We’ve seen a number of twitter “scandals” over the last year or so, all beaten up by the old media by:
- Taking the tweet out of context;
- Reconstructing the 140 characters in whatever harshest light can be put on them;
- Pretending that it was broadcast to a wide audience when it’s the newspapers’ beatup that has had that effect.
Recent targets have included Catherine “hope Bindi Irwin gets laid” Deveny, Miranda “had enough of rogering gerbils” Devine, and Larissa “show where guy had sex with a horse less offensive than Bess Price” Behrendt.
The point I wanted to make is that a tweet’s context is essential. Tweets are essentially like an SMS conversation open to any interested parties. Many twitter apps in fact display these exchanges as conversations – with back and forth remarks amongst the parties clearly developing a thread as the conversation proceeds. Because there are only 140 characters available, ideas have to be contracted (sometimes losing – or, worse, gaining – something in the contraction) and it has to be assumed that the reader is familiar with what went before. There is no room to quote previous comments.
Like in any conversation, someone who comes in late needs to ask what came before to make any sense of the last thing they heard.
So journalists and newspapers that present the tweets solo, without any context, without any explanation, are doing their readers a disservice. They are misrepresenting their targets and what was actually said.
It’s equivalent to taking 140 characters out of a half hour speech. Just because it’s new technology doesn’t, sadly, reduce the potential for the result to be fundamentally inaccurate and misleading.
In all of the above cases, there was a context. Deveny was making an off-the-cuff joke about the way Bindi Irwin is being exploited by adults, not suggesting she should actually be the victim of rape. Devine wasn’t suggesting that gay people actually roger gerbils, she was simply assuming that they’re perverts who are into bestiality. (Ok, I’m not sure how context actually improves the Devine one.) Behrendt was contrasting the content of one very offensive (but historical) ABC television show with another (quite contemporary) one.
All of this is obvious by reading the conversations in which these people were participating. And yet it’s all opaque and mystifying if the journalist doesn’t bother to give that context.
Let’s hope that next time one of the old media organisations presents a single tweet in the most damning light it can simply for the shock value, its readers ask for more.
21 Comments
Jeremy, you’re right that a tweet’s context is essential. Behrendt’s tweet has been blown out of all proportion, and the Deveny thing was a dumb joke that got broadcast by the media.
Devine’s #rogeringgerbils tweet is another story, though. It’s precisely the context that makes it offensive: it was in the middle of a heated argument with a gay man about sexuality. It was, in context, clearly meant as an offensive slur, and Devine deserves all the criticism she gets for it.
(Devine’s comment also wasn’t blown up by the media to nearly the extent that the other two were. As far as I could tell, the outrage over that was confined to Twitter and this blog.)
Dainiel
And News Ltd
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/youve-been-rogering-gerbils-miranda-devines-gay-slur-on-twitter/story-e6frf7l6-1225864276610
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/miranda-devines-gay-slur-on-twitter/story-e6frg6nf-1225864263839
even the Punch wieghed in
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/to-err-is-to-human-to-be-a-hypocrite-devine/
Is this what’s called irony?
Julie Posetti’s tweet about News Ltd agenda and Climate Change.
Didn’t MD blog about the Behrendt tweet being offensive
The question of ‘offensiveness’ is clearly in the eye of the beholder and only taken up as a weapon by political opponents. Surely the real issue is that these professional communicators have failed to realise the difference between things said in jest around a table, and things thrown out into cyberspace.
Is this what’s called irony?
No simon, this is what’s called “climbing down”, and “inching away from potential proxy embarrassment”, and “presenting ad-hoc show of maturity”. It also goes retrospectively by the name “memory of a guppy”.
Because the list of reminders about playing with teh horsies has, at last count, far exceeded three.
And have yet to abate.
Are we to therefore understand that Fox News* regards hot, greasy gerbil sex as being less aberrant, remarkable or newsworthy than, say, horseplay?
*(don’t bother correcting me – they’ve ALL been Foxised. Google “Felafel Bill” and… marvel)
Bravo surlysimon, maybe “hypocrisy” would be a better word.
Tony Martin skewers it:
http://thescrivenersfancy.com/scarcely-relevant/2011/04/20/if-i-could-tweet-to-the-animals.aspx
Love seeing the progressives get all apologetic.
Must be really sticking in the back of the throat.
Tweet and tweeted. Done and done.
It’s out there.
.
Tony Martin
http://thescrivenersfancy.com/scarcely-relevant/2011/04/20/if-i-could-tweet-to-the-animals.aspx
‘Love seeing the progressives get all apologetic.’
If you’re not embarrassed typing that, then you’re way beyond hope.
Don’t worry Q,
Haines isn’t a real person.
Yep, Hope.Bindi.Irwin.gets.laid. That means something else…like it means you know, that she looks tarty thats all I meant. Yeah, thats it.
‘show where guy had sex with a horse less offensive than Bess Price’ – Yeah that means I was watching another show or something yeah…yeah thats right.
These people are morons – Isn’t this crystal clear? Really, seriously, do you need a context for the above?
I love this site. (but is that what I really mean?)
PipBoy, Q, weren’t you listening?
How many times does Humpty (who continues to insist that he was pushed) have to explain it?
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“They’ve a temper, some of them—particularly verbs, they’re the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!”
Are we clear now?
Hmph, PipBoy is silent on the gerbils tweet. Wonder why.
As for the Behrendt tweet — saying somebody is offensive is itself offensive, now? Even taken out of context it is a harsh call, but hardly disgraceful. The greater context is that she sued a News Ltd commentator, hence the stacks on treatment by other Newsoids. Nuff said.
It’s all about freedom of speech, until you question rightard mythology. I wonder what sort of reception someone that looks like Bess Price would get if she knocked on a right wingers door.
Great piece by Jeff Sparrow in The Drum.
Please don’t take this out of context Jeremy but you are supercilious ,partisan prat who finds it difficult to empathize with mainstream Australia. You never afford the luxury of context to the conservative side as one looks forward to revisiting in the future when you hypocrisy will manifest itself as per usual.
…and Stanny, not being partisan at all, and even considering him/herself “mainstream”. Nothing new there, then, from Idiotworld.
ps “one looks forward to revisiting in the future when you hypocrisy will manifest itself as per usual.”
Is this one of the most unintelligible posts of recent times on PP? I feel there should be a contest for this sort of thing….
I’m pretty sure that means something else, just need to find the context…
Jeez talk about projection.
Conservatives have 90 per cent of the media voice, shutting out progressive viewpoints … and you talk about progressives “denying context”?
Right Wing Projection – the tendency of right-wingers to project their own behaviour/motivations onto their opponents.