as keeping an open mind and a healthy sense of perspective – The understanding that your stance and opinion is just one in a myriad of ideas.
Frequently, journalists work around a common narrative that develops by agreement among themselves. Remember the story that Gore said he invented the Internet. That was the result of an incompetent reporter, but even after it was generally agreed to be false, many “liberal” reporters continued to report it as fact. The add a phrase to the effect that some people disagree that he said this. Facts that don’t fit the current narrative are ignored; “facts” that support the accepted narrative are accepted as true, regardless of whether they are or not.
Academics do the same thing. For many years all chemists “knew” that the Noble Gases didn’t form compounds, so they didn’t even try to make them. That was wrong! I think you can provide examples from every discipline, whatever it may be. It is very hard to break out of the conventional mindset of your colleagues, but that makes it hard to accept change. When everyone has access to the raw data, it becomes more likely that someone will shout, “The Emperor has no clothes!” That is very uncomfortable for the keepers of the conventional wisdom, and they do not respond well to correction.
Did anyone follow the hash tag #CNNfail? The Tweets criticized CNN for ignoring the Iranian demonstrations for a whole evening. CNN broadcast stories about the failure of Six Flags because that would provide better U.S. audiences. Don’t exaggerate the expertise of the Main Stream Media or underestimate the power of the social media. It is more complex that just saying, “I’ll wait until the ‘real’ reporters tell me what truth is.”
Harry,
I think that you are proposing a false dichotomy, and defining one of the two possibilities rather narrowly.
CNN is enormously flawed. CNN and NYTimes might be the respective pinnacles of the broadcast and print mainstream media, but that really says more about their ubiquity than than their sagacity. Though the New York TImes is superior to CNN, it is far from perfect, itself. There is a wealth of other publications out there, and other broadcast outlets as well. CNN’s failures do not mean that the entire MSM has failed. (In fact, I would argue that CNN’s failures are far more of a condemnation of cable news than of any larger industry.)
More important, however, is that false dichotomy. There are more options than watching CNN vs. diving into the raw data . For example, of wealth of in-depth and intelligent discussions of news and issues on various NPR programs. There are news magazines, from general interest (e.g. Newsweek, US News, The Economist) to specialty (e.g. Foreign Policy). Of course, there are experts out there who blog (e.g. Andrew Gelman, Juan Cole).
You are right that journalists often work around a common narrative, and that sometimes that narrative is a flawed one. It’s good to keep in mind who is more prone to do that, and who is less. Our response to that problem should not be to dismiss them all and try to do their jobs for them. Rather, is should be to pick among them more thoughtfully, and consume them carefully.
I’m not sure I see a dichotomy. I tell my students that the old X-files got it right:
The Truth is Out There, AND
Trust No One.
All information is biased. The hard job is to recognize the bias and take it into account when you use the source. That is what we need to teach our students (and ourselves).
The main stream media can play a valuable role, but most news organizations are being forced to report at the level of the lowest common denominator. Paris Hilton is more important than the Iran election because more people want to hear about Paris. The tougher the economic climate becomes, the more that economics forces the MSM pitch to those who aren’t interested in the world in which they live – – – except for the lives of the rich and famous. This causes the people who do care to take their attention elsewhere. A vicious and destructive cycle for a Democracy.
The false dichotomy you set up is between the MSM and needing to wade through raw data yourself, as though there are not other options. This is exacerbated by the narrowness with which you define MSM.
I don’t mean to defend CNN or the MSM — or even the New York Times. Rather, I mean to suggest that there are many more journalists and experts who can help us than are found on CNN or the New York Times. The failures one outlet do not condemn all media in all things. Yes, television is ratings driven. But there are serious magazines out there, serious blog by experts out there, and even NPR/PRI (easier to consume, not often as meaty and deep as serious magazines and experts’ blogs).
I agree with you that we need to teach students to recognize point of view, bias and all that — I think I already wrote that somewhere on this thread. Of course, we should teach them to look beyond CNN, and not to give up on experts and journalists simply because CNN has fallen short.
Will,
Actually, what I am talking about — and all that I am talking about — it how the value of raw data and “media that we ourselves have to edit” is overblown, and the folly of thinking or teaching that it is inherently superior to edited reports.
Democratization of different areas does not have to — and ought not to — mean the death of expertise and professionalism, not even in the field of journalism.
Though technology, I have all kinds of ways to diagnose my medical problems, but I still go to the the trained and experienced doctor to get a real diagnosis. Through technology, I have all kinds of way to get information about how to cook, but I still go to restaurants for most of my best meals — and I’m a pretty good cook!
There’s a hubris involved in thinking that access to raw data is better than access to high quality digested reports. I can’t read the meaning of lab tests that my doctor orders. Heck, s/he might not even be able to read the meaning of a test without a report in a form that s/he can understand.
There are those who think that they can make sense of things simply because they have access to raw data. But let’s compare Andrew Sullivan and Juan Cole. Sullivan throws out these tweets, implying that he’s giving access to raw data but is actually acting like a filter himself. He hubristically believes that he is an appropriate filter, though he has no expertise in Iran, the region or the culture. I’m don’t even think he has access to sources on the ground whose credibility he’s given serious thought to assessing. Juan Cole has real expertise, thinks carefully about what he post or links to, and understands who is depending upon.
It would be folly to think like Andrew Sullivan, and it would be greater folly to trust his version of events. What’s the old expression? “Who’s the greater fool? The fool or the one who follows him?”
If we argue about how we assess or judge expertise then we are already on my ground, acknowledging the importance of expertise. We are already saying, “Who should I look to to help me to understand this?”
The fact is that we CANNOT all be experts at everything. It takes years to become an expert teacher, and we don’t like it when people who don’t actually know what teaching entails come and tell us what we are doing wrong. It takes years to become a doctor, and Oprah should be ashamed for passing on medical advice from non-doctors. Focusing on something for five minutes or two weeks does not make us experts. Heck, we don’t even know enough to know what we don’t know.
Expertise is not simply the ability to synthesize and communicate. You need background knowledge and context. You need the kind of judgment that experience — and little else — provides.
This is the weakness of the hype around Web 2.0. People overstate its power and significance. Expertise is not democratic or the product of collective so-called wisdom. And there is still a huge place for it. Those who think that they can quickly become an expert at anything simply because they have access to the internet and web 2.0 is fooling him/herself.
Again, I don’t disagree with much of this at all. Who said raw data was superior to edited reports?
My point here is that now we have access to more raw, less synthesized data and we have to figure out how to deal with that instead of just saying all of it is crap and wait for the evening news. There is still value in expertise, but the issue is that we each need to be able to judge what that is using different criteria. I’m not listening to Oprah for medical advice, and I’m not believing @kir277 when he/she says that “Mousavi will make important message today” unless I have some other contexts for that source, his/her history of accuracy, traditional credentials, respect in the community and many others. AS you suggest, how has that expertise been earned. Similarly, do I discount your ideas simply because you are unknown to me? I have no way of assessing your traditional creds as an entry to this conversation. Should I stop reading?
To me it comes down to how do we start grappling with the new reality of expertise not the old ideal. I totally agree we need experts, but I think it’s now more up to us to find those sources in BOTH traditional and non-traditional ways.
Regardless, thanks for adding your thoughts here, whoever you are.
Will,
I’ll try and keep this civil 🙂
You are not a trusted contributor on the political conditions in Iraq. At best, you are a trusted passer-along of unfiltered and “filtered” information gathered by others. What makes this more sophisticated than a Xerox machine or gossip?
Much of the American public, yes – including teachers, are woefully ignorant and disinterested in politics and current events. Having access to less thoughtful analysis or as you pejoratively suggest, “synthesized” information on which to act MAY be dangerous.
The reason why Twitter and other Web tools are so important during this crisis is that the tyrannical Iranian government fear journalists more than they fear millions of cell-phone toting, admittedly courageous, citizens in the street.
