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Bloggers - Beowolf Cluster of Fact Checkers?
d3ik writes "Wired has an interesting take on bloggers role in journalism and politics. I've never been comfortable with news discussions sites being called blogs... but I guess "news discussion sites" isn't as catchy. Anyway, the article makes some good points on the role of bloggers in fact-checking (read: tearing apart) some of the stories and claims that the huddled masses would normally take as fact."
So much so that I think the government needs a few dozen blogs for cross-checking the CIA. Maybe next time a blog from an Iraqi scientist will show us that WMD is a lie before we go to war.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Imagine that.
--riney
I'd like to second the oppinon of the author about the term blog. I find that term to be almost as anoying as "the information super-highway." Luckily that term mostly died out, and hopefully this one will too. To me blog sounds like something a 13 year old girl would say in an instant message (kind of like "LOL" or "OMG").
The part where the blogs make up their own shared reality just as disjoint with the real world as mass media is.
Blogs: Now your authorities are copy-catting non-professionals!
I live in a giant bucket.
I think that instead of shaping up the news media, blogger attacks are just going to make them more timid. I can't remember the last time I was watching a news conference and when someone asked something I shouted at the TV "that was a DAMN FUCKING good question."
Most of the questions asked nowadays are softball questions. "Mr. Bush, are you going to let Mrs. Bush decorate the Oval Office, or will you hire an outside decorator. And what would you like the voters to know about that decision?"
Now that Dan Rather went out on a limb and got burned, nobody else is going to go out on a limb. That means that nobody is ever going to ask Mr. Bush where the WMD are, where Osama is, how many have to die, did you really do coke at Camp David, and why the hell aren't we doing anything about the Sudan, Iran, or North Korea?
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
Great reference to previous looking post, while staying accurate. BRAVO!
which factcheck.org has been doing, too. FAIR is worth looking at, too.
The other important function of blogs is to show the pulse of public opinion in areas that are not necessarily driven by large media outlets.
Go to any of the three letter network TV news sites and you'll see a lot of similarity. Consensus? Of what kind?
One of the most important sources of bias in news reporting is deciding what even qualifies as a news story.
Bloggers get to decide for themselves.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Of Course this works, just look at the massive wealth of accurate, unbiased information that is Slashdot.
--Cam
All jocks think about is sports. All nerds think about is sex.
More like a beowulf cluster of (truth + lies + trolls + bias + opinions + misinformation + etc) with no accountability.
How do you defeat bad free speech? For instance, let's say someone tells an outright lie, or takes a fact an twists it and misrepresents it until they say something opposite of the fact. (This never ever happens, right?) How do you fix that?
I am reminded of a story, but I can't recall the details. The idea is that someone spread a false rumor about someone else in the community. When they saw the damage, they went to apologize. In response, the guy took a down pillow and ripped it open, and tiny feathers flew all over the yard and the street and the wind carried it quite a distance. He said, "Your rumor is like those the down from this pillow. See how it has spread? Now, in order to apologize, you're going to have to go collect ever single one of those feathers and put it back in this pillowcase." That's the kind of damage that bad speech does.
So how do you combat that and how do you fix it?
With more free speech.
Bloggers are the other part of the free speech world. They can produce more information faster than any other source. They have hundreds and hundreds of independent researchers, each specializing in one side or the other of each story.
So when Dan Rather came out misrepresenting the documents, he was held in check by more free speech.
Kind of like the question "How do you stop someone on a rampage with a gun?" The answer: "Get more and bigger guns."
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Elaine: "Well what, what about your fact-checking job?"
Jack: "Oh... here's a fact. Uh, I'm... the Wiz! I'm the Wiz
and noooobody beats me!"
I also think it's important to have front ends to this information. Sites such as daypop.com keep track of what's big in the blog-o-sphere. Their Top 40 list shows the most linked-to articles on the net that day. There's also an archive so you can watch how news stories have spread across the blog-o-sphere over time.
Direct away from face when opening.
It's going to be very interesting to see the long-term effect of the Internet on our society. This is yet another example of the phenomenal power of on-line collaboration by interested, unpaid volunteers. Software developers were perhaps the first to begin really using this global distributed medium to build complex, sophisticated tools that people would previously have thought could not be built by an ad-hoc collection of random volunteers. Groklaw is a shining example of what happens when the "many eyes" principle is applied to worlds that are traditionally somewhat opaque -- in this case the world of corporate intellectual property litigation. Wikipedia has used the same principles to construct the world's largest, and maybe most comprehensive, encyclopedia, producing volumes of high-quality factual articles that are nearly unthinkable under traditional approaches. Long-time readers of on-line fora such as USENET and slashdot long ago realized that when you get a sufficiently large and diverse membership, random posts become trustworthy sources of information, because of the simple fact that if the post contains an error *someone* will see it and jump down the poster's throat. Odds are, a fact that stands undisputed is correct.
