Reading the article "Total Recall" this morning, in the current Discover, gave me an idea. The article describes the photolog phenomenon as exemplified by Flickr. The idea relates to past and present "best policy" for dealing with the public. In the past, the successful ploy was to put up a false front. Now, to my considerable personal gratification, that is less and less possible, as was recently reinforced for me at the SFU "Future of Publishing" workshop I attended last week.

Here's the idea. Spin doctoring works when the channel of communication is narrow and broadcast-based in nature. The message must be blunt and shouted. It has to be clean and simple. You don't want to provide any rough spots for any negativity to stick to. This is very little like a real relationship, with multiple means and opportunities to test how genuine our impressions of each other really are. Information in the blogsphere, however, does more closely approximate relationship status. There are many ways to test the truth of a projected persona or product, and the greatest risk is not being misunderstood during a long stretch of silence after shouting out your broadcast-mode message, but being distrusted or otherwise dismissed as disrespectful of the audience. That is much more akin to relationship rules than the old, lordly mode of communication in which whoever has the power to shout the loudest gets believed no matter what the message.

Sounds like a healthy thing to me.
posted by Lynda at 08:05   comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments