Fighting the Groundswell: SF Authorities May Take on Flash Mobs

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words. And since my prof requires we post a 500-word response to our weekly readings, I’ve carefully cropped in half this photo of a flash mob that gathered last week in San Francisco, organized anonymously online and via text messages:

 

Update: In case my prof doesn’t buy my above mathematical proof justifying my completion of this week’s assignment, here is a more traditional rendition of 500 words:

 The nearly defunct San Francisco Chronicle reports that city officials are considering cracking down on “flash mobs” – large groups of people who arrange to meet at a certain time and place to carry out some sort of coordinated action—often an absurd or just plain fun activity, like a giant pillow fight.

 For three years running, throngs have gathered on Valentines Day to whack friends and total strangers with pillows—in what appears from these photos and videos to be a rollicking alternative to another candlelit dinner in Potrero Hill. But this event also creates loads of trouble for the city and its residents—including thousands of dollars in cleanup costs for the city and damages to local business owners who suffer floods due to the feather buildup.

Yet the authorities are uncertain about how to crack down on these events. This isn’t a case of just a few bad apples who can be fined and held accountable. There are no head honchos that they can arrest to put an end to the shenanigans.  The pillow fight and other disruptive flash mobs, such as a recent shaving cream fight in a posh shopping district, are the result of anonymous, decentralized planning that takes place on the web and via text messaging. The SF authorities are head to head with what Charlyne Li and Josh Bernoff call a groundswell.

Li and Bernoff define a groundswell, in their book of that title, as “A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need for each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations” (p. 9).  In the case of flash mobs, people are achieving group recreation by organizing it themselves. Other institutions provide group recreation—such as sports leagues or jazz classes—but in this case, people are bypassing the Y and Park and Rec to create their own fun with others beyond their immediate circle of friends. And for the flash mobs that carry out actions such as a giant silent dance off in which everyone starts dancing to their iPod at the same time, it is unlikely that traditional recreation institutions like the Y could scratch the itch of flash mobbers who seek somewhat spontaneous, absurdist, anti-authority displays of fun, often in public space.

The city has some proposed solutions for dealing with the flash-mobbers, but they aren’t tailored for working with non-hierarchical groups lacking representative leaders:

“Kern said officials want the organizers of such events to follow standard procedure: apply for a permit, pay a use fee (at least $1,750 for the plaza) and supply security, portable toilets and cleanup crews.

But he acknowledged that such conformance would be contrary to the flash mob’s decidedly decentralized, anti-bureaucratic principles. Kern said Rec and Park does not even know how to contact the pillow fight’s anonymous organizers.”

In trying to come up with solutions, if the flash mobbers cannot apply for a permit for their public activity beforehand and have some leaders take responsibility for the actions of the group, it seems like the alternative for the police is to round up the violators en masse as they make a mess and disrupt the peace. It doesn’t seem to be a good solution to me (I’d love to participate in the massive pillow fight), but if there are no responsible authorities and there are other residents who are suffering personal damage due to some of the activities, it seems like collective responsibility is the way to go. 

Collective action and collective responsibility. If you’re going to make a mess with a giant pillow fight, make sure you have a serious plan to clean it up afterwards. I’ll be there. 

Nothing’s Off the Record Now: Part II

Dear Rex Hammock,

Thanks for your comment and for helping to set the record straight. One thing Dan Gillmor repeats over and over again in We The Media is that a blogger or journalist’s audience will almost always know more about a subject than he or she does. In this case, you were the subject of my post (I commented on the blog entry you posted after your closed-door meeting with President Bush in 2004), and Gillmor’s observation undoubtedly holds. On many items, I stand corrected.

Let me take your comment piece by piece. Your opening salvo:

“I’m not used to responding to annonymous blog posts, but I thought I’d jump here to say that one of the cool things about blogging is that you don’t have to guess what was on and off record or what the intentions of the blogger or why you absolutely wrong about me ‘kissing and telling.’

“I’m Rex Hammock and my email address is on every page of my blog — it’s really easy to reach me and ask rather than speculate (wrongly) about the event you’re writing about.

“Here is a link to the blog post (at the bottom) that I wrote and many other posts where I have explained in great detail information that would have helped you get your blog post straight:

http://www.rexblog.com/2004/02/19/17096

My observations: You’re right, I didn’t do all my homework. I’ve grown up digital, but I failed to use the research resources at my fingertips to fill in the blanks from Dan Gillmor’s four paragraph retelling of the event on pages 137-138 of We The Media. If I had done some more online research, my post would have had less false speculation and more accurate details. Getting the facts right and consulting multiple sources are hallmarks of good journalism. But then again– I’m not a journalist. I’m a blogger. My folly highlights one of the fundamental pitfalls of blogging– I can publish anything I want, without any journalistic standards, quality control or rigorous ethical controls controlling my stream of consciousness. Beware. There are millions more idiots like me out there.

