Amendment 1: Social Media and the New South?

Next week North Carolinians will go to the polls to vote on a state constitutional amendment asserting that marriage is between a man and a woman only. (Of course, that's already the law here.)  One might expect that this would pass easily in a southern state, but the outcome is in question for a variety of reasons.  First, legal scholars say the amendment creates a host of unintended consequences on issues such as domestic violence.  Ohio had these problems for years after they passed a similar amendment.

Second, and perhaps more relevant to this blog - opponents of the amendment have employed an unconventional strategy.  They have used social media tools to highlight the words and actions of the amendment's most strident supporters. Two of the more popular examples of this are basic displays of typical redneckery - YouTube videos of young supporters, umm... defacing "oppose the amendment" lawn signs, either with urine or buckshot.  (The internet is forever, idiots.) Another popular one is the support the amendment has received from white supremacists. But to me, the most effective example has been the audio recording from a North Carolina pastor  suggesting parents should "punch" the gay out of their kids, and giving them a "special dispensation" to do exactly that.  Listen for yourself.

Normally it isn't wise to promote the views of your opponents in a political campaign. But amendment one opponents are banking on it - they assert that these views are held by most amendment supporters and they are trying to show the rest of the world what they're dealing with.

I'm an opponent of the amendment for a variety of reasons - mostly because I think gay people should have the same rights as anyone else, but also because this amendment goes far beyond what proponents say.  I do think, however, this is a somewhat risky strategy.   Social media tools can be very effective at times, but in my experience it serves to strengthen opinion within specific communities more than persuade people beyond that community.  Are the typical and perhaps undecided voters watching these videos and considering them as they come to a decision on the amendment?  Maybe.  But I'm completely convinced the overwhelming majority of views and shares are coming from people who are already decided and going to other people who are already decided.

Of course, this isn't the only strategic element to the campaign, and I do think opponents have done a good job garnering support from the business community and from mainstream media outlets.  But in the end, we'll see if highlighting the bigotry of the old south online will help lead to a new southern ideal of equality.

Just another issue for women in politics

Flake

So Newsweek decides to publish the latest in the "cheap-shot unflattering pictures of political women" saga. And the media now plasters it all over the place because this is somehow a story now, and the Newsweek Daily Beast team gets free advertising for lowering our political discourse just a bit more. And this, of course, sparks another silly partisan sideshow that no one really cares about.  Fox News asks aloud "what does Newsweek have against conservative women?" - you know, because that network would never do anything sexist or insulting to Congresswoman Bachmann or publish any less-than-ideal pictures of a political woman. And sadly, we all miss the point. Again.

Weak

Because this is nothing new.  If a political woman dares to raise her voice, she can expect stories that cite anonymous snipers whining about her "abrasive personal style," which is the worst euphemism for "bitch" I've ever seen.  Put Secretary Clinton in the situation room during the attack on Osama bin Laden's compound and suddenly a picture that includes her hand over her mouth becomes a national story. I put my hand over my mouth all the time.  I look at that picture and I still don't get it.  But whatever I'm missing is apparently such a big deal that  one newspaper in Israel actually photoshopped her out of the picture altogether.  You know, because a woman shouldn't be in that room or something.  The paper apologized after the fact but shouldn't it make you wonder why someone felt the need to edit the picture in the first place? 

Ditsy

Pictures show up all the time that take cheap shots at women who dare to lead.  The editors and others who publish them usually won't have the guts to say what they really want to say - something like "Sarah Palin is ditsy"  - but they'll print the one picture in the roll of 50 that shows her eyes a bit wider than normal or in the middle of a gesture that takes a fraction of a second. They won't say "Nancy Pelosi is a lunatic," but we all see the pictures with the wide eyes suddenly appear in news publications.  

And that's just the mainstream publications.  Just do an image search on google for any leading political woman and you almost immediately see the wonders of photoshop.  Heads on the bodies of porn stars.  Faces planted on the backside of a horse. I've even seen an editorial cartoon of Secretary Rice pregnant with a monkey.  The original cartoon came from a Palestinian paper - and then it was quickly republished online by several American news sites.

Of course, what happens if the woman dares to complain?  She can't take the heat.  She doesn't belong in politics. She's easily distracted.  But nobody really thinks much about what happens when that woman's children see the pictures.  Some might even blame the woman - "you had to be prepared for that."

Scary

Do we see unflattering pictures of political men?  Sure.  Newsweek just took a cheap shot at Mitt Romney too.  Bloggers have posted photoshopped pics of Presidents and Prime Ministers.  But be honest- they don't get the reaction that pictures of women do, and I'm fairly certain the frequency for women is disproportionately large.  

