University of Melbourne academic, author, writer, Tim
Dunlop writing
at
Patreon,
19 September 2021:
The audience-journalism treadmill
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The
best thing about Leigh Sales writing about abuse on Twitter, I was
thinking as the story broke, was that it will likely bring forth a
response from Margaret Simons.
Lo
and behold.
Simons
has a piece in The Age responding to Sales's piece at the ABC.
I
want to say something about both, and the debate more generally,
about why we keep going over the same old ground and what journalists
who hate social media think the endgame might be.
Apologies
if you've heard all this before.
The
Sales' piece, as far as it goes, is compelling. It addresses a
serious issue that needs regular reiteration, and it highlights a
failing of social media that users––and owners––of various
platforms need to acknowledge, that particularly for women, and maybe
particularly for women journalists, such spaces can be sites of
unforgivable and unrelenting abuse.
Honestly,
read the article and take it to heart. Keep the tab open. We are all
diminished by the abuse she documents.
The
article is, though, a very partial take on what is a much bigger
issue. I say this as a criticism, not just of Sales' piece, but of
the way too many journalists continue to wear blinkers when it comes
to social media.
We
can all acknowledge the problems with Twitter, but if we are ever
going to seriously address the underlying issues we need to engage
with a few other things, and it is a constant failing of journalists
that they don't. This is not to diminish their complaints; in fact,
it is take them more seriously than they tend to themselves.
Neither
Sales' piece (nor Simons') can be read in isolation from the previous
two decades of exchanges between professional journalists and their
post-digitisation audience, and one of the most frustrating things
about the issue is the way in which various journalists reinvent the
wheel every time they get annoyed with Twitter.
As
often happens in the media, the controversy du jour is presented as
just that, and little regard is given to history or wider context.
Even
worse, insufficient attention is paid to matters of power and
institutional structure, of the place of the media in society more
generally, of the way in which public spaces like Twitter and
Facebook are controlled by privately-owned corporations, and of the
ongoing relationship between audience and media. Little or no
reference is made to the endless pieces that have already picked
these issues apart outside journalistic op eds.
We
have been having this discussion since at least the turn of the
century, since blogs, but to read Sales' piece is to start from
scratch.
It
is a huge failing, and no wonder nothing changes.
So,
it is worth noting that Sales offers no structural analysis, makes no
attempt to understand the wider issues in which the abuse she rightly
criticises arises. She responds to precisely none of the, by now,
extensive body of work that exists on the nature of
journalist-audience interaction on social media. It is all reduced to
personal anecdotes (powerful ones, I might add) and generalisations,
an unfortunate combination.
Can
we at least be honest here and recognise the problems she describes
are not limited to social media, let alone to Twitter in particular.
Racism, sexism, misogyny, all sorts of gendered and class abuse are
stock-in-trade for other platforms and, for the mainstream media
itself.
In
an Australian context, News Ltd in particular has elevated
bullying––the almost unchecked exercise of their own power––to
a reflex, and Margaret Simons herself, along with any number of
others, have been victims of this, and it is more damaging than any
'pile on', so-called, on Twitter.
Can
we talk about that?
And
don't tell me this isn't relevant to Sales' piece, or that she is
making a more specific point. It is part of the same problem.
Let
me let you into a secret: part of the reason people take to Twitter
in the first place is because the media, its journalists, and
editors, and its so-called regulatory bodies, fail to respond to the
way in which the media regularly drops the ball, either in terms of
accuracy or analysis, or, indeed, in terms of abuse. They create a
vacuum into which an audience with access to social media is
inevitably drawn.
Journalists
will regularly invoke badly formed theories of free speech to defend
their own shortcomings, but never extend anything like the same
standards to "Twitter". To put it another way, they hold
Twitter to a standard they don't apply to their own industry.
.........
Some
people are running the line that the Sales' piece is about abuse she
has received, not about other sorts of criticism, and that
therefore––the logic runs––if you are upset about her piece,
then you must have a guilty conscience.
This
is disingenuous at best and goes to the heart of the problems we have
in discussing these issues.
By
which I mean, the line is not that easily drawn. Indeed, the
difference between abuse and criticism is one of the matters at
stake. Sometimes the line is obvious, other times it isn't.
Over
and over, journalists write pieces like this and they respond to the
most mindless abuse they receive, generalise that to all of
'Twitter', while ignoring more thoughtful criticism that comes their
way. It is a lazy and self-serving approach.
Journalists
are completely within their rights to complain about the way people
respond to their work, but it would help everyone, especially them,
if they acknowledged and engaged with the huge body of work that
already exists on these matters. If they responded to the best of the
criticism rather than the worst.
Only
then are we likely to get off this treadmill.