HUNDREDS of journalists have been killed since 2000. Their commitment to finding and sharing knowledge is demonstrated by their effort and sacrifice. Sitting in Starbucks and retweeting doesn’t seem like the same gravitas to me.
A great journalist doesn’t need to be in harm’s way to provide a vital service to our democracy. The gentleman who has served as City Hall reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News over the past forty years has a set of skills, contacts and procedural knowledge vastly superior to bloggers – many of whom learned their craft from him.
Twitter is serving the same function in 2009 as the fax machine served in Tiananmen Square in 1989. It’s just a new form of smoke signals. In fact, citizens supporting new elections Iran or candidate Musavi are chanting “Allah-o Akbar” from roof tops after dark each night as a way of signaling support to each other in anonymity.
How do I know that residents of Tehran were chanting signals in the dark? I saw it on the dreaded television and heard about it on the old-time Commie organ, National Public Radio.
Let’s see if any more Americans can find Iran on a map in a few months than they could a month ago. More importantly, let’s see if they have any interest whatsoever in Iranian politics or more than an abstract desire for peace in the middle east.
When
Gary Stager
Proud Member of the Los Angeles Press Club and the Jazz Journalists Asscoiation
I’ll try the civil thing, too.
It would be great at some point if you gave me (anyone?) a little credit here Gary. I’m not a trusted contributor on the political conditions in Iraq? No der. And I take the trusted passer-alonger comment as a compliment. Shocking, I know. If you took the time to read what I was passing along before you slam me for it you’ll see I’m not linking to very much about Iran at all, and almost all of what I do link about the news there is to traditional media. Most of what I’m “passing along” are what I think are thoughtful, provocative articles and posts attempting to dissect the role of new social media in what’s happening there. Pieces that I think others might find useful and instructive in their own thinking. Pieces worth talking about. Sue me.
It’s a bit over the top to suggest that in some way I’m denigrating the lives of hundreds of assassinated journalists by doing this. In none of this have I suggested that the role of journalists isn’t still important, that traditional media isn’t still an important source. (If anything I’m suggesting we all take on more of that role. Yes, I know, we need people who are professionals at it.) But now, it’s one of many. (I listen to NPR too, btw. Great app for it on the iPhone.)
Once again, I guess there is nothing good about social media, that it’s all pablum, that those who us it are ignorant, lazy, whatever. Reading anything (everything) through that lens doesn’t seem to allow for much perspective or openness to the good things that can and will come out of all of this. I don’t mind that you push us on these ideas, Gary. In fact I really do welcome it. Just wish sometimes it felt like you were at least trying to see the positives.
It is interesting that this whole discussion is turning out to be ‘Twitter is a bunch of folks publishing gossip’. Same thing could be said about the mainstream media in the lead-up to the Iraq War.
Difference is the mainstream media was supposed to be a group of professionals. Yet by-and-large, they failed in their coverage then. Just like they dropped the ball on the housing bubble.
The real issue here is that a whole lot of folks just don’t trust the mainstream media.
If the #IranElection Tweets are a ‘smoke-signal’ of anything, it’s of a warning to the mainstream media — particularly cable news — that “we don’t trust you”.
In a way, the Twitter angle of the story has moved beyond the historical/political events on the ground. Only the folks with feet on the ground know what’s happening there, and, with communications disrupted, there is actually fairly little coming out. Though the most important thing to remain coming out of Tehran are the amateur videos fed into computers and sent out-of-country to be reposted.
Where the Twitter angle now goes is what it means in terms of critical mass. You can argue all you want about whether Twitter is relevant or just a company trying to make money or whatever. You can argue that the American attention span is short or that we’ve got trouble with geography or whatever. What you are missing is that this whole situation will have huge consequences for innovation in communication in the long run due to the critical mass manifest in a global network.
Furthermore, this shift won’t manifest in the ways one might presume.
