On hand-wagging, scolding and other social media musings
Credit: t-dot-s-dot0
Maybe it’s the fact that Alex has a PhD from Harvard in Political Science and has studied activism and public participation (so have I) and the fact that Rob is the smartest/funniest man on the planet (I can’t say that I’m funny at all). Maybe it’s the fact that our personalities mesh so well. I don’t know. But I love Rob and Alex and more than anything, I love their brains.
In recent weeks (and maybe months), I would say that much of my own self-reflection has been triggered by Alex and Rob. There are many other people who influence my thinking as well, but this post is a response to one Alex wrote so it’s only fitting that I speak to what she and Rob have written.
Alex recently published a blog post urging her readers to stop the hand-wagging and encouraging them to think twice before scolding someone publicly on Twitter. I devoured it with delight and snickered as I read her latest sentence: “”For here I am, doing the hand-waggiest thing of all: a meta hand-wag at all the hand-waggers.” I wish Alex could have heard me laughing out loud, as I sit here writing at my tiny home office. I (Raul) am a natural-born scolder. I think I was born to scold people. My readers may react with shock and horror “OMG… and here I thought Raul was the sweetest, nicest, most adorable being ever”, let me clarify what I mean by being a natural-born scolder.
I believe that our world is shaped by two sets of rules: formal and informal. Formal rules are explicitly scribed in codes, regulations, laws and written policies. Informal rules are customs that become rules as society formalizes them through repeated usage. My research on water governance has been very strongly influenced by neo-institutional theory, a branch of the social science thinking that focuses on institutions, defined as the rules that govern actor’s behavior (if you want to learn more, you should read Elinor Ostrom’s work on ‘governing the commons’ – great read for anyone interested in formal and informal rules).
In my research, I became fascinated by the informal rules of water governance that evolved from water users left free of reigns to consume as much water as they possibly could. The problem with allowing people to access and consume water without any sort of formalized rule may lead to scarcity. That’s one of the main problems with water being a common-pool resource (CPR). Unless we create specific rules to govern water, it will be an exhaustible resource.
Credit: CharmingMan
I wag my finger at people who promote themselves endlessly (and yes, sometimes I scold myself for just having published “OMG someone is interested in publishing my PhD thesis in book form! OMG OMG OMG” And I am scolded as well when I see a passive-aggressive tweet saying “enough with all the self-promoting tweets”. And you know what? THAT’S FINE! It’s fine because social media is an experiment in crowdsourcing informal rules. Through time, those rules become formalized and lead to things like corporate social media guidelines, blogging codes of ethics and the like. THAT is the reason we need to continue doing the hand-wagging.
That’s also what I found so refreshing about Alex’s post. She scolds herself for scolding people who scold people. And in doing so, Alex is reshaping the rules of the game. From a reader’s perspective (and from an analytical perspective), Alex is encouraging people to reflect on whether hand-wagging is the right thing to do, and in admitting that she herself has scolded people, she opens the floor to creating a conversation around a really important topic – WHO THE HELL CREATES THE RULES OF THE GAME IN SOCIAL MEDIA?
Credit: Rob Cottingham
THAT, my dearest readers, is the reason why I am loving the mental stimulation that Alex and Rob have been creating lately (as have other folks, but this post is a response to Alex’s). Despite the fact that we are in 2009, and we gloat about having mastered the rules of social media and we have a gazillion self-appointed, self-promoting social media consultants, the rules (both the formal and informal) of social media are still being shaped.
- It’s 2009 and we still don’t have social media etiquette guidelines.
- It’s almost 2010 and we are still reflecting on what the ethical boundaries are for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube.
- We are nearing the end of 2009 and we are still scolding people for not using the tools “the right way”. Yet we don’t seem to be doing any better ourselves.
I am first and foremost an analyst. I’m an academic. Before I blogged, I was an academic. And after my short-lived fame as Hummingbird604 wanes, I will still be an academic (with a PhD, for what it’s worth). I live to analyze trends, study phenomena, research and disseminate what I have found. And I LOVE having high-level, meta-theoretical conversations on every topic. It just so happens that I’m so immersed in social media that I am pushing to have it analyzed.
One last thought. I don’t scold because of some sort of self-important, self-aggrandizing interest. I do it (in usually a very gentle way) because I care. If I didn’t care for you, I wouldn’t scold you. And I welcome scolding too. Those of you who know me well know that I’m always open to criticism. Even if you’re going to criticize me for writing such a long post in response to a post on scolding. So yeah, I’m going to scold myself for that too.
