“I am not a social media consultobot. I don’t have a magic formula for making stuff work – no-one does, really.” Despite her humble pronouncements, since arriving at the Guardian headquarters in London, Meg Pickard, head of digital engagement for Guardian News and Media, has seen the site’s traffic skyrocket to a record 37 million unique visitors a month.
Pickard, a self-described creative geek with a background in social anthropology (some years ago she wandered highland Bolivia to conduct ethnographic research), she abandoned the academic environment for the bright lights of the internet some dozen years ago, working for startups as well as giant corporations like AOL.
Pickard visited Athens last week at an invitation by the British Council here to give a speech on social media. Meanwhile, she spoke to Athens Plus about how powerful internet tools like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are changing the way in which information is produced, distributed and consumed at the digital age and how this is impacting on mainstream media.
Do you think that traditional media can survive without embracing social media?
I think they can survive. But it will be a particularly lonely existence in the future. As news organizations are embracing digital more generally and people are reading and engaging and sharing and doing all of these things with the content you put out there, it seems like an odd thing to turn away from. So even if you as a news organization did not chose to participate on Facebook, you would probably want to support other people sharing your things on Facebook. Even if you as a news organization chose not to be on Twitter you would probably be delighted if other people were talking about and promoting and sharing links to your things on Twitter. So I think you can make a distinction between active publishing to social media spaces and embracing the organic social activity that is already taking place around your site. So the question would be: does your newspaper have a website? Are people already sharing it? If they are then, sorry, but you are already using social media, or social media is already affecting your business. So a really short answer to your question “can they survive?” is, yes they can survive, but if you imagine that future metrics are going to be less about circulation and more about reach and engagement then social media can only help towards these reach and engagement metrics.
Are we perhaps overestimating the impact of social media? After all, they are to a large degree rehashing information that has already been produced by traditional media which are doing the dirty work of investigation and cross checking of facts.
When people talk about things like collaboration and participation by users, citizen journalism and all that I think that if you imagine that this is going to take the place of media then you’re kind of thinking about it wrong. It’s “as well as,” not “instead of.” So in the case of the MPs expenses tool that we put together when somebody hit the button that said “This Is Interesting” we did not automatically publish it on the front page of the newspaper. When enough people pressed that button we were able to then use that information to focus the attention of the journalist who could then look at where the heat is and where the conversation is and then apply journalism on top of it. Then they could verify, they could fact-check, they could oversee. So I think that gradually things like social media do not tell the story for us, they help us see where the story is.
You recently wrote an article in the Guardian recently about social media rules for journalists. You said “a good journalist should be able to support a particular football team at the weekend but put aside his loyalties when reporting on another.” Are social media forcing us to have multiple identities?
I don’t think they are forcing us to have multiple identities. I think they are forcing us to be clear about which identity we are speaking with at a time. So I think you are going to see a lot more of journalists or for that matter an employee of a company putting disclaimers on their blogs or on their Twitter accounts saying I am not speaking on behalf of my employer or whatever. The point there about a journalist being able to support a particular football team at the weekend and then suspend that when they are writing somewhere else was because a good journalist is somebody who is not a robot, a good journalist is somebody who can bring and can be inspired by all of their information and excitement and interest in subjects and still tell a story in a way that is valuable and useful and not somebody who makes every output the same just because they like Manchester United. That is bad journalism.
Technologist Janor Lanier has attacked many of the Internet’s sacred cows. For Lanier there is no “wisdom of crowds,” only a cruel mob.
The phrase “wisdom of crowds” is used a lot at the moment in the wrong way. Francis Galton who came up with the idea of the wisdom of crowds was talking about a statistical anomaly. He was talking about the ability for a lot of people to somehow, without knowing about each other, settle upon the right answer – or an interesting answer – to something without talking about it. So in his case, it was people at a fairground guessing the weight of a cow. And they had 160 people or whatever it was and they all guessed the weight of the cow and the average number was the exact weight of the cow. So what does that tell us? It tells us that if you get enough guesses statistics will do the rest. That is what the wisdom of crowds is all about. It says that the crowd as a whole is more intelligent or is cleverer than one individual on their own who may guess something completely random. When people talk about “wisdom of the crowds” at the moment they are talking about crowds as forces for good. That is never what the intention of that phrase was, and it’s not right either. Actually crowds in any sense have good elements and bad elements and it depends what they are pointing towards or what they are united against. Right now [last week] in London there is a protest going on against school fees or university fees and as I left the hotel this evening they were breaking windows; this is a crowd that has assembled for a good reason because they want the state to pay for their university education and there are some people in the crowd that have led this in the bad direction. So when we talk about the wisdom of crowds we’re not saying that they’re always right. Who do we listen to? We should always apply judgment.
I tweet therefore I am
Google and Facebook have been criticized for their handling of private information. Do you share such security concerns?
I think that Google certainly around the Buzz experience and so on have learned that just because you can do something as an engineer does not necessarily mean that you should do something. It was like a social product designed by engineers because it was clever, not because it was sensitive or useful. I think that privacy is something that people want to have more control over as individuals and I think that it is always worrying when companies take liberties with information that we have entrusted to them. In the Google wi-fi case we did not entrust that information to them. The Google cars were wondering around and they wrote it down and used that information. Facebook is slightly different. I recently got a wedding invitation which at the bottom said “please take many photos and share them with us and with each other but please don’t upload any of them to Facebook.” Facebook’s copyright restrictions say that if you upload a picture they can use it for anything they want. That’s a worry.
Much of online youth activism is superficial. The idea that you can support the opposition movement in Iran or the liberation of Tibet with a click.
It’s easy to like something. It’s hard to actually engage. Well I think that actually issues and people who are lobbying for things need to work harder to get people to actually engage beyond the “like” button or engage beyond the “support now” button. How do you get people to put their money where their mouth is or put their ideas to actually act on things rather than just writing. Some charities, like Amnesty International, are doing interesting work in this area figuring out ways that they can extend that simple low barrier to entry and try to actually extend it to something else. Or take the atheist movement campaign on the side of London buses. They made a just giving page and people were able to contribute and they raised something like 20,000 pounds as loads of people gave very small amounts of money. And I think there is a thing there which says how do you think about the big picture and the big effect you want to have.
I have to say that much of the tweets and Facebook feeds smacks of narcissism and self-promotion. I hate having to put up with 99 percent of pure narcissism just to find something that might interest me. Do social media cause narcissism or are they merely an outlet for those who are already narcissistic?
I think people who are already narcissistic have always sought outlets for their narcissism. If you are a narcissist you will always find a way to promote yourself on any platform whether that is the bus or Twitter. That is just a facet of people’s innate need to express themselves to the world in some ways. I think Twitter can do things, can be useful but that the main use as you exactly allude to is finding the signal. In a thousand tweets how do you find the one tweet that you really need to see? And that’s partly about curation, it’s partly about how these things bubble to the top, it’s partly about how these things appear in your networks.
But I have to say the trend does seems to cultivate narcissism.
Of course it does. Absolutely. But then so does every technology to some extend. You have a great camera but other people with that camera take photos of themselves, endlessly at arms length so they can put them on Facebook. It’s what you do with technology that counts. The technology is not to blame. I think it’s the people. It’s people who say “Oh, I am famous to thousands, famous to millions!”
Would you say that technology is neutral, it’s a tool, it’s value free?
I wouldn’t say it’s value free. I think it’s an enabler and it inspires us to do things but I don’t think that we can blame technology for human failings.
In Syntagma Square, some see the dawn of a new politics
Published June 27, 2011 news & comment Leave a CommentTags: 1973, aganaktismenoi, agora, aid, assembly, athens, australian, bailout, che guevara, communist, crime, crisis, demonstration, demonstrators, dictatorship, douzinas, doxiadis, economy, EU, financial, georgiadou, Greece, guardian, harry van versendaal, imf, indignados, indignants, KKE, loan, louka, loukanikos, maglinis, marfin, memorandum, moutza, mouzelis, o'neill, papandreou, politics, protesters, sociologist, spain, spiked, stathis marinos, strike, syntagma, syriza, tent, unemployment, unions, versendaal, voxversendaal, xenophobia
Photo by Chris Bertsos
By Harry van Versendaal
It’s past midnight in Syntagma Square, the epicenter of Greece’s month-long anti-austerity demonstrations, and Stathis Marinos is sitting at a corner cafe overlooking the colorful tent city under the trees. Flipping a string of worry beads while sipping a frappe, the 37-year-old software engineer muses about Greece’s financial crisis.
“The memorandum is unsustainable,” he says of the loan deal signed last year between the socialist government of George Papandreou and Greece’s foreign creditors to avert default. He thinks the debt-choked country is being stifled by a mix of brutally rigid measures — and that they must be resisted. “But you cannot use the system to fight the system. You must not get caught up in this process,” he says, criticizing calls among protesters and pundits to declare the bailout agreement unconstitutional.
A few yards away, in the heart of the white marble square, a loudspeaker crackles with rhetorical din from the ongoing session at the makeshift assembly meeting. Modeled after Spain’s “Indignados” who took over Madrid’s Puerta del Sol and other public squares earlier this year, Athens’s “aganaktismenoi” (Indignants) have camped in the capital’s main square since May 25. A month after the first call on Facebook and other social media, Syntagma, or Constitution square, the starting point to the capital’s main commercial street, is playing host to a postmodern incarnation of the ancient Athenian agora.
Every evening, hundreds of people gather here to discuss anything and everything about the crisis. Speakers, who are chosen by lot, are given a two-minute time limit so as to allow for the greatest possible number of contributions. There is little of the typical booing and hissing, and audiences react mostly with hand gestures: waving their hands in the air for approval or giving a thumbs down when they disagree. Interpretations of what is happening in the square range from the groundbreaking to the delusional or just plain silly.
“This is not a movement — and it will by no means evolve into a political party. It’s more like a trend,” says Marinos, who has joined in every evening after work since day one. He has often taken part in street demos, but points out that he has never belonged to a political party. “It’s great that people familiarize themselves with the political process; they learn how to engage in dialogue with each other; how to participate in civic life,” he says of the meetings.
In the beginning, the Indignants were mostly portrayed as a non-political grouping. It was in the wake of a mass demonstration earlier this month that Greece’s mainstream parties, PASOK and the right-of-center New Democracy, came close to clinching a unity coalition deal. Talks eventually fell through and Papandreou went on to conduct a cabinet reshuffle designed to galvanize his base. He also proposed a referendum in the fall on a proposal to revise the Greek Constitution. The fact that the Indignants have put pressure on the government and the politicians, some argue, means that they have now become political.
Political animals
In fact, some analysts maintain, the movement has been political from the start. Costas Douzinas, a law professor at Birkbeck, University of London, recently penned one of the most flattering profiles of the Indignants in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, after being invited to speak in Syntagma. For him “this is the most political movement we have had in Greece, and perhaps in Europe for the past 20 years. It is totally political and in a way it changes our understanding of what politics means,” he says.
He is not alone. Vassiliki Georgiadou, a political science professor at Panteion University in Athens, has kept a close eye on the demographics of the square. All findings so far, she says, indicate that we are dealing with a “politically active” audience. “These people are deeply disaffected and disillusioned with politicians, with the political parties and with the institutions at large,” she explains. Their reaction was not a bolt out of the historical blue. Most research shows that people’s disaffection with Greece’s social and political institutions dates back to the early 1990s. A public survey published last year found that nearly nine out of 10 Greeks are “dissatisfied with how democracy works.” The local media, which have suffered their own barrage of criticism (some of it fair) as sycophants of the status quo, like to describe the movement in emotional rather than ideological terms. “But frustration is not merely an emotional reaction. Frustration is the preamble of political protest,” says Georgiadou.
“Any kind of politics of resistance starts from a refusal. Refusal is the first step in any process of eventual political confrontation,” Douzinas says. The phenomenon seems to have a dream-come-true quality for some, and Douzinas is certainly happy to connect the dots. “Without people being in a space, taking it over and declaring their refusal of whatever it is that they want to reject, no radical change has ever taken place in history,” he says.
Skeptics, on the other hand, maintain that the memorandum is not at the root of the problem, but only a symptom. Culminating to the memorandum, they say, the trail has been one of dysfunction, waste and corruption. Writing in The Guardian last week, author Apostolos Doxiadis attacked the “charlatans” who blame the evil foreigners for our own ills and failures. Some soul-searching would instead be more appropriate, he reckons. “I know that the heart of our problem is a huge, parasitic and inefficient public sector, which EU funds, unwisely and often corruptly distributed by our politicians over the past two decades, made even bigger and less productive,” he writes.
When it comes to self-criticism and proposals to overcome the crisis, detractors say, the Syntagma folk are uncomfortably laconic. “Far form being the frontline of any kind of solid movement, the Syntagma camp-in is a confused, depoliticized, borderline-petulant response to the economic crisis,” writes Brendan O’Neill, editor of spiked website, in The Australian. He is annoyed at the absence of any serious debate about the hard stuff. Save their vociferous opposition to austerity measures, “absolutely nothing of substance is proposed,” he writes.
What virtually everyone agrees on is that Greece is a mess. Faced with bankruptcy, the country received a 110-billion-euro rescue package from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in May 2010 but now needs a second bailout of a similar size to meet its financial obligations until the end of 2014, when it hopes for a return to capital markets for funding. International creditors have set the introduction of a painful raft of belt-tightening measures — including tax hikes, spending cuts and privatizations — as a condition for releasing more aid. A critical vote is to be held in Parliament on June 29 and 30. Meanwhile, unemployment has soared to 16 percent and crime, in what used to be one of the safest states in Europe, is on the rise. Anti-immigrant sentiment, particularly in the poorer neighborhoods of the capital, is spreading as once-marginal xenophobic groups are establishing a mainstream presence.
Square feat
Nicos Mouzelis, an emeritus sociology professor at the London School of Economics, goes as far as to draw parallels between the Indignants and the anti-globalization demonstrations in Seattle and Genoa — and, in a more far-fetched comparison, the events of May 1968. Mouzelis, a former adviser to reformist Prime Minister Costas Simitis, praises the movement’s “great dynamism, spontaneity and the rapid, widespread diffusion across all social strata.” The protests have truly brought together a very diverse crowd — but one that is not always pulling in exactly the same direction.
Browsing through the crowd massed in the square, you encounter a motley crew of leftists railing against global capitalism and neoliberalism. Posters of Che Guevara hang next to used tear gas canisters (with “Made in USA” labels) launched by police during the recent riots. The spicy fumes wafting from the assorted stands of hot-dog vendors occasionally mixes with the pungent odor of marijuana. At the assembly, people discuss the negative effects of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy on Greek farmers before talking through some organizational issues. With time, the discourse at the meetings has become more progressive and assertive. A recent resolution called for activist-style interventions like the occupation of television stations and public buildings. For Marinos, some degree of radicalization is a “natural evolution.” “You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs,” he says.
The Indignants’ decision to cordon off the Parliament building on June 15 to prevent lawmakers from reviewing the controversial midterm fiscal plan was widely regarded as the first break with the movement’s non-violent stance. The rally, which was also attended by thousands of union members, degenerated into violence as riot police battled with self-styled anarchists for hours. Then came the usual finger-pointing squabble over who deserves the blame for the violence. A decision to give the movement a more activist orientation, some analysts say, would most likely alienate the big mass of supporters. “Some people would like to see a fallback to traditional practices. But I am not sure that many people will want to follow,” Georgiadou says.
