directorcommentary | jasonbentley.org

I started blogging this yesterday in fits and starts and I figured that since this looks like it's going to take a while to make my point (or at least find it), I might as well publish what I have and just add and revise as I go along.

First, a technical note:

Now I see why thay name hurricanes. Names sumplify complex concepts and shorted unwieldy titles, so that we're not dealing with things like the Third Florida Coastal Hurricane and Storm Surge of 2004. Nobody's agreed on a name for the disaster of December 26. Too many are referring to the total event as just "the tsunami," when it started as a massive earthquake. There were actually several tsunamis. The event was international, so naming any one country is unfair. References to either Christmas or Boxing Day seem rather crass. So, for my own sanity and consistency in writing, I'll usually refer to the December 26/27 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunamis and floods as a single event called the IOET. If I'm only referring to one aspect or the other, I will clearly differentiate which I am referring to.

There. So.

The IOET was the first major global natural catastrophe of the Internet era. For the past week, much of the time I've spent at home has been spent actively watching the development information infrastructure following the event: the news sites, the sites for victims, the sites set up by individual ountries, and of course, the blogs. The process has been facinating, and encouraging. If it's true that greatness emerges in times of tragedy, history may well determine that the IOET was a shining moment for the Internet Age.

This was a truly democratic disaster - the quake and wave regarded nobody, destroyed whoever and whatever it could, and united everybody that else together in survival and grief. The power of immediate, democratic information to inform and assist was undeniable. Survivors and families have reached out to each other. Loved ones have searched for, found, and in so many cases, lost the missing. Eyewitnesses posted photos and videos. Donations have poured into the major global charities through Internet portals. Never before, not even on 9/11, were the details of a major global event richer, more broadly-based, or more quickly communicated in so many media and languages.

Please bear with me as I crystallize my thoughts on this topic – they may envolve and change as this goes on. At this time, a few basic ideas keep bubbling to the surface – statements that the IOET has proven true:

1. The mass media is on their way toward irrelevance.
   
   There were many seismic shifts on December 26, 2004 - one was very literal, others were political and social and economic. From my vantage point in Santa Clara, California, the biggest shift was the assertion of "common media" in the dissemination of information and news. During and immediately after this event, the major media – and by this I mean just about everybody from cable to networks to print – were roundly trumped for information quality and quantity by veryday people with weblogs, text pagers, cell phones, digital cameras, and myriad other gadgets. The IOET was so large that it inspired an near- instant critical mass information exchange at all levels that has largely rendered the major media soundly irrelevant.

   I keep up on current affairs with a dogged persistance; the tools of information are deeply familiar to me. But 'til now, when the big news breaks, the television goes on. This was different. Apart from a few initial reports, the total amount of information concerning this tragedy that I've received from a major news source is less than 5%. A disaster of this scale, without warning or any semblance of control, served to spotlight a glaringly, um, underreported problem. The next point:

2. The editing decisions, presentation techniques, and dubious analysis of most major news media, including print, television, and radio, add little or no value to a story and often detract from or scramble the truth
   
   More on this later.
   

3. Weblogs, though subjective and opinionated, weave a tapestry of first-person experience that's closer to the heart of an event than the most closely embedded reporter.

From the very first rumbles of the 9.0 earthquake in the Indian Ocean, first-hand accounts appeared online, in desperate detail - not on CNN.com, but on weblogs. Content is easily posted to a blog - it can be from a computer, a PDA, or a decently equipped cell phone. And right away, a deeper perspective on the horror that was happening emerged.

Case in point: Ernest Rodriguez, a Californian that lives and teaches English in Bangkok. Ernest is gay, and his boyfriend is a Thai national named Pong. Pong was raised as a monk's assistant and despite Thailand's relative acceptance of homosexuality is the closet to his more religious family. Ernest and Pong had planned on visiting the family for the first time in their village on the border with Cambodia, but on December 24, Ernest wrote that plans had changed.

Ernest Rodriguez:

2 days ago Pong said 3 important words to me, " I'm not ready" ... For 12 years the people of his village have held him in high respect and have wai-ed to him and have been very proud of him. Pong is worried that if they know he has a boyfriend that they will think differently of him. You know, small town boy goes to the big city and gets corrupted by ____________________ (fill in the blank). ...

Instead of going to Buri Ram we are going to Phuket, pronounced Poo-ket. Phuket is an island in southern Thailand that is a big resort destination. People from all over the world go there for vacation.

From there on out, the weblog takes on a much different character. Essentially, you are there. Meanwhile, CNN had a reporter on a grainy video phone talking about "reigning confusion" while showing the same footage of the wave it'd been showing all day.

You can read the entirety of Ernest's LiveJournal here. While it's true that weblogs are subjective, they bring me to my next point:

4. Good, relevant, and true content will rise to the top of glut.
   
   Whether it comes frm a major news site like Reuters or the weblog of a villager in Sri Lanka, relevant, important content will get the notice it deserves. This is especially true in times of crisis, which people actively reach out and gain comfort form other voices. I've heard people profess an affection for weblogs but an aversion to writing one themselves because, "I just don't think I'd have anything to say that anybody would want to read."
   
   The common misperception is that all weblogs are either ciminally boring line item chronicles of some person's daily minutae, or the tedious clothes-tearing angst and manipulative social machinations of teenage suburbanites with broadband. Truth be told, chichés are based in fact, and there was a time when that may have might have been an easier assumption to make. I had a bilous aversion to "LiveJournals" for a long time for just this reason. But where's there's young people, there's innovation and evolution.
   
   Like hip-hop and video games, web logs and bloggers have evolved well past the limited connotation of their names into something far more rich, complex, influential, and now essential. While the 2004 US election cycle proved the weblog in the areas of marketing, politics, and outreach, the IOET highlighted he humanitarian, emergency management, and recovery benefits with greater poignancy and immediacy.

So this is going on too long. I'm going to publish this out and continue refining offline.

This entry was posted by jb, on January 2, 2005. You can leave your response.