It also sounds like I may have upset you when I used the phrase “kiss and tell” to refer to your explanation of your meeting with President Bush. I must acknowledge, my editor has told me that any even remotely salacious references are necessary to help sell papers (Full disclosure: I am my own editor, and there is no print edition). But more seriously, I don’t think that “kissing and telling” is inherently a bad thing. Kissing? Great. Telling? Also good. You shared an intimate 25 minutes with the President and wanted to share your experience. I don’t blame you. Ive now read your blog, and I thought it was a pretty candid reflection.

Now to move on to the second half of your comment:

“To save you having to read all that, here are some things you’re wrong about:

“I was the only small business owner.

“I was not a “Bush supporter” — as in, I never donated any money to his campaign or ever publicly endorsed him.”

Me: Sorry about that misrepresentation. In his book, Gillmor wrote, “On February 19, 2004 Rex Hammock was ushered into the Old Executive Office Building in Washington. He and four other small-business people sat down with President George W. Bush for a short discussion on economics issues. It was another in a series of Bush meetings with supporters of the administration’s policies.” So you can see why I thought the others were small business owners and why I described you as a Bush supporter. But I sincerely apologize for wrongly identifying you as a Bush supporter– I cannot think of a worse form of slander.

You continue:

“I did not blog about the private meeting until after a White House press person asked me if I would talk with a reporter from my home town about the meeting. I figured if the reporter could talk with me about the meeting then I could write about it myself.

“The meeting was off the record (as I wrote at the time) because we were talking about the President’s tax plan and the individuals were discussing their private taxes — something none of us would have done on a stage in front of people. The jist of what we were discussing was public as we left the meeting and went to a press briefing where the President talked very publicly about what we discussed — except with out the private details.

“I could go on, but you get the idea — it’s easy to find out the facts on the Internet.”

Me: My speculations about why the meeting was off the record were wrong. As you explain, it was off the record because you were discussing sensitive tax information with the president, and also because he was taking notes from your personal stories that he would use in his own remarks to the press.

You are right that since the White House press team connected you with a journalist, they did not expect the meeting’s occurrences to be off the record. But, if you had shared the private tax details of the other individuals with the journalist, the journalist’s editor would have likely prohibited them from printing this information. There was still an institutional filter preventing you from sharing hurtful information with the world. You, as a blogger, were able to post whatever you wanted. You chose the journalistically responsible and ethical route, but the technology exists for you to have shared the private information instantly with the entire world.

But I am guessing that the info the others shared wasn’t all too private– they were providing to a president who was preparing for a press conference and were sharing it with four other strangers. So it’s likely that they didn’t spill all their figurative beans.

Hammock Man, thanks for engaging in this discussion. I’ve learned a lot about the Internet and blogging from our exchange. Frankly, the public nature of this is exactly why I never blogged before. It’s a strange, cruel world wide web we live in.

yours in the struggle,

anneontheinternet

Hitting the Links

Today we learned that the google search algorithm improves my page rank when I have a lot of outbound links.

Nothing’s Off the Record Now: Part I

The name of this blog is Eat, Sleep, Blog. And admittedly, this week I did more of the first two than the third. I also spent a fair amount of time editing this new web video.

And when I wasn’t eating, sleeping or editing, I tried to figure out my own perspective on the fact that bloggers now have the potential to report to the world on any public or private event they attend. Since this is a complicated issue, I’ve strategically titled my post “Part I” to signal that this is only my first foray into exploring the matter.

Gillmor presents a few different scenarios in which ordinary citizens circumvent the rules of traditional journalism and report via their blogs on events that otherwise would have been off the record.

On page 138 Gillmor recounts how Bush supporter and small-business owner Rex Hammock joined President George W. Bush and four other small business owners at the White House for a meeting that was closed to the press. Hammock subsequently posted an essay about the meeting on his blog, sharing details of the private gathering with the rest of the world. He did not reveal any public policy secrets; he posted an essay reflecting on Bush’s political style and what it was like to discuss issues with him.

The meeting was likely off the record in the first place to create intimacy and allow for more candid exchanges between the participants and the president. Its doubtful that the President closed the meeting to the press because he was discussing secret information that he didn’t want the world to know about— when it’s time for those conversations he has them with his trusted advisors. Rather, he wanted to meet with some good Americans without the flash of the camera staring them in the face. For public figures, it’s nice to get a break from the unrelenting press and talk to people one-on-one. And just maybe, it was also a PR move, showing that the president wanted to have some candid heart-to-hearts with some outside-the-beltway folks.

So what were the consequences when Rex Hammock blabbed about the whole encounter to the entire world on his blog? Well, the media didn’t erode his privacy with the president—he did it himself. He decided to kiss and tell. And for Rex, maybe that didn’t matter. He would have told his friends about the encounter, so why not tell a broader audience, his blog?