It’s gonna be a cultural shift that rises up out of the hacker culture that’s been supporting much of the critical mass that’s led to thousands-deep queues on Twitterfall.
And for better or worse, it’s going to be led by a generation who has grown up without nostalgic feelings for newspapers.
As a teacher, here are some consequences of the whole thing for schools:
1. Internet Blocking is now a moot point (if you want it). Every teenager in America can now figure out how to build a proxy following widely distributed instructions disseminated by the hackers via #IranElection and which are now out there all over the place in the open.
2. This is a teachable moment with regards to what the purposes of journalism are and who and what can be considered a ‘journalist’. Fax machines in Ti Sq?!? Gimmie a break. In the current situation, we’re talking tens-of-millions of Tweets — mostly RTs and thing sent outside the country to be reposted. Who has made this possible? Who is responsible for what we see? And to apply Derrida’s ‘counterfeit’ argument: does it matter?
3. Authenticity. There’s a reason we’re talking about a Twitter feed. It’s because it’s reality. Even if you disagree with the validity of what that feed represents, the feed itself is reality. And whether or not Twitter exists in five years doesn’t matter: the networked feed paradigm isn’t going anywhere. It’s an authentic part of reality, whether you or I like it or not. How do we withhold that from our students with a straight face and a clear conscience?
If anything, what the whole Twitter angle has done is bring up complexities in the way we communicate that have been hinted at by thinkers for decades but which only know have been made manifest in the public sphere.
We’re talking “The Whole World Watching”… but ‘really’ this time. So, it’s time we start thinking about the implications of what the global network means to students in terms of critical thinking. Let alone our own precious debate.
Because this debate is well beyond “NPR is ‘better’ than Twitter”. That’s kids’ stuff.
This is about the way we communicate and perceive the world.
This is about how humans respond to word events using the technology that history has granted them.
This is about: what now?
Don’t forget that Twitter (like most of the social media companies) are for-profit ventures as vulnerable to the proclivities of the economy and marketplace as a print newspaper.
Oh yeah, except that most of the social media tools don’t make any money.
I don’t quite understand your comment Gary. How do economic and marketplace forces influence Twitter as a news source. Does Twitter edit which tweets go through?
James,
I’m happy to clarify. I was suggesting that an overreliance on any one venue for information is imprudent since that company may go out of business just as easily as the Rocky Mountain News. That’s especially true when these new communication outlets have no business model whatsoever.
Great, passionate discussion. The application to this in the classroom is that we need to teach our students to reading critically, read broadly, check the sources.
Without a doubt there is great value in in-depth professional journalism. We would be well served to use some of those same skills when we read primary or secondary sources of news.
However, the 24/7 stream of news, especially from TV, and pressures from outside sources like marketing and editorial bias, have pushed journalism into sound bytes and commentators commenting on commentaries. I would consider that lazy journalism as opposed to high-quality journalism.
Our secondary sources of mainstream news are still filtered by news editors. Editors must still choose what to publish and what to drop. Too often our mainstream media is US-centric and limited in context.
I think Will’s point was that social media can give us a broader perspective and context by getting information directly from primary sources, like the people in Iran watching it happen.
True, that should not be limited to one source. The power of Twitter is that many, short, primary sources can be pulled into one place to get multiple perspectives on one topic (Iranian elections).
True also, that it does require thought to sythesize information from those sources.
However, wouldn’t it be a valuable thing to teach our students to use higher level thinking when reading and viewing news?
Great discussion and some excellent points on all sides. Perhaps *this* is the value of social media in that it gives thoughtful people an opportunity to discuss their opinions in a forum that is easy to access and open to all. Compared to how this might have been done 10 years ago–where one of the few avenues to voicing an opinion might have been the letters to the editor of the local newspaper–we have indeed come a long way towards a ubiquitous method of sharing news, information, and opinion.
