The Way We Live (and Die) Now

by Scott McLemee on April 17, 2007

At BookTruck.org (a group blog for librarians), Mimi notes that with the nightmare at Virginia Tech, mass-media coverage has been almost entirely conditioned by the new-media “surround”:

The public spaces on the internet served as the most important arena for exchange of information on the events yesterday. Almost every news story cited a Facebook or Myspace page or a livejournal entry as a source. The Wikipedia entry and discussion on the event hashed out validity of sources and the semantics of tragedy. And then the jarring cell phone footage on Liveleak was among the realest indicators that this gruesome event had actually happened. The events as documented on the social web became the authority.

MTV was among the first to track web reactions, and the Washington Post has a fairly full blog roundup. Mydeathspace.com, a site that tracks online profiles of the deceased, has links to Facebook and Myspace profiles for many of the victims at Virginia Tech. The New York Times is soliciting comments and photos of the victims. After 9/11, the print edition of the NYT ran photos and profiles of victims, which at that point felt immediate and personal–it’s clear now that rapid coverage is essential, and that anything not interactive would be useless. These past two days have made it ever so much more apparent that our social lives on the web are intractable, crucial, and part of the news and the historical record.

See the original post for various links that I wasn’t able to copy.

This sort of moment bears noting, because it is otherwise so very easy to take it for granted as we grow accustomed to the shift of media “ratios” (to clip an expression from McLuhan).

{ 32 comments }

1

nick s 04.18.07 at 12:01 am

These past two days have made it ever so much more apparent that our social lives on the web are intractable, crucial, and part of the news and the historical record.

But also that cablenews journalists use what’s available given their short lead-time, and online sources equal informed searching from an office, rather than shoe-leather work. I’d say ‘really fucking lazy’, but that’s a bit unfair.

But I thought Alessandra Stanley’s piece in the NYT was on the mark:

The amazing thing is how familiar campus shootings have become. For viewers, initial disbelief is quickly folded into a methodical ritual of breaking bad news. News trucks race to the scene, witnesses upload images recorded on cellphones and video cameras, students on the scene calmly and patiently recount their impressions in front of news cameras. One student was taped soberly expressing shock — and cognizance. “This is like a college Columbine,” he said on MSNBC. “Really sad.”

2

tom bach 04.18.07 at 12:58 am

Yes, well, maybe not. This event has been a freak show of repugnant goonery.
1) Instantpundit and Michelle Malkin: the deaths prove the need for more guns
2) Debbie Schussel (or however it is spelt) Pakis yes she used that particular slur, which — as I understand things British — is next but one to the N-word, did this
3) John Derbyshire called the lot of students et alia a bunch of wimps.

The last is particularly stupid, cruel and immoral inasmuch as one victim Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, gave his own life that others might live.

Howsoever the MSM might cover this and howsoever normalized might the reaction of bunch of half-wits, which is to say Katie Curic (or however it is spelt), might be, I spent a good half hour or more shocked, dismayed and filled with sickness unto death. Meanwhile, it would seem, those tasked with fighting great wars on terror/extermism and other related nouns misinformed their reading public and traduced those whose bodies, as the cliche would have it, were still warm.

3

grackel 04.18.07 at 1:03 am

“it’s clear now that rapid coverage is essential, and that anything not interactive would be useless.”

I either don’t understand what this means, in terms of referents, needs, desires, or else I do understand and couldn’t disagree more. Rapid coverage is necessary for what aside from satisfying ubiquitous human voyeurism? Interactive makes sketchy information useful how? I’m not saying I don’t have sympathy for the curiosity that apparently drives the reporting of these events, but I think one would be credulous to put much stock in easily obtained unverifiable bits of information as decribed. It looks to me like a pretty good description of an urban legend factory.