Yes,
Sales makes a valid and concerning case about the abuse directed at,
particularly, women journalists. And yes, such abuse is cowardly,
demeaning and indicative of broader issues of misogyny in public
culture and should never be tolerated.
But
now what?
Unless
journalists also engage with the legitimate criticism they receive,
they run the risk of conflating criticism with abuse, and that is
what at risk in Sales' piece and other articles like it.
A
double standard develops.
The
people Sales blocks on Twitter include well-credentialed journalists
who have criticised her, not abused her, and while it is entirely up
to her who she does and doesn't block, can we at least acknowledge
that lines are, at best, blurred.
Abuse
on social media is given disproportionate attention by journalists,
but the abuse, sexism, misogyny, and racism that is structurally
embedded in the mainstream media is given little attention at all.
Sales
is on strong, if anecdotal, ground when she highlights abuse. She is
less convincing in some other matters, and it is a shame she didn't
offer a more in-depth analysis.
For
instance, she writes, 'Let's not duck the common thread here — it
is overwhelmingly left-leaning Twitter users who are targeting ABC
journalists for abuse.'
Given
the way in which the ABC is targeted by News Ltd, the IPA and the
Liberal Party (a point Sales notes in passing) I would like to see
some data that supports the claim that abuse is 'overwhelming
left-leaning'. It may well be true of Sales's experience, but as I
say, it would be good to see some evidence that this 'fact' extends
beyond that.
The
plural of anecdote is not data, as they say. And the use of
'left-leaning' as a descriptor is itself hardly an example of precise
labelling.
My
own experience is that most abuse is from the right and from the
centre (yes, also imprecise terms), not to mention from the
mainstream media itself––particularly true in the days of
blogs––but I would try not to say this amounted to a common
thread, let alone present it as an overwhelming fact of Twitter or
any other social media platform.
Let's
look at the Simons' article.
Margaret
Simons is one of a relatively small number of established journalists
who were trained and came to professional maturity in the pre-digital
age who have meaningfully adapted to the changes wrought by
digitisation and rise of social media. In fact, she is a leader in
the field, and has written extensively and wisely on the topic. From
the beginning, she has engaged with the new landscape and has tried
to make sense of how, not just the industry, but the craft of
journalism has changed. (And yes, she is a friend, so I am biased.)
She
is simply one of the best journalists out there, with a love of, and
dedication to, public interest journalism that shines through
everything she does, and that she enhances with her own use of social
media, as anyone who followed her Twitter coverage of the lockdown of
the Flemington public housing towers in 2020 can attest.
In
her hands, Twitter is a powerful tool, and her journalism on the
platform has won her plaudits and a dedicated following amongst those
other journalists dismiss as the Twitterarti. Her example puts the
lie to the idea that the site is nothing more than a sewer.
Beyond
all that, she is journalism educator, most recently as the head of
the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne,
where she has nurtured some of the best young journalists in the
country.
And
this is one of the things I keep wondering as journalists continue to
bag and rubbish social media: from a purely pedagogical standpoint,
what message are they sending to young journalists who will
inevitably have to work in this environment?
Maybe
a Leigh Sales or a Chris Uhlmann or a Chris Kenny can excuse
themselves from such platforms, but it is a privilege not available
to most journalists, especially newbies.
Simons'
response to Sales is measured, but with steel in it.
She
acknowledges the problems with bullying; she concurs with Sales'
concerns about accusations of bad faith. 'Nevertheless,' she writes,
'I think she fails to draw a distinction between abuse and legitimate
critique.'
She
calls Sales bluff on journalists not being thin-skinned, and writes:
'Journalists ARE thin-skinned, sometimes ridiculously so, when they
are criticised in public.'
Simons
makes the point that simply withdrawing from social media is not good
enough, arguing, 'Journalists who do not interact are missing a
professional opportunity.'
Many
journalists dismiss Twitter as unrepresentative of broader society in
order diminish its relevance, and Sales says it is not 'anything
remotely representative of the Australian public.'
But
as Simons points out, Sales is underestimating the number of people
who use Twitter:
Leigh
Sales quotes data from the ABC’s Australia
Talks survey
to assert that only
6 per cent of Australians use Twitter regularly. The University of
Canberra figures suggest that is closer to 18 per cent – but these
general figures obscure important details.
The
Digital
News Report data
shows Twitter users are particularly news-aware and engaged.
They
are more likely to use Twitter mainly for news, whereas Facebook and
YouTube users come across news incidentally.
Twitter
users are more likely than other social media users to follow
mainstream media outlets and journalists, and less likely to get
their news from social media personalities and “influencers”.
