Internet Gives Teenage Bullies Weapons to Wound From Afar

The above article from the NY Times did not exactly surprise me, though the section where it describes instances of kids sending pictures or video clips of themselves of very personal moments and having them mass-distributed on the Internet was a little shocking. But why not? We’re worlds “ahead” of the 35 mm film cameras that I had in high school that even if you did take a picture that would be embarrassing, it would be a month before you’d have the money and inclination to get it developed. And who would take a video of themself and then convert to a VHS tape to give to someone. The sheer amount of time it would take nipped those problems in the bud.

But now many of us have instant access to digital images and video. We’re drowning in data. And a lot of it seems disconnected from our selves–in other words, we see pictures of people every day who are not people we know, so it becomes easy to objectify them. And as this article indicates, this technology makes it even easier for us to objectify people, treating them as if we don’t know them through faceless harassment or embarassment.

Switching gears suddenly. I decided/it was suggested to me to enter an article in an award competition. It would help if the article were complete, but what are deadlines for if not to push one to finally pulling everything together?

For anyone who has been glancing at this blog, this might seem like an abrupt departure from previous topics. However, I have been working on a small qualitative study examining the design practices of small, community museums. Instructional design models are formulaic and linear, however, real world design situations often do not lend themselves to such clean, rounded edges. Unfortunately this is resulting in a rather thorough reading on various instructional design models, all theoretical, and I don’t know why I am not as excited about it as other theoretical discussions such as communicative action theory. However, I do like the possibilities presented by suggesting that existing design models, with their focus on behavioral and cognitive objectives are not adequate to all design situations. For example, the objectives of many museum exhibits are attitudinal, in other words, the purpose of the exhibit is to change attitudes more than anything else. For example, a science museum might have an exhibit on the environment and the objective could be for people who view the exhibit to feel that saving the environment is important.

B. Wilson at Colorado has written one of the most thorough discussions of implementing constructivist thought into instructional design: http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~bwilson/construct.html .

After further reflection, I was unhappy with my last post. I did not focus enough attention on the transcript I posted, focusing instead on the general gist I understood from the communication. The problem with that is that each person experiences the same words and tone and interaction slightly differently, bringing their own experience, personality, culture, and view of society (Lifeworld á la Habermas) to their understanding.

I was incorrect, to some extent, to suggest that anyone on the show Hardball is interested in communicative action. If reaching understanding were the true objective, the show would not be so argumentative and confrontational. In fact, it is a little disingenuous to “feel sorry” for anyone appearing on Chris Mathews’ show– as every exchange is similar–fast, provocative, cutting to the point, and very in-your-face argumentative. As I understand it, Habermas’ theory is so groundbreaking because he suggests that the medium IS the communication…therefore, the setting where this conversation took place is as critical to the conversation as the words themselves.

Looking at how the topic unfolded, Malkin starts by opening up the discussion to create doubt about Kerry’s service in Vietnam:

BROWN: He volunteered twice. He volunteered twice in Vietnam. He literally got shot. There‘s no question about any of those things. So what else is there to discuss? How much he got shot, how deep, how much shrapnel?

MALKIN: Well, yes. Why don‘t people ask him more specific questions about the shrapnel in his leg. They are legitimate questions about whether or not it was a self-inflicted wound.

By starting this line of questioning, Malkin was gearing up to play Hardball. The spin of what happened next is that Chris Mathews “put words in her mouth.” He did ask:

MATTHEWS: What do you mean by self-inflicted? Are you saying he shot himself on purpose? Is that what you‘re saying?

Here, as I understand it, having watching and re-read the transcript, is a request for clarification. In a conversation outside of this context, say at the dinner table with family for example, one would hope that in the mutual interest of shared understanding (Habermas’ ideal speech act), that the respondent would clarify what s/he meant, as was asked. But this game is Hardball, not dinner table conversation. So Malkin does not attempt to clarify in her next response instead saying

MALKIN: Did you read the book…

Now that’s an interesting follow-up. In the context of watching the exchange, I perceived this response to evade answering the question. But having read Malkin’s post on her own blog, I am inclined to think that this response might have even been a sly attack, trying to divert the attention from what she had just alleged, to whether or not Mathews was adequately prepared.

The exchange continues, Mathews stating a blunt statement…”did he shoot himself?” and Malkin evading giving a strong yes or no answer. I appreciated JR’s comment as well that MM was given a chance to respond with a yes or no. We reach the pinnacle of the exhange when Mathews asks explicitly for a “yes” or “no.”

MATTHEWS: I want an answer yes or no, Michelle.

