Monday, April 9, 2007

Blogstorm civility debate offers research opportunities and a topic for another "blogs vs. old media" class discussion... Tech book publisher Tim O'Reilly has given a bunch of folks reason to misquote the old Sierra Madre line, "We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges!" (which also gives me an excuse to link to that wonderfully whimsical bit of popular culture research). In O'Reilly's case, the badges are silver stars marked "Civility Enforced," something he suggests might accompany self-enforced codes of conduct on blogs, particularly those that accept comments from readers. His post had accumulated 91 comments in the hours before I found it and added seven more while I was typing this, closing in on the 100 comments he drew with an earlier post. The debate over "cyberbullying" and what to do about it has flowed around the Web for weeks, but there's nothing like page one play in The New York Times and coverage by CNN to start a trend-story feeding frenzy among other "mainstream media." Print and broadcast coverage of the blog world always risks unfairly stereotyping bloggers, something that annoys me as much as some bloggers' blanket statements about "journalists" or "the old media." It makes me long for the wonderfully civilized journalists of old. See this note by one smart blogger who was interviewed by CNN: A serious piece would do some serious research about just how prevalent bullying is: It might be quite widespread, it might be unevenly distributed, it might indeed be usually gender-based. All that would be truly interesting and important to know. But I don't think that's the story they're doing. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope so. Here's a page from two of the bloggers in the center of the original controversy, reacting (in advance) to CNN coverage. For other reactions, see Dave Winer's Scripting News, Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine and Rex Hammock at Rexblog (love the badge, Rex), plus the News Sentinel's Michael Silence. Personally, I like the "community guidelines" tone that BlogHer, an organization for women bloggers that defines "unacceptable content" for its own contributors and visitors. Community is the key word. Blogs that allow anonymous comments by visitors sometimes erupt into shouting matches and drive-by insults. The latest round of debate started when messages directed at one prominent tech-industry blogger turned from rude to scary -- enough for the target to call the cops, and then her story inspired others to get angry -- almost lynch-mob angry. Is this a job for Miss Manners? Or for the Electronic Frontier Foundation? I don't have an answer beyond trite things like "play nice." But I do think some communication grad students will get a thesis or two out of the topic, doing the research suggested by David Weinberger above. Another resource, from more of a "professional journalism" perspective: Online Journalism Ethics, the Poynter Institute's "Evolving Guidebook for Online Ethics" -- which began with discussions at an August 2006 conference and a ethics online Wiki discussion. 9:54:05 PM    comment []

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