Related posts:
- Musings on Granovetter, social media and friendships
- Where is the diversity in social media conferences?
- My recent Social Media Club Victoria talk: “Towards an Action-Focused Agenda for Social Change Using Social Media” (#smcvictoria) @smcvictoria
- Social media faux pas? The evolution of etiquette, rules and norms in a Web 2.0 world
- Blogging, socialization and social media
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i think there’s a fine line. scolding, the way you do it, is your way of letting people know what’s acceptable and what isn’t. without the “rules of social media”, everything is left open, letting people do what they want. but by constantly saying how things annoy you, on a medium like twitter, then it’s possible that your followers will follow suit, and in turn their followers, until it becomes a social norm. but there are always going to be some people who don’t understand or “get” the social norms/informal rules that are created – people still traipse into my office each morning, and it’s quiet and they bellow “anyone else here?” or “so i moved into my new place!”.
i suppose the question is, where do you draw the line at scolding? when and when isn’t appropriate? maybe THAT’S a social norm that needs to be constructed.
Alex and Rob have, in their usual timely fashion, articulated and identified one of the chief frustrations about social media that’s certainly made even some of the seasoned social media users in my life consider withdrawing from online life, and that’s the propensity for social media to be an amplifier of negative energy that they have correctly labeled scolding.
That said, like anything I think it is a case-by-case basis whether it is ultimately for good or ill. Social media’s also made me so much more reflective and reminded me of the importance of kaizen. It’s also made me much more aware of how to word constructive feedback. It could be that I’m conflating the fact that I’m learning these skills anyway with my use of social media, but the fact is, the fact that Twitter is there means I’m constantly presented with the opportunity to exercise care in what I say, and (hopefully) to consciously make the decision to mind my words and their effect on our broader psyches or feelings.
…says the girl who bitches about transit service in 8 of 10 tweets.
I’ve always been very attracted to the notion of Right Speech, because I’ve certainly been guilty of letting my mouth run ahead where my heart or mind might not agree, for the sake of being conversational. It’s not always obvious that we bitch because we love, and for me anyway, my troubles have always started where I’ve made the assumption that that’s understood.
I’m a believer in an Open Internet .. there are no Internet Police/Miss Manners .. that goes for “Etiquette Guidlines” or whatever other polite terms you choose to use. As long as you follow the policies of the system you’re using, you’re on your own.
When you post a message, you take responsibility for the consequences. A few years ago, you’d get flamed, today we’re a little more polite, we scold or stop following.
What you might consider spam, I might consider a good source of marketing material. Not everyone wants to follow someone’s minute by minute drama every day. No right or wrong .. just get over it and stop following people who post information you don’t want to see.
I’m a big fan of Miss Manners, and even she’d be in favour of constructive finger wagging. Remember, this is the woman who authorized you to grab hold of an out-of-control kid’s arm just a little too tightly and hiss, “Be careful. SOMEONE could get hurt that way.”
So many people don’t realize what they’re doing (literally; they sign up for services that then hijack their accounts and post spam, and they don’t know because they don’t read their own Twitter stream). And so many people have been taught to do things that shouldn’t be done at all, like AutoDMs. They don’t know that it’s a bad idea.
Nobody died and made me (or anyone else) the Twitter police, but we do have a social obligation and an impetus to give social feedback; in the absence of the “cutting look” that tells someone they are out of line, what are our options? Until someone invents something more subtle than the DM or the @ for people who are not following, we will have to experiment with the tools to figure out how to give this feedback.
Social platforms require feedback mechanisms and with time comes increasing sophistication in those feedback mechanisms. Right now we’re at the primitive stage, but there is hope that if we can all get through this without killing one another, we’ll come up with something better in the future.
All – thanks so much for your commentary – I definitely think this is a worthy-of-discussion topic (where are the forums to discuss this, I ask?)
In particular, I’d like to make a point here that I don’t know if it came through or not. I do believe in an Open Internet as Bonnie suggest (which is the reason why the feedback mechanism becomes ever-so-important). An Open Internet doesn’t have to mean an unruly internet, does it?
I believe that there are rules anywhere, formal or informal. The fact that we are now navigating uncharted waters in regards to how these rules are being formulated means that we’ll have to explore the inner-workings of rule-setting WITHIN the platform itself. If the platform were stable, we wouldn’t need rules at all, I think.
Great points everyone.