But what is the effect on public officials and how they approach conversations with private citizens? Well, if politicians were smart (and perhaps this is a counterfactual, but go with me people), they would be aware that any exchange with any citizen could be blogged about in the time that it takes to set up a wordpress.com account, and refrain from making edgier, off-the cuff remarks that could be damaging to them. So, public figures would be in-turn a bit more self-censoring.

Of course, this event happened four years ago, and politicians have continued to say unmeasured things in what they thought were private exchanges over and over again, only to have them later shared with the world online—so may the level of self censorship really isn’t that high. But even if public officials are more self-censoring, I’m not sure this has a negative effect on politics. After all, they will just try to present themselves in a professional manner at all times—the way they would behave if they knew the whole world is watching. In the past I’m sure they tried to do this as well—they didn’t want to say anything stupid to a private meeting because an individual could then call up a reporter and pass on the evidence of indiscretion. It happened before the Internet, there were just more steps involved and it was less frequent.

And as for the blogger that shared this information, has he broken any rules? Well, the event was closed to the press, and he’s not press. He was a participant who expresses himself on his online diary. I think that in this day and age, if you are a public figure want to keep what happened at your event private, you have to make people explicitly agree not to blog about it. Otherwise, the first amendment and instant access to the best publishing system ever invented will get in your way.

# # #

Keep your eye out for Par II in which will explore the other cases of bloggers breaking down the traditions of off-the record meetings with public figures.

Becoming Part of the Long Tail

Today In the last 24 hours I posted my first blog entry and became a part of the long tail. (Im somewhere barely above the x axis way out to the right near infiniti). I know I have at least two readers 1) me (despite appearances, I do read everypost before I hit “publish”) and 2) my dedicated professor who gets paid to read my posts. Given my activist tendencies to promote peace and justice, maybe, just maybe, the Maryland state police are reading my blog too– which would raise my readership and Technorati rating by like 300%. Silver lining!

Bush in 30 Seconds: The Prototype or Pitfall of Collaboration?

In the first half of Dan Gillmor’s We the Media, I was struck by the two paragraphs recounting the Bush in 30 Seconds ad contest by MoveOn.org. In these two paragraphs on page 100, Gillmor offers an enthusiastic portrayal of the contest that asked MoveOn members to create their own TV spot about then-President Bush. “The fifteen finalists were an incredible display, not just of activist sentiments but of the power of today’s inexpensive equipment and software for making videos,” writes Gillmor (Gillmor, 100). He extols the MoveOn contest as an example of the power of open source politics—inviting the grassroots to produce content and help shape the direction of political organizations and campaigns.

Dan Gillmor’s enthusiastic description of the MoveOn contest contrasted starkly with my own professional experience relating to this campaign. I had proposed a similar video contest for our organization, and a colleague strongly objected citing the MoveOn contest as an example of the disastrous unintended consequences of these types of contests. Referencing the controversy that developed around the two ads that compared Hitler and Bush that were submitted to MoveOn’s contest, he argued that we shouldn’t create a video contest because we could end up getting into trouble with the media if some ads in poor taste were submitted.

I was struck by how the same MoveOn campaign could be characterized so differently by Gillmor and my colleague—Gillmor didn’t even mention the Hitler controversy that riled the conservative media, focusing instead on the great overall success of the project. My colleague focused solely on the political damage caused to MoveOn by these two outlier submissions.

I think this discrepancy gets to the heart of difference in approach to collaborative projects on the internet—on the one hand, an approach that embraces the vast power of collective efforts that far exceed what individual campaigns or organizations can do on their own; on the other hand, an approach that sacrifices this power because of the risks that develop from empowering citizens and relinquishing total control.

I agree with Gillmor— let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sure, there are some individuals at the fringe who act counter to the interest of the organization or campaign, but overall, the collaborative effort produces results that would have been otherwise impossible.

Furthermore, the threats to collaboration can be dealt with reasonably. In the case of MoveOn, they responded to the negative press about the Hitler ads by disavowing the abhorrent ad and reminding people that they were not responsible for the content of every submission. In a world where collaboration is increasingly used online, attacks against organizations for comments written on their blogs or submissions to their contests is likely to decline—the idea that an organization is responsible for the actions of every individual that participates in their website is illogical.

However, websites can respond and monitor their content, and I felt that Gillmor’s celebration of MoveOn’s open source contest left out an important development. According to Wikipedia, Moveon approved 330 videos of the 1500 submissions they received. So they made some editorial decisions about what would appear on their website—probably after the Hitler controversy occurred.

I am interested in further examining how to find the right balance between complete open source politics and intervention by organizational authorities for collaborative projects. Wikipedia is dealing with these same challenges right now, trying to figure out how much to subject page edits to editorial control.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!