Interestingly, however, developments in and around Syntagma Square have thrown left-wing parties — like the Greek Communist Party (KKE) and the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) — into disarray. Early skepticism — the more sclerotic KKE went as far as to condemn the movement for not being class-driven — gradually gave way to, some say, cynical attempts to hijack the movement. They are unlikely to succeed, as most protesters view them as part of the problem. “If KKE changes, it will destroy itself,” Marinos says.
Dogs of war
Just up the steps from the assembly, in front of the illuminated Parliament building, a different group is chanting slogans and hurling insults against the “thieving politicians who destroyed Greece,” calling them to “give the money back and get the f*** out of the country.” Demonstrators make the disparaging open-palm “moutza” gesture against the House and point green laser beams — sold here by immigrant street vendors — at television crews conveniently positioned on the balconies of the Grande Bretagne luxury hotel. Mock gallows and banners taunting Papandreou as being “Goldman Sachs’s employee of the year” decorate this part of the square. Most of the acid is flung at Theodoros Pangalos, the corpulent deputy prime minister and father of the infamous “we-all-ate-the-money-together” comment. Here, in this more colorful part of the new agora, is where you are most likely to bump into Loukanikos, the famous riot dog, and manic street preacher and cult TV personality Eleni Louka yelling “repent” into a megaphone as bystanders take snapshots with their cell phones.
The rowdy behavior and nationalist overtones of the people stationed in front of the House have caused occasional spats with their left-leaning counterparts down the steps. “I don’t understand what is going on down there,” Giorgos, a young man in blue jeans and a polo t-shirt, tells me while rolling a cigarette. “I don’t have a solution to the crisis. All I know is that I am angry with all this,” he says. The blanket rejectionism and often xenophobic posturing of those upstairs conveys a sense of uncertainty, of lost bearings perhaps, in a world swept up by rapid social change.
Elias Maglinis, a writer and journalist in his early 40s who lives in the nearby Mets area, is put off by some of the crass behavior. “The gallows, the comparisons to the 1967 military coup and the slogans that the dictatorship did not end in 1973 make me angry. These people have no memory or do not know what a dictatorship or firing squad means,” he says.
At 1 a.m., the protest has petered out. About 50 people remain scattered on the sidewalk of Amalias Avenue in front of the House. Some lean over the newly installed railings to taunt the baton-wielding policemen. Two middle-aged men, beer cans in hand, chat with a police chief. A towering figure with a white mustache, the soft-spoken chief expresses his sympathy for the demonstrators. “We also are suffering,” he says pointing at his men. “My salary was slashed; I am the father of three. We are here to protect the House, not them [the deputies],” he says. Police officers, currently paid between 800 and 1,500 euros, are in for wage cuts like all civil servants. As he speaks, fireworks explode overhead as the Panathenaic stadium, the venue that hosted the first modern Olympic Games, prepares to host the Special Olympics opening ceremony.
What next?
Most analysts predict that the Indignant movement will fizzle out. “Because these movements reject any linkages to political parties, trade unions and other well-established organizations, they do not last long,” says Mouzelis. But the long-term impact on Greece’s political culture must not be discounted. “Politicians will not be able to operate ‘as usual’ anymore,” he says. And even if the hype about direct democracy in action is exaggerated, recent developments have made people realize that they can be active citizens without belonging to any particular party or trade union. “A democracy should welcome the existence of active citizens; it’s not something to be afraid of. After all, it’s better if people get together in public squares than becoming numbed couch potatoes,” Georgiadou says.
Back in the square, the assembly is voting on the resolutions proposed over the course of the day. Attendants vote in favor of organizing concerts on a daily basis, but reject a proposal to invite the country’s premier for talks. Decisions will soon be posted on the real-democracy website. Most of them dictate actions to be taken during the two-day general strike on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Ambling over to the crowd, Marinos says that what happens during the strike may well determine the future of the movement. He ponders the Marfin bank tragedy in May last year. Three employees died when the premises were firebombed during an anti-austerity rally. “Should there be human losses like then, the whole thing will die.”