Now, what exactly have we done with this new power? Certainly, we can get breaking news from around the world that subverts the usual journalistic channels, but we also get LOLcats, Perez Hilton, and new avenues for spewing hate and misinformation. Social media allows access and connections across all kinds of topics, and not all of it is positive. I agree with Will and others that as educators we bear a responsibility to teach how to filter and assess the quality of the information we are receiving and be able to discern reliable and trusted sources.
As to the MSM bashing, well, I’m way over the notion that nothing good comes from traditional news outlets. Personally, I’d rather spend 15 minutes reading Leonard Pitts on race relations, as one example, because I know he has spent time thinking about the topic and synthesizing the information he wishes to present. His authority comes from the fact that many thousands of people read his work and are willing to pay to get the newspaper that carries it. Traditional news media, as Gary rightly points out, has an economic underpinning that establishes some authority by the sheer weight of how many people are willing to pay for access to it. The New York Times, CNN, and your local newspaper won’t stay in business for very long if the information they provide is routinely found to be incorrect or out of date. (Yes, I know newspapers are struggling, but not because of the lack or quality reporting. That has far more to do with loss of advertising than it does whether the writers and editors are doing their jobs. Of course they could go the way of FoxNews and pander to their audience just because of the profit available, but that’s another topic.)
To wrap this up, our enthusiasm for instant news and the ability to generate a buzz across the Web does not diminish the need for journalists and the outlets they write for. Much of what is available in the instant-on, publish before you process world of Web 2.0 is crap. Journalists may in fact play a *more* important role in today’s world where this flood of information requires analysis, thought, experience, and restraint before being pushed out the door and into our heads. I’d rather get my news from someone who has spent time synthesizing that information, comparing and filtering and assessing its validity, and has the experience to see connections than 200 bloggers in their dens pounding on a keyboard. While I appreciate the ability to access information and share opinions as we are doing here, and I certainly value the ability that the Web provides for unfiltered information like we’ve seen coming out of Iran, I still need someone to provide a historical context, to spend time I don’t have evaluating those sources, and to provide me with thoughtful, insightful analysis. And that comes from Main Stream Media.
K
I agree with you Kim that a lot of what people publish on social media is crap, because instant publishing allows people spout off without thinking through what they say or who they are saying it to.
Mainstream media helps us sift and sort through the miasma of information to pull out the relevant bits and help us process it. Thoughtful, quality commentary can also be found on some social media sources, like this one. The advantage of social media verses mainstream media (and MSM is moving this way) is that we regular folk scan have great discussions and debates like this one in the context of the same article.
The credibility of (good) trained journalism lies in its commitment to objective reporting, not impassioned and biased heresay. Tweets are good for whetting our appetites & announcing just-in-time turns in events, but I would rather trust professionals to compile the information, sift through sources for reliability, and then report the events with a wider view.
Twitter “news” is catching us up in a fever of reactionary mob-scene passion. People are jumping on bandwagons to support causes they really know nothing about, just to be part of the right-now crowd.
I’m reading the tweets and am amazed at the ubiquity of the medium, but I still will rely on reports from trained journalists — even then I believe in harvesting a variety of sources of journalists — before forming opinions.
It’s amazing to me that some people (ceolaf) can disagree and get their points across in a civilized manner and others (Gary) take it to a ridiculous level. Gary, you are out of line sir.
I’m just thankful I live in a country where freedom is still relatively evident.
Please keep the faith Will. Your work is important.
Just for the record, I don’t think Gary is out of line. His larger point is valid. It’s the overstatement that niggles at me.
All this boils down to the classic educational refrain, “if we don’t teach students (insert skill here) who will?” I agree this is a great teachable moment that we should not let pass. If we fail to teach students to be literate consumers of digital information (especially now!), then we will be as negligent as if we don’t teach students the 3 R’s–Educational malpractice.
What is the point here? What am *I* trying to say?
1) The fact that we have access to a virtually unlimited number of first person account and to something closer to raw data does not mean that we necessarily should avail ourselves of it, or that we should encourage our students to do so. In fact, I suggest that that we should encourage ourselves and our students to look elsewhere.