With this, if the interest of the exchange were truly about reaching a shared understanding, Malkin should have answered, “yes, I am saying he shot himself” or “no, of course, I’m not saying he shot himself. I am trying to make your audience aware that there is a big difference between shooting onself and receiving self-inflicted wounds.” In fact, neither of those answers occurred, and as with every time I see an exchange where a pundit refuses to answer simply, yes or no, I get the distinct impression that the person answering is trying to pull a fast one on the audience and create an impression that something is true, when in fact it is not. That is to say, even if I think something is true, if someone is being evasive about an answer, it makes me feel that they are trying to lie…so in fact, responding linguistically in this way has nothing to do with actual truth but perceived truth.

Finally, the dynamic of power on Hardball is essential to understanding the exchange. It is Mathews’ show, and he does fire questions at his guests—there is no doubt about that. This is actually a similar hostile arrangement to many political “talk” shows. However, guests appearing on the show knowingly participate, even though they will not have the upper hand in controlling the soundbytes. This further establishes the communication game that the host and guests play in this environment, and Malkin played her hand a little too carelessly and did not respect the unequal power structure. It is somewhat misleading to call the players in this game, host and guest, since neither tend to act in a very hospitable way, although the language we are using to describe them suggests that they might.

This is a longer follow-up than I intended, but as I mentioned, I wanted to really focus in on the language and less on the “partisan politics” inherent, but more on the political language games that were being fulfilled in this context.

Michelle Malkin’s recent book In Defense of Internment supports the US decision to intern Japanese Americans during World War II. The review which I have linked above says that her argument is sound because at the time, ” FDR and the generals could not see into the future. Theirs was not an immoral choice that stemmed from “wartime hysteria” or “racism” (at least primarily), but a responsible action based on solid intelligence, constitutional legality, and tough deliberation.” Yes, of course, none of our past leaders could look into the future and know that future generations would find such racist policies reprehensible. At the time, Jim Crow laws were acceptable and it was our national policy to turn a blind eye to outright racist policies. But that doesn’t mean that we should return to such racist policies. And if interning the Japanese during World War II was not done out of racism, then why were German Americans not sent to these camps, their property confiscated?

But this isn’t really why I am bothered by Malkin, as disturbing as I find it that the daughter of Filipino immigrants would favor racist government policies. However, it was her performance on Hardball yesterday, her claim that Kerry shot himself to get sent home a hero in Vietnam. Keith Olberman & Chris Mathews comment on hardblogger. This crosses an unacceptable line in strategic communication …where she blatantly lied to try to spread a powerful meme to cast doubt as to Kerry’s capability as a war veteran. People who have never gone to war, even when they were required to by draft and found convenient ways out of it, seem to find it very easy to accuse the actions of soldiers in a war. It is disturbing that our Commander-in-Chief, himself never having fought in combat seems to be playing out his fantasies now, treating American soldiers like they are the little green plastic army guys little kids play with.

So what would Habermas say? Malkin’s communication was not meant to create any kind of understanding (as all of this discourse on political shows like Hardball is about). The exchange was meant as a strategic action, to 1) try and vindicate what she perceived as an “interrogation” by Chris Mathews toward one of the authors of the book who claim that Kerry’s war service was not honorable and 2) to cast doubt on Kerry’s fitness as a leader. Where she failed is because Mathews flipped that communication into communicative action and questioned the veracity of her statements.

As her blog entry regarding her appearance on Hardball indicates even further, finding the truth is not the objective of that exchange. She really wants to put forth that Kerry’s wound in Vietnam was “self-inflicted” for her own strategic aims.

And just to make sure we are clear about the exchange that occurred, here is the relevant section of transcript. Her claims on her own blog that said she never tried to insinuate that he “shot himself.” You decide. The entire transcript is available here:

BROWN: He volunteered twice. He volunteered twice in Vietnam. He literally got shot. There‘s no question about any of those things. So what else is there to discuss? How much he got shot, how deep, how much shrapnel?

MALKIN: Well, yes. Why don‘t people ask him more specific questions about the shrapnel in his leg. They are legitimate questions about whether or not it was a self-inflicted wound.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: What do you mean by self-inflicted? Are you saying he shot himself on purpose? Is that what you‘re saying?

MALKIN: Did you read the book…

MATTHEWS: I‘m asking a simple question. Are you saying that he shot himself on purpose.

MALKIN: I‘m saying some of these soldiers…

MATTHEWS: And I‘m asking question.

MALKIN: And I‘m answering it.

MATTHEWS: Did he shoot himself on purpose.

MALKIN: Some of the soldiers have made allegations that these were self-inflicted wounds.

MATTHEWS: No one has ever accused him of shooting himself on purpose.

MALKIN: That these were self-inflicted wounds.

MATTHEWS: Your saying there are—he shot himself on purpose, that‘s a criminal act?

MALKIN: I‘m saying that I‘ve read the book and some of the…

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: I want an answer yes or no, Michelle.

