Eavesdroppable?

Ears open: But is it worth listening to?

Here’s Suze, musing on the question of how far blogging is having a positive impact on journalism. Suze concludes that it’s too early to tell, but she says a lot of interesting things on the way.

For me, here’s the big question: Does the emergence of a decentralised space with fewer barriers to entry (ahem: Web 2.0, or whatever we want to call it….) offer a challenge to the traditional relationship between the elected governors and the governed? Here, John Stuart Mill is very succinct about the two problems that representative democracy faces:

“It has been seen that the dangers incident to a representative democracy are of two kinds: danger of a low grade of intelligence in the representative body, and in the popular opinion which controls it”

So: Do blogs lead to an increase in the volume of ‘low grade intelligence’ in popular opinion? And does it act as an effective suppressor of intelligence among elected representatives? And in terms of helping them with their deliberations, is the read-write media eavesdroppable?

Opinion appears to be divided. The case for ignoring blogs, for example can be drummed up easily by looking at the rambunctious tone of the conversations. Political weblogs are often a fissiparous places. It is tempting to dismiss them as generating more heat than light (though, as Christopher Hitchens is often keen to point out, “heat is the only source of light.”)

Is debate in the blogosphere of a lower quality than in the newspapers?

Certainly, one or two of the columnists so derided by bloggers as the MainStream Media (MSM) have gone to some lengths to decry the damage that political weblogs are doing to the quality of public conversation. Polly Toynbee, in particular, set out her stall with some vigour a couple of years ago:

“There is a risk that the style of the blogosphere is dragging us all along to shout louder. It may be that the short burst of opinion is all anyone can absorb and the longer column becomes too much of a time-investment. A number of us columnists are anxious about it because it is a different style. It’s not crafted, you haven’t had the time to ring someone up, they want it now. There’s a danger that it becomes more opinionated.”

At the time, Mick Fealty replied with a reassuring post up on The Guardian’s Comment is Free site (one of the less attractive forums, it has to be said).

“Toynbee believes that the blogosphere is a mere “cacophony”, a narcissistic sounding board. Not worth taking seriously. But it also offers something that remains an undesirable to the columnist: close proximity to a complex and often highly intelligent audience that answers back. Like an actor trained for the proscenium arch, Toynbee is clearly uncomfortable with the rougher, in-the-round format.

Yet the wisdom of crowds is not simply another transient buzzword. It was first cited by Plato as the reason why democratic systems are more stable than any other. Indeed, the blogosphere offers an embryonic “deliberative democracy”; one in which politicians can tune in to a much higher-quality dialogue”

Now, as a democrat, while human sympathy should extend to anyone who is subjected to rudeness and abuse in the course of her job, we have to ask how far a bit of rough-and-tumble enhances democracy – and if our conclusion is that it does, then perhaps bruised feelings are a price worth paying? I’d be inclined to say that they are – with one important qualification.

Do flame-wars exclude some people from the debate?

One really has to acknowledge the point that Polly makes very well – that the maleness of sharp-elbowed argument and the overwhelmingly male nature of the blogosphere creates an idiom that itself demonstrably excludes women. There are only a handful of women, for instance, among Iain Dale’s various directories of political blogging in the UK.

It’s not a simple question, is it?

Is the blogosphere objectively hostile to representative democracy?

And where established columnists are at least prepared to argue with bloggers, there is, I would suggest, a comparable suspicion of the blogosphere among elected politicians. So, is this rowdy space a threat of any kind to representative democracy? Certainly, there are many bloggers who see the emerging medium as a challenge to the Schumpererian model of democracy – a competition of political elites that seek re-election every few years and expect little interference from the public inbetweentimes.

Among critics of this Parliamentary chauvinism, (and the blogosphere runs over with them) there is a tendency to brood upon the rights that representatives exercise once they have been elected, and the over-riding suspicion sometimes is that they don’t take their responsibilities as seriously as those rights.

This, I would suggest, is the nub of most popular objections to representative democracy – and particularly among those of us who believe that a more interactive read-write media changes the traditional voter-politician relationship.

But what about the role that we – the represented – play? A reading of Edmund Burke’s succinct – and I think, near-perfect – argument offers us a possible answer: Quoting from Burke,

“…it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own.

But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living”

The first sentence of that quote is, I believe, constantly overlooked. I suspect that representatives would find themselves less at odds with their electorate if they could have a higher quality of contact with the population than they currently have. But this requires that population to be more prepared for a meaningful eavesdroppable dialogue on the subjects that are under deliberation.

Is the blogosphere moving to make itself more eavesdroppable?

In their own way, bloggers are thinking about this. For example, different blogs create different conversational dynamics by being configured in different ways. For example,

“…journalist Paul Carr’s blog is undoubtedly a blog, but has no comments (for reasons he explained here). Marketing guru and author Seth Godin only does trackbacks, not comments, on his very popular (and influential) blog for reasons he explained here. One of the fathers of blogging, Dave Winer, hasn’t had didn’t have comments on his main blog for years. Winer, an often hectoring voice online, was left open to accusations of not taking what he dished out. [Update: as pointed out in a comment here, Dave does now have comments. Mea culpa.]“

The social reporter David Wilcox provided a very good illustration and offered some excellent advice on how to create a buzz using weblogs. Bloggers are gradually thinking about how they can become more eavesdroppable.

We’re starting to see faltering attempts to build reputation management systems for bloggers and commenters, and to use collaborative filtering to incentivise quality comment (watch this space for more detail).

And if the online conversation does become more worth tuning in to, we may be in a position where we can say that there is no need for any constitutional change in the way that voters relate to politicians.

If we can start generating high quality content that politicians can trust and use, we – the public -are beginning to shoulder our half of the burden. This leaves us with the question, ‘should politicians blog’?

That’s one for another day. But leaving that more complex question aside, there’s one thing that I would suggest is a no-brainer.

Public bodies in general, and elected representatives undoubtedly need to make themselves easier to interact with. A good start would be to have a look at this recent guide on how to publish a document in a way that will invite useful comments.

There. I said I’d be linking to that post quite a bit.

Update: Mick at Slugger has picked this up and posted on it. We’re planning a few moves with Slugger O’Toole to make it more ‘eavesdroppable’ – stay tuned!