The common thread running throughout all of these examples is that random volunteers are able to accomplish things that would challenge large staffs of well-paid experts. Why does it work? I mean, it's obviously *so* inefficient to have so many people looking at the same thing, not to mention all of the inefficiencies created by delays in communications, mismatched skill sets, etc. It works because the aggregate manpower available by tapping a few minutes or hours of time from a sufficiently large group of interested volunteers vastly exceeds what any corporation, or even any government, could dedicate to a task. And by "vastly exceeds" I mean "is several orders of magnitude more".
In terms of developer-hours applied per line of code released, I'll bet Linux is the most expensive operating system ever developed. In fact, I'll bet it's hundreds or thousands of times more expensive than the next most wasteful competitor. Consider the issue of code reviews. Most development shops don't do much code reviewing because it's a lot of boring, tedious work that sometimes doesn't seem to provide much benefit. The attitude is that those review hours are better spent writing more code. But every line of code that goes into the core of the Linux kernel gets thoroughly reviewed by multiple people. How wasteful! Linus is a self-proclaimed asshole who is perfectly happy to reject working code just because he doesn't like it, or because he thinks it could be simpler, or clearer, or fewer lines, or less invasive, or whatever strikes his fancy today. Instead, he'll flame the author, provide a long list of things that suck about the code and tell the author to come back after the code has been fixed *and* vetted by at least a half-dozen people Linus trusts. And that's only if he likes the code enough to care, otherwise he'll just silently discard it. How can such an obviously inefficient development process actually make progress?!? It can progress because the manpower devoted to Linux development is simply enormous.
Using a Wiki to build an encyclopedia is just stupid, from an efficiency standpoint. How much effort is wasted on edit wars and on fixing up vandalism? How much time is wasted by people writing erroneous articles that have to be fixed by others? How much time is wasted in discussions about whether or not the use of a particular word violates the Neutral Point of View principle? It doesn't matter, because a few hours a week from every volunteer Wikipedian is enough to cover all the inefficiency and still push the project forward at a phenomenal pace.
Publishing facts to tens of thousands of ordinary people to see who just happens to notice something wrong has to be the most insanely wasteful way of checking facts ever devised. Wouldn't
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The American media is just very Dickless, its sad. The sad thing about this whole memo thing is that CBS took a risk and tried to report a story that would make lots of people mad. It was refreshing to see then actually pressing bush on something unlike those press conferences where they just give him softballs. Now the media will be so scared to press bush on anything because of this for fear of conservatives complaining about some "Liberal-Jewish Media Conspiracy" like they do whenever there is bad news to report.
Blogs are ok but when you get blogs like Drudge and such that report rumors as fact and have such a rightwing bias more so than the corporate media it does more harm than good.
You're arguing that an aspect of a process (efficiency, or lack thereof) is more important than the outcome of the process. Sometimes having the most efficient process sabotages the goal(s) of the process. If the goal of linux is to have more (or a specific set) of features, but Linus Torvalds rejects inefficient code (code with too many lines), then linux has to wait longer to get those features, or not have them at all.
In the case of linux, I would argue that Linus' goals include both features & code efficiency and quality; perhaps that's the balance he's trying to struggle with.
As for fact-checking, it seems the "more efficient" process that the mass media uses is not working. If the less efficient process of hundreds of bloggers poring over the facts works better, who cares how efficient it is? Perhaps eventually there will be independent groups of bloggers formed who concentrate on certain issues or something, but what it comes down to is: what's more important for fact-checking, efficiency or accuracy? I would argue accuracy.
For example, Kerry's recent strategy of intensifying his attacks on Bush's record in Iraq may seem logical to Democratic advisers, but will just increase the public's uncertainty and fear about the situation which in turn just increases the chance they will vote for Bush since Bush has captured the head space of being the "action guy"
With the election played out on an emotional instead of an intellectual landscape, traditional TV media far outweighs the internet. Facts are optional!
Terrorism and Iraq have been pumped by the media and the candidates to dominate the election. They make for good video and more importantly a nice vintage of plain old fear.
Yet look at the recent Rico court case against the tobacco companies. Who has killed more U.S. citizens by several orders of magnitude? (About 300,000 deaths a year, every year!) Are the families of lung cancer victims no less deserving of our sympathy than victims of terrorism? Why are there no M1 tanks parked outside tobacco head offices?
Why not at least a debate on the top ten things that kill Americans and the resources we apply to prevention? Is the 200 billion spent on Iraq more usefully spent on cancer research or safer automobiles?
Even the blogs seem to be buying into the limited framework for discussion set by Kerry and Bush. It would seem that even the power of the internet can't escape the politics of fear.
"OK. Prove it. Prove Christopher Columbus even came here."
Proof only exists in mathematics.
"Fact , and truth, are subjective. Truth is of the individual, fact is of the plebescite."
Incorrect. Facts exist whether you know them or not, whether you believe they are "true" or not.