And pictures are just one aspect of the larger cultural problem. I remember when John McCain told a joke at a Republican fundraiser - to great laughs -  "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?  Because her father is Janet Reno." Some papers censored the joke, but others, like the Arizona Republic, didn't.  McCain apologized (after his press secretary initially denied he ever told the joke), but again - what makes anyone think  it's even remotely ok to say things like this?  Why weren't there huge consequences to this?

Angry

A couple of weeks ago I recorded a discussion with Joanne Bamberger - the blogger known as PunditMom and the author of the new book Mothers of Intention: How Women and Social Media Are Revolutionizing Politics in America.  We talked a bit about this phenomenon and I asked her how she thought women should respond to cheap shots like Congresswoman Bachmann being asked point blank, "Are you a flake?"  The conversation should be available on her blog in the near future, and I think she lays out the issues really well and gives some thoughts on how things might change.  I hope she posts the interview soon.

There's one approach to addressing this issue that I'd like feedback from women.  I remember a while back a running bit on Saturday Night Live called "Janet Reno Dance Party," where the Attorney General was played by Will Ferrell in drag. It ran a few times, and at the end of the Clinton Administration, it had a "final episode" that actually featured Janet Reno. She was essentially saying "I'm in on the joke," but the joke is really "Janet Reno is an ugly man."

Is this how women should handle this?  What do you think?

To me, the response to things like this should be to celebrate female role models.  I've done this a few times on this blog before - I think it might be time for another installment.

What she said

I've tried twice to explain how the big tech companies have disproportionate (and often morally questionable) influence over our culture and our commerce.  Rebecca MacKinnon comes from a different perspective but she did a much better job explaining it than I did.

AMA vs. Photoshop: think of the children

This pic is everywhere now

Last week the American Medical Association officially condemned the "photoshopping" of models in fashion advertisements and magazines to make those models appear unrealistically thin.  While the "models are too skinny" debate has gone on for decades, this is a rare and important step.  Their stance is obviously more of a statement on our runaway culture of beauty than our use of technology, but it also should send a clear message to those of us in the communications business (marketing, advertising, or PR) - just because you can do something, that doesn't mean you should.  Earlier this month I warned against pretending to be someone you're not. This is a similar principle - don't use deceptive images to promote your products.  This example demonstrates the consequences can extend beyond looking like a creep.

I'm not going to pretend to be the moral authority on these issues and I'm not going to say it's wrong to retouch a photo or get a nip and/or tuck if you want.  However, it seems the AMA believes things are getting worse, not better - and it's clear that technological advancements have enabled some people to take things to the extreme.

This issue reminds me of two other issues where some segments of the medical community have already weighed in but I wish the AMA would add its rather hefty and credible voice - promotion of breastfeeding and reducing the influence of pro-anorexia groups on social networks.  I've written about this before. People who freak out over nipples on breastfeeding pictures in Facebook profiles aren't simply advocating for more modesty, they're reducing our ability to promote breastfeeding - and that has negative health consequences.  Social networks like Facebook have made some progress on cleaning up pro-ana sites, but they're still around - and this is also a threat to public health.

Don't take my word for it - take my wife's.  She's the health researcher at the big-time university, and she wrote about both issues several years ago. Discouraging breastfeeding is bad.  Facilitating the harmful practices of people with anorexia is also bad. Of course, I look at the Facebook terms of service and I don't see anything in there that would address these issues. I'm not sure if other social networks have different terms.

Bottom line, there's an opportunity here for the AMA to get more involved in the online space. There's no question that our culture affects our behavior, and our behavior affects our health.  While we should be mindful of protecting free speech rights, we should be giving the medical community a larger voice here.

Beauty pageant contestants vs. science advocates: this isn't helpful

As a science fan and a PR guy, when I see something like this video - where contestants from the Miss USA 2011 pageant answer the question "should evolution be taught in schools?" - I really cringe.



If you are a science fan and you sat through this entire video then kudos to you. (Actually the answer from Miss Vermont was rather good.)

Let's get something clear from the get-go here.  Evolution is real.  It's sound science and it must be taught in public schools.  Myriad advances in health and science derive directly from evolutionary biology.  It's not a secular alternative to the Bible.  You don't "believe" in evolution any more than you "believe" in gravity.  If you're reading this and you're a person of a particular faith and you're offended by this, I'm sorry - but you're wrong. The sound science of evolution isn't encroaching on your faith, your faith is encroaching on sound, provable, evidence-based science and when you try to take evolution out of classrooms you're only making things worse.