MALKIN: Some of the veterans say…

MATTHEWS: No. No one has every accused him of shooting himself on purpose.

MALKIN: Yes. Some of them say that.

MATTHEWS: Tell me where that…

MALKIN: Self-inflicted wounds—in February, 1969.

MATTHEWS: This is not a show for this kind of talk. Are you accusing him of shooting himself on purpose to avoid combat or to get credit?

MALKIN: I‘m saying that‘s what some of these…

MATTHEWS: Give me a name.

MALKIN: Patrick Runyan (ph) and William Zeldonaz (ph).

MATTHEWS: They said—Patrick Runyan…

MALKIN: These people have…

MATTHEWS: And they said he shot himself on purpose to avoid combat or take credit for a wound?

MALKIN: These people have cast a lot of doubt on whether or not…

MATTHEWS: That‘s cast a lot of doubt. That‘s complete nonsense.

MALKIN: Did you read the section in the book…

MATTHEWS: I want a statement from you on this program, say to me right, that you believe he shot himself to get credit for a purpose of heart.

MALKIN: I‘m not sure. I‘m saying…

MATTHEWS: Why did you say?

MALKIN: I‘m talking about what‘s in the book.

MATTHEWS: What is in the book. Is there—is there a direct accusation in any book you‘ve ever read in your life that says John Kerry ever shot himself on purpose to get credit for a purple heart? On purpose?

MALKIN: On.

MATTHEWS: On purpose? Yes or no, Michelle.

MALKIN: In the February 1969 — in the February 1969 event.

MATTHEWS: Did he say on it purpose.

MALKIN: There are doubts about whether or not it was intense rifle fire or not. And I wish you would ask these questions of John Kerry instead of me.

MATTHEWS: I have never heard anyone say he shot himself on purpose.

I haven‘t heard you say it.

MALKIN: Have you tried to ask—have you tried ask John Kerry these questions?

MATTHEWS: If he shot himself on purpose. No. I have not asked him that.

MALKIN: Don‘t you wonder?

MATTHEWS: No, I don‘t. It‘s never occurred to me.

For those in graduate school, or those interested in graduate school, or anyone who is just bored at the moment this is a classic piece to read: So Long and Thanks for the PhD

The author is very astute when noting that life is much easier if one learns to perceive one’s role as a graduate student as part of a business…and this is true.

It also ties in with my latest reading from Brand’s interpretation of Habermas—regarding “colonisation of the Lifeworld.” Since I’ve barely adequately defined Lifeworld thus far, I won’t go too far with this. But Habermas’ observation is that the System in a capitalistic world, at least, slowly encroaches on the Lifeworld. The university is a place which has been adversely affected, at least insomuchas in the past it was a collaboration between a very knowledgeable person, a “master” of their field and a student. Now, universities are being held accountable for providing the workforce with employable labor—which results in a shift from the pursuit of knowledge to merely skills-based training. And due to the high cost of higher education, most students expect this too.

I have noticed this problem in my own program. With a field like Instructional Technology, many students, particularly Master’s students are drawn by the practicality of the field in terms of getting a more high paying job after completion. Many seemed genuinely put out that we had massive amounts of reading that accompanied some of the classes. I’m sorry, it’s hard for me to say with a straight face that graduate students were surprised to be asked to read—but they were because they thought they were going to come to school and play with some video equipment and web design software for a year and then go out get a good job.

But then when you get to the truth of the matter, I am proud to be involved in a field that has real world applications (I believe my ex-roommate referred to my field as vo-tech). But I would never want to remove myself from the learning and thinking part of the equation, which unfortunately a majority of students at the undergraduate and Master’s level do. PhD students who feel that way would have to be involved in a ridiculous world of self-delusion to think that they are in a training program. When in fact, we are to some extent…because really we’re people who liked school and came to realize that all education has been training us for is to educate others.

From Brand:

“Communicative action takes place against the background of an enormous fund of non-explicity, taken-for-granted notions…agents draw on their common Lifeworld to seek shared understanding about something in the objective, social or subjective world under the functional aspect of mutual understanding…communicative action…serves to transmit and renew cultural knowledge; under that aspect of coordinating action, it serves social integration and the establishment of solidarity; finally, under the aspect of socialization, communicative action serves the formation of personal identities.”

In other words, Lifeworld is comprised of: culture, society and personality and the interaction between all of these components. For me this is a little confusing because it suggests that not just society and culture comprise the Lifeworld, we have to also consider the personality (individual) involved and frankly how the society and culture of which they are a part helped shape their experiences in the world. Lifeworld, despite the fact that it sounds like a term straight out of Star Trek, is much more descriptive than just talking about the influence of culture on an individual.