2) It is important to keep in mind and to teach our students how to assess an author/source’s point of view, agenda and credibility, or at least to think about these issues.
3) The bias of American journalists and the mainstream media (MSM) is usually overstated, and is certainly less than that of first person accounts and raw data. That is not to say that it doesn’t exist. Rather, it is to say that if these are concerns for you, you are not well served by going to the raw data, unless…
4) Getting a picture/understanding from raw data takes wading through enormous amounts of data. If you would rather look to the raw data, you’ve got to be ready to put in much more time, and to specifically look for multiple points of view yourself.
5) The “best” of what you find is likely not going to agree with your preconceptions, desires or hopes — and if you think it does you need to be much more careful in your exploration. Looking at the “raw data” yourself makes it easier for you to find the story you want to find, and that is just bad — incredibly bad. The story you want to find can blind yourself to truth more powerfully than any external editor or filter, and on most days/issue it is best to avoid that problem entirely.
6) The problem of the story you want to find is often even worse in groups, where like-minded folks can think that they have freed themselves from their own filters because they are depending upon others, too. However, when they all have the same filters, they get groupthink — the same problem of self-delusion magnified by the certainty of having others agree with them.
**********************
There are a few things that have not been my focus, but I want to add here.
A) This is not about new media vs. old media. This is not about mainstream media (MSM) vs. alternative media.
B) People who think that the MSM is defined by CNN, the New York Times and even NPR — or Fox News, the Washington Times and Rush Limbaugh — have too narrow a view. Foreign Policy magazine, for example, is mainstream. It is traditional. It wins major awards. But it is also expert and careful. Think about all those potential periodical sources that those of us over 35 learned about from librarian in the 1970’s and 1980’s — or earlier. They count, too. They, of course, vary in quality, from outlet to outlet, and from writer to writer.
C) New media varies as well. There are serious, informed and expert writers out there in new media, be it on web pages, blogs, social media or any of the rest. The first coverage I saw that questioned whether Iranian protesters were using twitter to speak to each other or to speak to outsiders like us came via twitter. Juan Cole is an blogger with great expertise, and writes and edits for his own blog in addition to writing for other online outlets — in addition to his academic publishing. Of course, there are careless aggregators (e.g. Andrew Sullivan) and any number of unverifiable accounts. The fact that something is new media should not give it special cache or make it devoid of credibility.
D) The history of education reform or change in this country shows us clearly that big bold efforts and intentions and the kinds of changes they prompt in the short term invariably get subverted and subsumed into the system. Big bold efforts result in minor change — at most. The pendulum(s) keep swinging, much as they already were. We should remember that revolution is quite rare. If you think that this is the special moment in history or that you are looking at a pivot point, you are probably wrong. The new information order that digital and decentralized media is creating is developing slowly (see my extended 1776 analogy above).
E) I was taught in the 1980s about reading information critically, thinking about the author’s point of view, purpose and agenda. I was taught in the 1980s about thinking carefully about the of data an author marshals to support his point, about its meaning and credibility. I was taught to be aware of what an author might be assuming, or leaving out. These are not new lessons for new media consumption; these are old lessons for media consumption. If we haven’t taught it, we have been avoiding higher order thinking skills, not properly teaching our students how to analyze and synthesize what find.
I’m an early adopter. I love technology, and use it all the time. I think that Twitter is great. But I am not so ego-centric as to think that that the changes I see in front of my eyes as *I* pay attention are necessarily bigger or more important than then ones that took place before I paid attention or while my eyes were closed. The old important lessons remain the most important lessons, almost all the time. All the rest…well, it’s usually just the circumstances of the moment.
Will, to comment on your initial post, I think the skill of handling primary source information is extremely valuable and has evolved significantly with the emergence of social information tools like Twitter. Kids and adults alike need to understand (and experience) this, to be sure.