But let me make something else clear: I think the Miss USA contestants were set up for failure. As I understand it, the goal of a contestant in a preliminary interview competition isn't to advocate for science or religion or anything else - it's to sound reasonably pleasant and articulate and avoid offending the judges.  I don't think it's fair to expect a woman in her early- to mid-20's to speak competently and at length to the pedagogic merits of evolutionary biology if that isn't something she's studied.  If you were in your early twenties, and you were put on the spot about a controversial issue you hadn't studied in depth, and you assumed you were talking to a group of people who had different opinions, chances are you'd come out where most of these women did - "present both sides fairly and let people decide."

As someone in PR, that's a very recognizable phrase.  Nearly everyone agrees with that blanket statement.  Give people the right to choose. Present both sides fairly.  If you're against those statements on just about any issue, you're typically seen as an elitist or worse. You're positioned as the person who doesn't want people to have their views heard and you're not interested in a fair debate.  PR folks like me recommend taking this tack in a messaging strategy for clients all the time.

This is where many scientists see themselves today on important issues like evolution, climate change, and vaccination.  Scientists point to the data and say the debate is over - those with interests on the other side take advantage of the fact that the issues are still not well known to everyone, and align themselves with consensus-claiming, PR-driven statements.  They're just trying to be heard and they want a fair shake.

So scientists and science communicators find themselves right on the facts but wrong in the eyes of the public.  So they sometimes resort to mocking:



Personally I think it's pretty funny. And it probably wasn't produced for the purpose of changing minds. But mocking beauty pageant contestants - as good as that may feel for some - doesn't really help.  A lot of people think pageants are silly, but a lot of other people really like them.  And we're trying to reach everyone.

Perhaps it makes sense to do some outreach to the contestants, give them some education, help them understand the issue, and then let them be great messengers and advocates for science?

I've heard cheerleaders are pretty good at that...

"Closed" networks and cultural arbitration

Last week we saw the latest pothole in the road to Utopia for iTunes:

Apple Inc. says it has removed an application called "ThirdIntifada" from its App Store following complaints that it glorified violence against Israel.

Of course, when they say "removed" they could just as easily have said "approved and then had to be told this was one of the stupidest things imaginable."

I've already written how the "big four" tech companies - Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook - have made our lives amazingly easier and they have connected people in ways we could barely imagine just a few years ago.  But because those companies have understandably placed limits on those markets and marketplaces, and have tried to create some rules for entry, they've had to make a host of judgment calls about what gets in and what doesn't.   By fate or by design, we're now at a rather alarming point.  Middle-managers at tech companies are regularly policing free speech and global commerce, and occasionally wielding more power in a single mouse click than some foreign ministers could hope to wield in a term of office.

It's hard to define social networks and commerce platforms with hundreds of millions of users as "closed" - especially when the administrators of them want as many users as possible. But they do want to be the gatekeepers of speech and commerce, insisting on approving the software that appears on their platforms.  They are now they are forced to make judgment calls I'm certain they never anticipated.  The folks at Facebook did not intend to be the folks who determine "obscene" content, yet here they are, establishing the "visible aerola" standard for breastfeeding pictures.  Apple never intended to mediate the Arab-Israeli conflict or promote the idea of "praying away the gay" or help drivers avoid sobriety checkpoints.

There's no doubt in my mind that the more apps they approve, the more mistakes they'll make, and the more likely regulation with plenty of unintended consequences will appear.

When tech companies become cultural arbiters

Confronting the threat of "visible areolas" on Facebook

Facebook imposed another creepy "feature" - facial recognition technology - on its users without saying much about it.  It was another relatively quiet encroachment on personal privacy in the name of providing more value to marketers.  An (ironically) anonymous Facebook spokesperson apologized for "the way it was rolled out," but three days later everyone was pretty much back to business.

To me it was the latest warning signal that we're ceding too much of our lives to people whose values work exceptionally well for a successful company but create significant problems in other facets of our lives.

There's no question that companies such as Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft have changed the way millions (if not billions) of people live their lives.  Many of the innovative products and services they've created (or acquired) have made profound improvements to our quality of life.  We've gotten to the point where fast and easy access to the services provided by these and similar companies is a social justice issue.

These companies create a relatively minuscule amount of original content - instead they make it easier for others to create, find, consume, organize, enhance, and share that content.  As millions upon millions of people use their networks and their services, these companies aren't simply helping us create an "online version" of our culture, they're an integral and increasingly significant portion of our actual culture.  And in doing so, these four companies have become our cultural arbiters by default.

They decide who can find your content and how. They decide if you can earn a living in an online business and how. They decide if you can share certain information and how. And arguably they sometimes even decide if you can OWN your own content and how.