"Well, in your own words, that's what *you* call fact. And what you didn't say was that there has to be something that is right - for *you*. You are not in charge of what other people think is right."
It's called "reality". Whether someone believes in it or not, it exists.
What people THINK is their "Truth".
"I mean, if I choose not to believe in the scientific method (and yes, I do believe in it), you can't prove a damn thing to me, ever."
Again, proof only exists in mathematics.
You can believe whatever you want. That is your "Truth".
"Face it, fact is subjective, predicated on a previously existing system of belief and trust."
You're confusing facts with belief. Facts are not based upon "belief and trust". Belief and trust are what people use to determine whether a specific fact is "true" or not.
"Just ask the Amish aboyut facts. They'll have a bunch for you (electicity is the work of the Devil, etc)."
That is not a fact. That is a belief. It may also be a fact, but it is impossible to contradict unless the Devil comes by and says that it is.
"They will not listen to "scientific" proof because they don't believe in science."
Not the use of the word "believe" in that sentence.
"And until we die, we won't really know for sure whether they might actually be right about a thing or two."
You're starting to catch on. The FACT exists whether you believe it or not. You might be wrong about what you BELIEVE are "facts", they might be right. But no matter WHAT either of you BELIEVE, the FACTS are still the FACTS.
"The only sources of knowledge in the world are that which you discover *for yourself* to be true, and that which you accept as true from others. If fact is so immutable, why are there so many debates about it?"
Because what you "discover" for yourself is based upon the limitations of your senses and you pre-existing belief system. This causes people to accept the "facts" that support their existing "Truth" and discard anything that contradicts it.
"Not if I challenge everything you are basing your "facts" on. (ie, those figures are wrong, that research is flawed, etc). Everyting you believe is based on something else that you believed first. Fact is just what the majority happen to consider to be truth."
It seems you are arguing over the definition of a term. Yet you are not offering any other term to fit the to which he put the term "fact".
If you do not agree with its usage, you really should provide a term that you will agree with.
"Sure. Just as soon as you prove it."
Again, proof only exists in mathematics.
The problem with the mainstream "news" organizations is that they have to sell a product.
That product is entertainment packaged as "news".
But they only have one real supplier: The Government.
So, if they don't fall into line, they will find that they aren't given the choice contacts. They will end up depending upon the "news" that other, more government friendly "news" people have already broadcast.
So, we get soft questions with no follow up and "news" that is almost totally devoid of critique.
But the "bloggers" (I hate that term) are NOT operating on the same "it's 6 o'clock and here's the news" time schedule. They can WAIT and CHECK and do some ANALYSIS of the material.
What we need is for the mainstream media to get some guts and WALK OUT of any "press meeting" where the politicians are trying to manipulate them. It won't happen, but that's what we need.
How long until someone packages all these blogs slickly enough to compete with TV news for their huge audiences? Like Red Hat packaging Linux, with an organization and salespeople behind the "enhanced quality".
--
make install -not war
...when this site becomes crucial to our democracy.
How long until someone packages all these blogs slickly enough to compete with TV news for their huge audiences?
All it would take would be a slick looking RSS reader with prepackaged content. For that to happen, though, more bloggers will need to open up their feeds to more than just headlines and a short blurb, which means more/cheaper bandwidth.
From my perspective, part of the problem that the American electorate finds itself in currently is that most journalists are pressed by time and deadlines - in addition to being lazy, intellectually dishonest, and unoriginal. Lies are repeated ad nauseum until they attain the polish of fact; lies, evasions or misrepresentations aren't confronted.
Bloggers aren't much better in this regard. Indeed, some myths or misunderstandings ("Al Gore claimed he invented the Internet") circulate longer on the Web than they do in mainstream media.
I think that blogs are useful for keeping attention on things: the costs of the war in Iraq, the veracity of the TANG memos. But they should not be mistaken for serious investigative journalism. Bloggers have even lower standards than journalists, if that's possible, and will rapidly jump to conclusions that a halfway decent journalist never would. (Almost every point raised by the conspiracy theorists over the TANG documents was quickly discredited. That is not to say that the combination of oddities and anachronisms in the memos wasn't worthy of attention, just that the bloggers were focussed on entirely the wrong things - such as trying to to determine kerning in a document that was a PDF of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy).
Sites that specialise in getting hold of original source material, such as thememoryhole.org - are often worthwhile. Writers with an actual understanding of the situation on the ground, or academic qualifications, such as juancole.com, are also good. Otherwise, it is mostly rampant speculation and spin.
Neither does it increase your credibility among anybody who hasn't drunk the Kool-Aid.Blogspace works even better for disseminating attractive lies among True Believers than for distributing facts.
How many right-wing bloggers still believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 and had WMDs which will be discovered someday?
Are you one of them?
Tech Public Policy stuff
To my knowledge, George Bush has never argued in favour of a draft; to date, it's been (rather) liberal Democratic Senators...
a Beowulf cluster of.....
/me reads headline again
Damn, never mind.
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS