The considered alternative voice: a disappearing phenomenon?

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Looking through my blogroll recently, it suddenly struck me that this new social media has one tremendous advantage and one tremendous disadvantage.

The advantage is that through this new distribution channel I have been exposed to the ideas of those who hold similar views to my own. Which is fantastic - I no longer feel so alone as a communicator in this quiet country town of a city.

Indeed, it turns out that there are now four of us IABC members here and we are meeting up next week for a drink.

However, the tremendous social networking inherent in this new medium comes at a price - that of alternative views, and indeed alternative not-directly-related-to-my-interests news.

The ‘MyWeb’ phenomenon has both consolidated those who hold similar views and distanced them from alternative viewpoints and current affairs.

For example, I subscribe to the rss feeds of writers I like. But consciously I’ve not subscribed to the feeds of those authors I come across that I don’t like the look of — perhaps their blog is ugly or their English is atrocious.

But as a communicator it is my duty to hear all sides of a discussion. Instead, consciously or otherwise, through the scatomas I have, I have not subscribed to views different from my own.

Similarly, if the ‘MyWeb’ syndrome is letting me pick which news stories to see on the front page of my own ‘Daily Me’ web newspapers, like MyYahoo and my webfeed aggregator for example, then at what risk do I put myself by not being exposed to news and current affairs items not directly related to my interests but would add considerable value to me if I knew about them? Is the liberation of a ‘Daily Me’ really a cleverly-disguised limitation, giving us only what we expect?

Now, I could argue that not keeping abreast of the ‘doom and gloom’ news that the MSM gleefully pumps out is good for my psyche. And it is; a steady diet of soap operas, sport, hate, evil and man’s worst behaviour is not good for one’s mental health. But what life enhancing items am I missing by not paying attention to the MSM?

The role of mainstream journalism, surely, is to be the check-and-balance of democracy, and a valuable foil for ranters and ravers like politicians and bloggers who sometimes let fly without knowing all the facts. Not all bloggers, naturally, but who, as a blogger, hasn’t let a post rip out without checking all the facts first?

Now, we can discuss how the commercial pressures of MSM outlets means that shortcuts are taken — fact checking is cursory, and journalists and editors are expected to submit work that falls into the general philosophy of the outlet’s owner. But, hey, that’s nothing new and a free, independent press is something that is long dead. Indeed, we pick one newspaper over another for precisely the reason that we concur with one paper’s philosophical and ideological stance more than another.

But will the world of we digital natives cease to be a world of digital intellectuals as we continue to circumscribe our information sources? Even one of my favourite writers, Seth Godin, says he has only 32 feeds in his reader.

Am I right to worry about the dying of the art of serious debate in a society that seems more interested in instant gratification?

This social media is a fantastic way of connecting like minds across geographic divides — and I am fortunate to have connected with many of my erstwhile colleagues around the globe courtesy of this very podcast, but at what risk, ladies and gentlemen, do we put ourselves by our failure to listen to voices dissimilar to our own? At what risk do we put ourselves by creating our own little information bubble that makes us feel comfortable but that excludes information that could potentially enhance our lives?

But why should I worry about posting this — no one has the time to read long posts these days anyway…

Tagged as: blogging