Paraphrasing from ‘Meanland: Reading without privacy’

The last Meanland session for 2010 was ‘Reading Without Privacy’. Hosted by The Wheeler Centre and chaired by Michael Williams, the session was a wide-ranging conversation about the use, application and consequences of the embracement of social media, particularly twitter, with writer, blogger and critic Alison Croggon; ABC Drum editor Jonathan Green; writer and editor Sophie Cunningham; and writer and editor Jeff Sparrow.

Today, we’re all reading and writing more than ever, on text messages, on Twitter and on Facebook. But has social networking broken down the distinction between our public and our private lives? What are the rules for writing in forms that are so intimate and entirely open? Do we Tweet as ourselves or as representatives of our employers? And is new media helping us work differently or just work harder?

(The following snatches of conversation were pieced together from hastily scrawled notes; please excuse the paraphrasing.)

Chair Michael Williams began by describing the universal spread of Twitter and the ways in which this was changing how we read and write.

Michael Williams: How do you use Twitter? Do you enjoy it? Is it work?

Jonathan Green (JG): I actually enjoy it. It’s a legitimate form of expression. It’s coherent, concise and good promotional stuff. I have 5000 followers, the Drum has 10 000 – that’s 15 000 eyeballs on a story.

Jeff Sparrow (JS): We are all haunted by the fear that everything is happening without us so many are motivated by anxiety – if you’re not on it, you’re missing out on something. I used to have an account with everything: tumblr, facebook, twitter, myspace, and then thought, if this is going to work (as a promotional tool for writing and the journal), I’m going to have to promote it.

Yes, there was a time when Overland was always hungover, or filled with pictures of chickens. Twitter is an aggregator of content. It also beats down the demarcation between work and leisure.

Alison Croggon (AC): I was always asking which hat am I wearing today. It was actually blog readers who encouraged me to join Twitter. The blog was taking too long, sometimes a show would be finished before I’d get the review up there. Readers wanted a way to know immediately, and I’ve found it a really useful tool. It took me somewhere unexpected and I now find my interests intersecting with the people I follow and the things I explore. But you can’t talk and tweet at the same time.

Sophie Cunningham (SC): For me, it was a professional thing, so I set up two accounts, one for Meanjin and one for me, a separation of Meanjin and @sophiec. My account is a locked account because I was conscious of privacy issues. I’ve found it quite a real experience: I’ve made friends, strengthened friendships, and had the beginnings of real conversations that have moved into longer conversations.

Twitter directs my reading, because I follow people who read similarly to me or find interesting stories. The inanity of Twitter, in my opinion, is no more so than that of inane conversations.

Michael Williams: Interesting, that idea about strengthening friendships and relationships. Talking about privacy and complications, what did you think about Catherine Devney’s tweets and the resulting fallout?

JG: well, she claims that that was part of a longer story with simmering tensions and not much to do with her tweets and I think there’s some truth in that. I’ve had similar experiences. There’s a public name and social media for public personas. Social media is only a small representation of an authored persona, but the author needs to protect their brand.

SC: I remember when email first became common and people were always getting into trouble for sending off angry or recriminatory emails. It was the same with blog comments. Now, people have demanded some sense of decorum. People need to be taught how to use twitter in the same way.

AC: Yes, it’s a public medium. Kids growing up now know that, they have a sophisticated understanding of it.

JS: The social context is important here as well. This is not just a purely technological invasion. Its uptake owes much to the proliferation of white-collar clerks: low-paid jobs seated behind a desk with a computer all day. This was a distraction for people when they got bored at work. And it’s continued with the shift in working conditions.

The thing about Devney was that she was on contract. Twitter means you’re essentially working for people on your own time. The Age benefitted from her persona on Twitter, but there was no editorial protection.

JG: It’s hard to know when to pull a writer up.

SC: Social media encourages or allows for obsessive interest.

Michael Williams: Is there a preferred role for Twitter? Are there broader implications?

JG: It’s very useful as an aggregator. Social media puts people in the same space. I find writers through it; it’s possible to develop relationships through Twitter.

JS: Twitter is a useful way of working at home and not working at work.

Michael Williams: What about Twitter as a political tool? And the case of Paul Chambers in the UK, who was arrested for tweeting a bomb threat?

SC: I think the flotilla incident is a good example how twitter can be a form for political engagement – it’s not all talking about Master Chef. I really followed what was happening throughout the incident on Twitter, and reading stuff that broke there far earlier than it in broke in the traditional media.

JS: The story of the tweeter arrested for threatening to blow up the plane has more to do with terrorism hysteria and much less to do with Twitter. There have been a sum total of 0 people killed by acts of terrorism on American soil since 2001.

AC: Yes, I think this was to do with the damage to the American forcefield, because it was terrorism on American soil. England, for instance, had long being bombed by the IRA.

JG: Twitter has become serious, it’s now a respectable way of reporting.

Michael Williams: Anonymity and pseudonymity: is it a right?

SC: I started blogging under my own name because I didn’t see the point in anonymity.

AC: I’m the same. I was on these email lists in the mid-90s under my own name. Most anonymity in those days involved people coming and wreaking havoc. But there has always been anonymous journalism.

JG: It’s dependent on context, and should really be used in exceptional circumstance. Bloggers build up their own reputation. Their name, outside that reputation, is kind of meaningless.

AC: It’s about an online persona. You get a sense of a person, their interests. But when people talk about the self on the internet, it’s different to who and how they are in the real world.

SC: The self has always been performative. Then online self is simply another expression of that.

Michael Williams: How do you feel about live tweeting? Like Q&A?

JS: It’s like passing notes in class. But it makes campaign speeches amusing.

AC: I think it’s great fun watching and tweeting.

The entire evening was filmed by The Wheeler Centre. We’ll put it up as soon as it’s available.