Lifeworld and System are connected in that “System arose out of the rationalisation of the Lifeworld…increasing complexity in the System and the rationality of the Lifeworld and the disjunction between the two…” (40). In this process, says Brand, “the world views implicit in the Lifeworld are made more and more explicit”(37). I think what this means is that in previous cultures, in this case temporally looking back 50 years, 100 years, morality was, let’s say at least hypothetically, understood. Society was much smaller in many ways since contact between geographically remote people would also be limited. Issues of morality and law did not need to be explicitly stated—they were well understood on the community level.

I think here I have to mention what Habermas lists as the stages of the rationalisation of the Lifeworld as stated by Brand (37) . These are:
structural differentiation - institutional views become increasingly disconnected from world views
differentiation between form and content- law and morality become more and more abstracted
functional specification of processes of the reproduction of culture, society & personality - specific discourses are developed for each discipline (in this case, it seems like we are referring to the extremely precise specialisations and specialisations of language that have resulted)

Habermas credits this rationalisation of the Lifeworld with an integration of certain areas that had formerly belonged to Lifeworld, such as government and economic systems being integrated into the System and thus “dropping out of language” (38).

If you are confused by all this, welcome to my world. But I am using this blog to keep notes, to make comments, to work out these ideas. What I see as being the most important aspect of this distinction between Lifeworld and System is that Lifeworld is driven by communicative action. Because, at least according to Habermas’ theory, certain aspects that had previously been a part of Lifeworld are now part of a more complex functional System, they are not readily transparent and comprehensible to members of modern society.

I have found the best book yet to introduce Habermas’ ideas: The Force of Reason by Arie Brand. As digging into the Theory of Communicative Action, while engaging at first, soon became a cure for my insomnia (no offense to Habermas actually…my brain just got tired).

I like this book because it really contextualizes Habermas in contrast with others in the Frankfurt School, especially Weber, Horkheimer and Adorno. As I have only a limited background in philosophy, this in invaluable “setting” of the scene to better understand the importance of communicative action in the context of where it arose from (which would, in essence, be especially critical when in a philosophy that fueled the “historicizing” of knowledge).

Brand credits Habermas with the paradigm shift from the focus on the philosophy of consciousness on the part of Weber and friends. Philosophy of consciousness as I understand it is rooted in the premise of rationalization, ie, the pursuit of scientific, objective knowledge. However, as the rise of this rationalization or scientific knowledge occurred, resulting in a decline in religious influence in the world, humans were left with a void—as science cannot systematically explain our existence.

Skipping ahead slightly, essentially Habermas rejects philosophy of consciousness as a foundation of critical theory because ultimately, the end result of the Frankfurt School’s argument is a breakdown of an individual’s subjectivity and uniqueness. In this paradigm, a person can have only two sorts of relationships with other objects (I assume this to include people– and I suspect that Heidegger’s idea of bestandt is important here when he talks about the danger of viewing other human beings as resources instead of people.) Thus, Habermas shifts to communicative action as a new foundation for critical theory. From this viewpoint, he is shifting from a subject-object focus in philosophy of consciousness to a subject-subject interaction, where shared understanding is the focus.

What else is informative in this first chapter setting the stage for communication theory is the tremendous impact that this paradigm shift has had for research. Essentially this shift in thinking brought out by the Frankfurt School’s thinkers radically suggests that there is no absolute “scientific” knowledge. Essentially, the author equates philosophy of consciousness (poc) with logical empiricism and in rejecting poc, Habermas radically changed how many view knowledge, a major result being: “the widespread conviction of the relativity of all knowledge and the…belief in the untenability of the concept of truth.

This is particularly pertinent as a researcher in education. Recently (in the last 50 years or so), education research has tried to “scienc-ify” itself (my own neologism). This has led to a great rift between those doing quantitative and qualitative research because essentially, the whole construct of these two branches of research are like night and day philosophically. While there is value in viewing statistics and interpreting them, I truly believe that 1) the interpretation of these numbers can as easily be as biased as any interpretation of qualitative data, as can the formulations of questions in a survey. 2) The formulation of knowledge is complex and subjective—what one would call constructivist or probably more often socially constructivist (and I wonder if this term is also related with Habermas’ social action theory) and for that reason it is important to try to understand how another person is experiencing something—and this can even be more informative in case study form. Personally, I find a mixed design ideal in that one can present a view of a statistical trend, but then also have that rich data to provide a more thorough interpretation.

So there goes Habermas, bringing communicative action in to radically reconceptualize our perceptions of ourselves in the world, to redefine rationality and to remind grad students like myself that we’re not as smart as we think we are.

Haven’t had any time to read anything fun & theoretical. My life is Spanish & ASP & PHP and all day long it means I’m having communication issues with either a person or a computer. I do not feel that there is a tacit understanding between me and my computer and in fact it is a sort of failed communicative enterprise. The computer cannot understand my way of expressing what I want it to do. Damn you computer!!!!