However, I don’t think I would go as far as your statement, “The difference is, obviously, is that I have to do this for myself.” As many have pointed out, there is still great value in experts who synthesize and report information and events. Unless there is a great body of evidence that says we should favor immediate social participation over expert reporting, then the urgency that you infer perhaps is a little exaggerated. So yes – it is now imperative to teach and model new forms of information gathering and participatory learning, but there is much to be gained from those who are already expert and can devote their entire career to doing that for “the masses”. An over-emphasis of immediate social information streams has the potential to diminish the foundational body of knowledge upon with those very facts have meaning.
So, I think a balance is in order, which in and of itself is revolutionary, since many are not experiencing the evolving nature of information at all and are still solely relying on textbooks and dittos… not even newspapers!
Fantastic discussion. Thanks.
Will, I certainly didn’t read this as you advocating “new” ways to get information as a call for abandoning everything else.
To me, the power of instant news lies in the people who are sending the information. Their hope that the world sees what’s going on there might simply be the motivation they need to keep demonstrating. It’s a way to defeat the totalitarian premise that their protests will not be heard. So actually, they really don’t need us to understand, just to listen.
BUT…my concern is that we (the listeners) are instructed by our human nature to gawk at accidents and be continually distracted by the latest shiny object that comes into view. Having so much “news” appear all at once so conveniently is stimulating, but is obviously less than informative.
We love a train wreck, whether it’s Housewives of New Jersey or dramatic footage of anything far far away.
It’s just as true now as it ever was to understand that not everything we see is true or of equal importance. After a while, CNN putting “Breaking News” on every story becomes a farce. After a while, most of us not directly involved with Iran will be distracted by some other story. And what happens in Iran will fade into the background, just like millions of untwittered tragedies in Bangladesh, Darfur, or Detroit.
So while this raw news feed should of course make us think about what news and journalism mean, it also should be seen as a way a rich, bored society amuses itself.
Sylvia,
You bring yet another dimension or two to this complex issue. I think you hit a number of nails on the head with your comment.
Will,
I apologize for my comments on this blog post. Please feel free to remove them.
Gary
Great discussion, I can’t wait to share it with my high school students and see what they think – to bad it will have to wait until September. The tools are here – how we use them, and teach others to use them is what is important.
Ethan Zuckerman has a great post out this morning that is relevant here: http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2009/06/18/iran-citizen-media-and-media-attention/
Another piece of the picture (that has yet to be covered anywhere near as well in the main stream media) is the story of internet traffic coming out of Iran: see http://asert.arbornetworks.com/2009/06/iranian-traffic-engineering/
Also, a few comments in this thread cite Nate Silver as a political expert. Well, he used to be a baseball expert, and then he applied similar methodologies to politics. I guess that made him a political amateur, until he did better than the professionals. See http://www.newsweek.com/id/140469 and http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/05/no-im-not-chuck-todd.html
In non-traditional media, the signal to noise ratio can get skewed. However, in traditional media, the bias behind much of what is reported as “news” can be hidden more effectively. Unless, of course, you’re Joe Scarborough and have to hawk Starbucks as a condition of your employment 🙂
All of these systems have a role to play in keeping the public informed, but the public also has a role to play in keeping these various systems honest.
Cheers,
Bill
You want to talk about Nate Silver?
He is, first and foremost, a methodological expertise. That is a legitimate field of expertise. His goal is to predict future performance by mining imperfect (e.g. noisy) indicators of past performance. He tries to finding underlying factors that might contribute to performance, figure out the relationships between them and the measure(s) of performance.
Nate — whose work I’ve been reading all decade — has not been a political expert, but more of an electoral expect. Actually, more a polling expert, if even that.
He has spent quite a bit of time learning more about polling during the last couple of years. And also about politics, yes. He’s been spending quite some time developing some new areas of expertise — and ongoing process. If you actually look at what he writes about, it is overwhelmingly based either upon his models or what he has learned from his models.
Most disciplines have established and accepted methodologies. Nate brings those from economics to the world of politics, mostly through polling, public opinion and elections. That’s where his expertise comes from.