I think it's fair to say for the most part they've done an amazing job.  Every day millions of people create and share trillions of pieces of information across the platforms these four companies have created, and it's a fast and easy process.  Every day millions of people move billions if not trillions of dollars across the commerce platforms they've created, creating economic opportunities for people who had no chance of profiting from their ideas just a few years ago.  I wouldn't be able to write this blog post and you wouldn't be able to read it, comment, or share it without these companies.

Further, I look at the values these companies promote and it looks like a recipe for success.  Things like:

• Pursuing relentless, even dogmatic, measures to protect intellectual property rights. 
• Demonstrating passionate loyalty to customers, and always striving to do more for them.
• Creating products and platforms that are so good they become the standard everyone uses.
• Innovating at breakneck speed - get the it to market first, and fix it later.
• Embracing the "social" - err on the side of sharing and let users tell you if they don't want something.
• Automating solutions to complicated problems - save time and money. 

But while Facebook embraces the social they reject the personal.  It's clear that the privacy of Facebook users takes a distant back seat to the revenue potential of their marketing data. Facebook is constantly thinking of ways to serve its customers - the companies who want to know what you do so they can sell more effectively.   So Facebook develops ideas that provide marketers with knowledge about you without your knowledge or specific consent.  They'll apologize afterward, but they'll never stop imposing "features" that sometimes blow up in their faces (remember Beacon?) and forcing users to opt-out rather than opt-in because that would limit their value to customers. Resultingly, we've seen the emergence of a new form of moral hazard. Since users aren't the actual customers of Facebook and they have incomplete knowledge of the consequences of their actions, they make decisions they may not otherwise make.

And ask Ars Technica what it thinks about Facebook's approach to intellectual property - all you have to do is claim a site has taken your content and that site is suspended.  You apparently don't even have to reveal your own identity.  The burden of proof is on the accused, not the accuser.  That's not how it works in our courtrooms, but that's apparently how it works on Facebook, and possibly on Google's YouTube.  It appears the suspension is automatic - kill the site and then review the situation when the company's amazingly small and no doubt overburdened staff has a chance to get to it.

Of course there are the many times Facebook has automatically suspended accounts for posting "obscene" pictures of breastfeeding moms.  Years ago I noted the irony of scrapping those accounts while protecting the "free speech" rights of pro-anorexia Facebook groups that claimed the disease was a lifestyle choice and offered tips on which drugs to take to stave off hunger.   My wife told me that just last week Facebook did it again - closing down an account simply over an incorrect claim of obscenity.  I loved this line from a spokesperson (again apparently anonymous) the reporter quoted from 2008 - "we've made a visible areola the determining factor."  Actually, they've made the claim of a visible areola the determining factor.  Perhaps those who wanted to shut down pro-ana groups should have told Facebook they saw a nipple there.

I think Apple has handled this a bit better but has had its own challenges here as well - like when they allowed a religious organization access to their iTunes platform to distribute an app that promoted "ex-gay" conversion therapy.  Medical organizations have suggested conversion therapy is ineffective at best and harmful at worst.  Gay advocates noted the irony of placing age restrictions on some apps geared toward gay people but this was widely available to anyone.  It took a petition with 150,000 signatures to get Apple to reverse course.

Apple's issue really has been access to its commerce platform and the types of technology it will allow on its devices. Developers crow about how long it takes to get their applications accepted on iTunes.  Personally I don't have a huge problem with this - it means someone is actually looking at what's being presented on their platform.  Their house, their rules.  The problem comes when they want to be the "standard" - standards should offer the most choice possible, and iTunes doesn't.  Resultingly there are other, more open platforms that developers are increasingly choosing.  What I don't understand is Apple's take on "flash" animation technology.  Apparently using this technology in websites and the like places a greater burden on processors and drains the battery more quickly. So Apple won't support technology that reduces the performance level of iPhones and iPads. They're essentially trying to dictate what developers and website designers do on sites that have nothing to do with Apple. As a consumer, I think I'm more than capable of monitoring battery life, and I'm not sure how limiting the number of websites I can fully utilize helps Apple.  It's also arguably a restraint of trade issue - leveraging their dominance in one market (devices) to dictate the terms or channels of distribution of other markets.  Microsoft had those criticisms years ago.

The real risk is that one of these companies will (unintentionally) do something so stupid, so brazen, so outrageous that it will result in an enormous backlash and we'll see social networks and platforms regulated in ways that begin to resemble regulation of utilities.  Regulation can create as many unintended consequences as arbitrary and automated terms of service.

There's no silver bullet but there's one option I can think of that would be a good start - require anyone bringing a complaint such as copyright infringement or obscenity or anything else to confirm their identity and contact information. That shouldn't be too hard to implement, and it has worked in our justice system.  It would also likely reduce the number of embarrassing news stories we've seen over the years.

If you've read all the way to the end of this, I'd love to know what you think...