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The Number One Reason Why New Orleans Will Not Participate In Social Media
July 16th, 2007
“That’s why I don’t read comments. Because of the things that people say about people who look like me. Half of the comments are people saying things about people that look like me. The other half are people defending people who look like me poorly. Only 10% sound reasonable when they talk about people that look like me. At least I hope it’s 10%.”
We were talking about the release of the murderer of Dinneral Shavers. I was proposing the creation of a website that would chronicle the lack of progress of criminals through our court system. People would comment on the reports.
I was showing a friend of mine, who is African-American, the lucid and constructive dialog in the Road Home Questions post of Think New Orleans. I wanted to make that point that you could have a productive conversation about a contentious subject on the web.
Unfortunately, we’d followed a series of links that brought us to a NOLA.com blog post. The comments were ugly.
She then explained why she does not read comments on the web.
The Promise of Social Media
I beseech people to publish their recovery research and recovery experiences on the web. I am a professional beseecher. If you post it on the web, the magic of search will connect you with people near and far, who can help you with insight and information. It just like email, but you put “To Whom It May Concern” in the recipient field, and the search engines deliver. If you post it, when people search for information, there will be an alternative to the punditry and opinions; your own honest New Orleans voice, your experience.
It’s called social media.
With this exchange, I finally felt the long overdue embarrassment at having advocated communication on the web, when it is so obviously associated with racism in the minds of my fellow citizens.
Which is where I’ll start my series on anti-social media.
The Forum of Last Resort
Social media is at a stand still in New Orleans. People equate online dialog with the racist bile that courses through the comments sections of NOLA.com, the affiliate website of the The New Orleans Times-Picayune.
That website is in a difficult position, because they are affiliated with the one major newspaper in our city. If they were to apply strict moderation they would be accused of censorship. They would offend their potential customers.
They do not moderate much. Only the most blatantly offensive comments are pruned. The ordinary offensive comments stay, and ward off anyone who might have something intelligent to say. It does not serve as a model of public dialog.
In fact, it ends up serving as dumping ground. A forum of a last resort.
The Internet is only place in New Orleans where these horrible can be said publicly, therefore people who harbor horrible sentiments make full use of their only public outlet. NOLA.com becomes the voice of racism. New Orleanians think of the Internet as a place where these true colors fly.
The Promise of Moderation
After a year in New Orleans, the people who I beseech have come to understand that there is a value to web publishing. People see my web publishing efforts as worthwhile, but for what reasons exactly, I’m not yet certain. After a year in New Orleans, I have come to understand that the people I beseech have every reason to avoid web publishing.
I counter their objections with a promise of moderation. Since this conversation, I moderate more than ever.
Racism is just the obvious example of unsavory dialog that keeps people from opening their web browser. There are other many reasons to avoid anonymous unmoderated web conversations. If it is a subject you hold dear, such as the recovery of your school or neighborhood, an unmoderated web forum is no place to present your information. It is pointless. No one of consequence reads those comments. All you’ll get in response to your contribution will be either dismissive or vindictive or somewhere in between.
For Your Eyes Only
New Orleans is a blur of information and Internet communication. It takes place in email. The Internet protocol of choice for New Orleans SMTP, not HTTP. The address on the email message assures you that the recipient will be of one of those 10% who has something reasonable to contribute to issues you hold dear.
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Comments 
[...] It helps me understand, however, why people are so cautious. It fits nicely into my new understanding of why people disdain the web as a means of communication about New Orleans and the issues of our recovery. You expose yourself to quick and easy slander. [...]
Interesting how fears about bad or no moderation trump fears about idea censorship. I didn’t expect that.
I do think there’s something to that though — I imagine the online conversation areas I use most end up being the ones that aim at and cultivate a specific and stated environment for discussion, whether that’s by empowering the users, having super-users handle it, or one or a few moderators.
Yahoo News stopped hosting (or has temporarily stopped hosting; I’m not sure what to believe) discussion forums for similar reasons: All the racists show up. I’ve also noticed that more than a few posters to nola.com stories seem to hail from locales far removed from the city. Gosh only knows how many people who don’t identify their locale are from elsewhere (although I still presume that many are from the city). New Orleans is more than just a tourist resort area to Americans now. It’s a politicized locale, a symbol.
In any case, this would be a great topic for research in the area of political communication, and one that could people like you a great deal about community or political organizing. Plenty of research already shows that people are less likely to participate in politics or their communities if they have to hear about views that conflict with their own too much (or, to put it in Internet lingo borrowed from electrical engineering, the signal-to-noise ratio is too out of balance). Are black people any less likely to participate in neighborhood message boards, etc., all because of the racial invective on display at nola.com and New Orleans’ craigslist page, etc.?
Alan, before you mentioned the NOLA.com forums I had never read them. Well, I used them once or twice while I was evacuated but that was an exercise in futility so I never went back.
I strictly moderate comments on my blog and do not allow anonymous comments. This was something I picked up from law student bloggers who were trying to keep snarky, offensive, childish comments off their blogs. Apparently law school has about as much drama as high school, but I digress.
I think New Orleans is technologically about 10 years behind the rest of the country. This keeps people ill-informed, limits their avenues to participate in meaningful public discourse, and I think the local power structure and political machine wants it that way.
Why do you think we still promote a tourism based economy that provides lots of low-paying jobs that require very little education. We need to promote an economy that stresses information and knowledge workers. We have seven 4-year universities, 2 medical schools, 2 law schools, and one community college in the Greater New Orleans area. Where are the jobs for all these graduates? There is not a lack of a skilled workforce, there is a lack of leadership in the community to get those companies to come here. How can a city with so many educational resources at it disposal have the worst schools in the country? I don’t preted to have the answers to these questions but I urge you to think about them and ask yourself “How can I change this? What can I do personally, right now, this second, to make a difference?” and then go do it.
thanks alan and the other bloggers,
i find this conversation very encouraging and informative, please keep improving this media, the potential is boundless. i feel it is important to allow people with strong feelings, whatever the bend, to vent. it also allows independent thinkers a look into how twisted some minds are.
prayerfully the bigots will gain from a relationship, however impersonal, with us.
Dave
I’m sorry I didn’t respond to this sooner. It’s more to consider in the wake of speaking at YearlyKos, which went well, but focused on race. The other speakers are involved in social justice issues. I tagged along, while I really wanted to address the frustration of corruption and incompetences in government, but how do you forget the barricade at the GNO bridge?
Thus, yes, it’s probably a matter of being more inviting than aggressively deleting, although I do promise to delete anyone who makes a comment that is too cheep. No one needs to be in the company of someone who merely wants to get a rise.
The follow up to this post, Dave, it to extend it. To tell the story about the Dempsy development at Canal Blvd and City Park Ave. A short anecdote, where I put my notes online and asked for feedback on a web forum. I got feedback in email. I asked that it be posted to the forum. I gave my reasonings. I was told no. Lakeview residents (white people) didn’t want to post publicly. I went a back and forth, explaining, but what really did the trick was to promise that I wouldn’t allow the context of their contributions ruin their contributions, or put them in company of rabble.
Because, they have to maintain their dignity. They don’t want to have their name caught up in a bitch session on web forum, because they lose their effectiveness if someone can dismiss them as obstructionist.
Which is to say that the aversion to aggressive comments is universal. People do not want to convey their message in a forum where the dialog will degenerate into the same old argument that no one can every win. It is a refinement of “Godwin’s Law”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin’s_Law that I’m fighting.
[...] racist bile coursing through the comments of nola.com exemplify this sort of outlet of rage. This happens because there are no decent people to face. The [...]