As for his calling the election that others got wrong? Well, he was far from the only one. Quite a few of us saw that most of differences in the early primary/caucus states were attributable to demographics. The experts you think got it wrong were either employed by Clinton or people lacking in electoral or polling expertise. The usual talking head fools? Oh, please! Most of them are so far removed from their days as real journalists as to be laughable, and the rest have no such laurels to rest on.
Nate’s done great work, and added well to the debate. He’s raised the level of discourse, and minded the talking heads about evidence and the usefulness of arguments that actually depend upon it. He has demonstrated the value of expertise and knowing ones limits. His life story/professional history is an object lesson in how smart people can leverage their expertise in a variety of milieus, and even expand their areas of expertise in the process.
(Not that I’m an expert on Nate Silver or anything.)
The odd thing in this comment thread is that people think that I am arguing against new media. That is far from the case. Nate and his ilk have made for better baseball reading than most of the BBWAA (Jo Pos, excepted of course). Juan Cole has been a lot more informative and provided more context than ABC, or even NYTimes. This is about not being so impressed by the flood of information that new media can provide that we forget that the same old lessons about taking in old media still apply.
RE:”Do you want to talk about Nate Silver?”
Sure. That’s why I added two links that provided some general information about his background. I also find him fascinating, as he provides a prime example of how applying similar techniques across disciplines can enhance our understanding of both the process of examining a specific problem, and the actual problem under examination. In very general terms, he provides a compelling example of the usefulness of a fresh perspective.
RE: “The odd thing in this comment thread is that people think that I am arguing against new media.”
Not my take at all. You seem to be arguing more for the value of a more tempered perspective when people declare something “revolutionary.” As you and others note — and I completely agree — true revolutions occur infrequently.
RE: “This is about not being so impressed by the flood of information that new media can provide that we forget that the same old lessons about taking in old media still apply.”
I would think that this is so obvious as to not need further argumentation. Critical thinking (hopefully) will never go out of fashion, although I will admit moments of despair when I see what passes for “analysis” of politics and current events from people who are paid because they have been judged to have expertise.
RE: “Quite a few of us saw that most of differences in the early primary/caucus states were attributable to demographics.”
Your phrasing here — especially the use of the word “us” — implies that you were directly involved in some of the more accurate analysis of raw data regarding the election. Have you written about this anywhere? I have found your contributions to this thread worthwhile, and would enjoy reading more — please, link to some of these posts. I’d love to read them.
Cheers,
Bill
1) Thanks for all the complements.
2) I think that we need to start moving past the term “critical thinking.” It has become what I call and “essential elastic construct,” that is ad idea that is universally lauded but without firm definition. EEC’s leave people believing that they are talking about the same thing, and therefore buffer people and groups from oversight and/or conflict. But they serve to undermine substantive alignment or agreement because people don’t even realize that they are not talking about the same thing.
I’ve talking about critical and analytical thinking for 25 years. But I’ve come to think that even those who purportedly agree with me often do not. What do I mean when I write “critical thinking skills”? What do you mean when you use the term? Unfortunately, it is just too elastic a term, even though we agree that it stands for something essential.
3) I didn’t write up my observations, or do anything formally. I just shared with my friends and family, among whom there was vociferous disagreement through the primaries, that the patterns seemed pretty well set. All it took was comparing exit polls straight up. Nate Silver formalized it and refined it to the point that he could publicly make predictions with confidence, something that I didn’t have the time — or probably the expertise — to do.
My point was that flawed thinking of the talking heads was not universal, and that Nate Silver’s fundamental observation was not unique to him. (I, like many others, have lots of ideas that I throw out there with my friends and family but lack the expertise, time and/or attention span to truly develop. So, I’m happy to say that my private analysis was more accurate than that of most of the talking heads, but that is really more of a reflection of their lack of quality than any excess on my own part.) Silver’s accomplishments did not come from an initial brilliant observation about the race, but rather a pretty basic to which he applied his real expertise.
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