Importantly,
at a time when persuading people to pay for news is crucial to the
survival of serious journalism, Twitter users are much more likely to
be already paying subscriptions.…
By
comparison, only 14 per cent of Facebook and YouTube users pay for
news, although the user bases are much larger. (Park emphasises that
sample sizes are small once cross-tabulated, so the data should be
treated as indicative rather than precise.)
In
other words, the more serious contributors on Twitter are exactly the
kind of people serious media organisations most want to attract.
I
would make a further point: the fact that Twitter is not
representative of the broader population is a feature not a bug. Used
properly, as many have found, it can be an endless source of useful
information and, what's more, can offer insights not available
elsewhere.
In
other words, by virtue of the engaged and learned nature of many
participants, Twitter users are often ahead of the game precisely
because they are not beholden to the same echo chambers and
self-reinforcing problems of journalists who talk only to their own
kind.
I
know this flies in the face of a lot received 'wisdom', but so be it.
Users
on the platform saw the end of Malcolm Turnbull long before the
gallery did. They saw the relevance and power of the Gillard misogyny
speech while the press gallery was churning out Tweet after article
dismissing it as a gimmick.
To
say you don't want to deal with the most engaged edge of your
readership/viewership is a limiting professional decision.
For
most people––for the representative Australian public Sales
invokes––politics is completely mediated, known only by the way
it is reported. Twitter, on the other hand, is full of people who
interact with politics more directly and it therefore offers, as
Simons says, a tremendous resource for any journalist who is smart
enough to take it seriously on its own terms.
There
is another inconsistency here. If Twitter users are as small and
irrelevant a section of the population as Sales claims, and if your
intention is to make a stand against bullying and abuse, then why is
Twitter given so much journalistic attention and the mainstream media
itself so little?
There
is a glaring double standard here.
Again,
this has all been pointed out before.
In
the early 2000s, when blogging took off, it was inhabited by engaged
amateurs, often with expertise in various areas, and it was
noticeable how the tone shifted––from a deliberative space to one
of gotchas and, yes, abuse––as more and more mainstream
journalists started to use the space.
When
I blogged for News Ltd, my comments thread would on occasion fill
with abuse and I knew that in all likelihood Andrew Bolt had
'mentioned' me and linked, thus encouraging his carefully cultivated
readership to whip over to my joint and tell me what they thought of
me. This wasn't an accident: it was a business model, and when I
complained to higher ups, no-one was willing to confront Bolt, let
alone issue any sort of wider directive about such matters.
Sky
News doesn't exist to deliberate on matters of public importance: it
is there to cultivate and monetise anger and disaffection and it does
so in such a heavy-handed way that YouTube recently suspended Sky's
channel on the platform.
Can
we talk about that? Can we get a phalanx of journalists who are
concerned about standards in public debate to put pen to paper on
that?
Journalists
who regularly find fault with 'Twitter', rarely call out abuse when
it is other journalists doing it, and they use their powerful
platforms to intimidate, and in some instances, actually abuse a
particular sector of citizens, namely, those on Twitter. They rarely
take the time to discriminate, dismissing and criticising 'Twitter'
with a broad sweep of their hand.
In
the Phil Coorey article the above Tweet links, Coorey says of the
Lindy Chamberlain trial:
One
can only imagine how even more hideous the whole episode would have
been had the internet – including its sewer, Twitter – existed
back then.
It's
laughable. One of the huge failures of mainstream Australian
journalism, and his concern is it might've been worse if Twitter
existed.
Great
argument. Compelling analysis.
Coorey
dismissing Twitter as a sewer and Uhlmann calling people on Twitter
sewer rats is itself a form of bullying. By itself, each insult might
be a glancing blow, but they reinforce prejudices that poison public
discourse. The difference is, Uhlmann and Coorey (and others) are
doing it from a position of much more power than any no-image user on
Twitter.
Can
all mainstream journalist concerned about bullying and abuse on
Twitter write a swathe of articles about that?
Until
journalists acknowledge this power imbalance, until they openly
address the structural problems with their own industry and pay more
than lip service to the failings of their profession, they are never
going be taken as sincere contributors to this important debate.
And
round and round we will go.
I
honestly don't expect Sales to pay any attention to this piece, but
that's why I was glad Margaret Simons wrote a response. Maybe Sales
will be less willing to dismiss the criticism Simons offers, and take
to heart, not just the article itself, but the way Simons conducts
herself on social media and how she deploys it in her journalism more
generally.
Regardless,
the issue goes beyond individual behaviours and rests on structural
matters to do with the incentives––algorithmic and human––built
into the business models of both social and mainstream media. If
journalists genuinely want to address abuse in the public sphere,
they could do worse than enlist the support of their most engaged
readership and work with them towards a common solution rather than
simply dismiss that readership as the problem.
