The Philippine Online Chronicles

The question came to mind after Steve Jobs stated in his D8 conference interview:

“I don’t want us to see us descend into a nation of bloggers... I think we need editorial oversight now more than ever. Anything we can do to help newspapers find new ways of expression that will help them get paid, I am all for.”

And after Joey Alarilla of Yahoo asked on Twitter:

What's purpose of your blog? Think strategy, not tactics: What are you doing 6 months from now, not just blogging to promote event #blog4biz

Quite recently, veteran columnist and blogger Manolo Quezon published a presentation on presidential elections in the Philippines that he gave on May 28, 2010 in Berlin, Germany.  He noted a study from Universal McCanns into the impact of social media.  He also noted how much impact social media had during the recent Philippine election campaign.

The findings are consistent.  Filipinos look to television as the predominant source of information and influence. Of the estimated 3 million (study was done in 2008) frequent users of the Internet in the Philippines, some 2.3 million have blogs.  Given the limited broadband access in the Philippines and given the demographic that frequently use the Internet, this data is not surprising.

That said, what, exactly, is social media?  After all, the Internet and the Web since their inception have always been a communications platform.  Specifically, the Internet is a many-to-many platform.

What is social media

Social Media is New Media.  It is a better and more apt description of Web 2.0.  Social Media translates into the applications that combine the whole dimension of media--audio, image, text, and video--and these applications facilitate collaboration, communication, and the sharing of content.

It includes a weblog.  It is social networking like Facebook and Twitter.  It is YouTube. It is Instant Messaging. It is Flickr. It is all these applications that have sprung up on the Web and on the Internet. All of that is Social Media.

Why this apparent distaste for blogging and bloggers?

Blogging experiences

As a blogger myself, I understand where Steve Jobs is coming from.  I understand this from the recently concluded Philippine election campaign, and from blogging since 2004.

There are too few bastions of insight in the blogosphere, or at least in the political blogosphere to which I gravitate.

Perhaps it was this great expectation of discovering the light of truth amidst the chaotic storm, of finding a diamond in the rough and seeing it sparkle.  Perhaps it is this frustration that here is an opportunity to raise the discussion to a higher level, but only to find egos who prefer to debate for the sake of debating and for the sake of being contrarian rather than the search for knowledge, for understanding, for insight.  Perhaps that is why we eventually, we utterly fail.

This ranges from the blog posts themselves to the comment threads that spring up.

At the end of the campaign it was a realization of how empty our wisdom is, at least in the limited sphere that is political blogging. It can be so shallow and so utterly empty. It is more of this general dimension, this state of the political blogosphere that no matter which side of the fence one stood, there was a lack of... depth, perspective, and profoundness. Mind you, this isn’t specific to people and I include myself in this assessment.

Something is missing. In Filipino, the phrase would be “parang may kulang.”

Are we taking ourselves too seriously or are we not taking ourselves seriously?

Citizen Journalism

There is something that I read recently from Monday Note.  It is a most insightful blog of which I am an avid reader for its intelligent and insightful writing.  In an article, Frédéric Filloux wrote about “The Oxymoronic Citizen Journalism:”

Professional blogs – either independent or hosted by traditional medias – can be the most advanced form of written journalism. Quite often, blogs produced by good journalists are as insightful as standard stories, but way more fun to read. (In France, I do know editors who wish their writers were as witty in the paper as they are on their blogs). Good bloggers sometimes border on columnists. Their work is solid, precise and, sometimes, edited; they take time to write their pieces and it shows.
At the other end of the spectrum, blogs can be utterly superficial, lacking precise facts, or agenda-driven and written with a shovel. Unfortunately, both kinds of blogs are sometimes found under the same roof. In many news organizations, big and small, instead of being considered as a more modern form of journalism, the “blog” name tag is a synonym for lower expectations.

I believe this is where Steve Jobs is coming from.  There comes a point when bloggers must curate themselves.  Our posts must have meaning and be well-thought-of points of view as much as they are good reads.

Yes, more than ever before there is a great need for curating and for curating responsibly, as the wealth of Content reaches proportions that no single human could consume entirely.

That’s exactly what this whole blogging and social media will get into.

Filloux goes on to write about people who comment:

The same kind of carelessness goes for comments. I do believe that opening news content to public feedback is a good thing. At its very core, journalism begs for argument; pundits need detractors. But most online editors satisfy themselves by opening the floodgate of comments, without a strategy, or even the slightest attention to content. As a result, everybody loses: the writer who sees painstaking work defaced by shouts; and the publication for allowing substandard, unmoderated feedback. Participation without relevancy is pointless. Unfortunately, in most news sites – including big ones, very little thought seems to have been given to raising the level of public contributions.

“Participation without relevancy is pointless.”  There have been numerous times, and I’m sure if you’re a blogger reading this, you’ve been on this end of the spectrum, at least once.  You’ve asked yourselves why is this person commenting when it is quite clear you’ve answered it.  Or why is this person commenting on matters already beyond the context of the topic?

Social media is about communication.  It is about the blogger being swayed by an argument made by a reader.  It is about the blogger swaying the reader to his point of view.  It shouldn’t be about endless debate or who has the bigger ego, but about learning and growing.

Quite often, I think, we each forget that and we devolve into wearing our troll hats and wander around without troll membership cards.

Should comments be turned off?

John Gruber does it.  He has turned his comments off.  Do you then need to moderate?  Arbitrarily deleting a comment just because it offended you, the person, or it violated the terms of a blog’s comment policy doesn’t help.

I think the best way really is to simply let the comment be reflected on site, with the moderator noting why this comment has been moderated, like mentioning that it violated the terms of the comment policy, but being sure to either link to where the reader can read the original content or have a way, whatever it is, for anyone to go see the original comment.

In my humble opinion that way strikes an important balance. It is a way to keep the page clean while staying true to the tenets of social media and at the same time routing away from the temptation of censorship.  As John Gilmore, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, was quoted by Time magazine in 1993, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."  This way satisfies the core philosophy of the Internet and Social media and the need to clean out rubbish.

A sense of purpose

As Joey put it, what is your blog’s purpose?  Are we out to change the world?  Are we out to change the level of discussion?  Are we simply out to have fun?

I suppose we each blog for our own reasons.  Sometimes, we do take ourselves too seriously.  Sometimes, to blog is simply to escape.

At the end of it, I think it doesn't matter if the blog post was contrarian. Social media is about the conversation.  It is about that willingness to be swayed by a comment and that realization that one was wrong.  It is about being able to hear, read, or watch something and realize how one's worldview or one’s opinion about something is entirely wrong.  It is about learning as much as it is communicating.  In short, it is about the conversation.

I too understand that Social Media and its subset, blogging, is not limited to commentaries and opinion.  Social media is about finding the balance of curation.  It is about curating science and technology.  It is about the truth and beauty and glamour of fashion.  It is about discovering health and wellness.  It is about the fun of sports.  It is about the escape of entertainment, the critics, and pop.  It is about the depth and multitude of culture.  It is about communication.  It can simply be about the joy of simple pleasure.   Social media is about all the things that make us Human, and all the things that make us uniquely Filipino.  In this digital tomorrow, whether in playfulness or seriousness, social media is a vector where the Soul of the Filipino could find utterance.

___

Image is a screenshot from Wave 3, Universal McCann.