4

C. L. Ball 04.18.07 at 1:38 am

I agree that web technologies like Facebook, Liveleak and others make publicly available and more accessible information that would be more fleetingly televised, radioed, or (less fleetingly) printed and make it more democratic (e.g., the students upload it). But I don’t see the “interactive” part yet. What struck me was how non-interactive most of the web-coverage remains. You could read and view, but not interact in any meaningful sense. The blogosphere — at least the sites I read — were mostly silent about the events.

5

parse 04.18.07 at 1:42 am

I spent a good half hour . . . filled with sickness unto death.

Congratulations on your speedy recovery.

6

tom bach 04.18.07 at 1:45 am

“Congratulations on your speedy recovery”

Gee golly thanks, the spasm and tears come now in intervals.

7

tom bach 04.18.07 at 1:47 am

And by the way, let us meet socially and you can call me a callous prick to my face.

8

km 04.18.07 at 1:54 am

I agree with everyone above — as gossip mills, Facebook and Myspace are great, but otherwise, I’m skeptical.

For instance, I read in a Swedish paper last night that the suspect was a 24 year old Chinese immigrant who landed in San Francisco from Shanghai on August 7th, an exchange student on a student visa. The Swedish paper cited the Chicago Sun-Times, which cited Facebook or some such social networking site. Needless to say, that was all bogus, and at least one Asian kid — still alive and obviously not the gunman — is reportedly receiving death threats on his MySpace page (yes, the logic of that is mind-numbing).

We little folks have access to these social networking sites and the on-demand information they can provide, and reading stuff there can provide some immediate satiation for our thirst to know what’s going on. But mere information is not fact, and these sites — rumor machines on a good day — are not legitimate places to turn for “the real story”. But now that actual, ostensibly fact-checking news agencies are turning to MySpace for content generation, the circle — national media replaces traditional gossip — is complete.

9

jet 04.18.07 at 2:14 am

Tom Bach,

Oh that’s absolutely correct. Instapundit wasn’t horrified at the event and grasping for solutions, he was callously promoting his pet projects. Absolutely, everyone who has a different solution than you who wasn’t piously weeping in the corner, is just a scumbag.

Me, I think all those people advancing their pet projects of more gun control and higher levels of security, instead of piously weeping in the corner, are also scumbags.

—-

On a more on point note, I was also blown away by the web aspect of the event. While bawling my eyes out over the 77 year old who survived the fucking nazis only to die (a hero) by some punk loser, I noticed that truth and fiction were being hammered out by average joes on Wikipedia, that the school paper had turned into a real time blog of events, and that there were many sites aggregating information, and that watching the news meant I was learning things slower and filtered through Stupid.

10

radek 04.18.07 at 2:22 am

Obvious difference between sources like Myspace etc. vs. Wiki etc. – one person vs. many many people.

11

Other Josh 04.18.07 at 4:39 am

Tom Bach and KM — I think I take the side in this that those who “misinformed their reading public” were more likely to be in old media venues. Certainly I saw that those of us who followed developments online were a couple of steps ahead of tv-viewers in getting corrections. Although I agree with Tom as well that the net was a good way to promote “extermism” (you mean the dogma of extermination? Never heard that neologism, but like it) as a response.

Tom, I’m sorry that it turns out the ‘net’s a dangerous place to confess that you responded like a human being. Read Aaron T. Beck’s Prisoners of Hate for an analysis of your critics’ mentalities.

12

voyou 04.18.07 at 5:31 am

mass-media coverage has been almost entirely conditioned by the new-media “surround”

A particularly odd example of this just now on the local news in Berkeley. They were discussing a play the killer wrote that quotes lyrics from a Guns and Roses song, and they illustrated this with a shot of a YouTube page showing the video of the song. I’m still bemused by that one.

13

e-tat 04.18.07 at 8:08 am

I have a pet project too: blame it all on the pace of modern life. Killing happens much more quickly now. So much more quickly that media (let alone people) can’t keep up. But reporting is also much faster, as are asinine, callous appeals to partisan agendas: people are cruel much faster now too.

Is your response ready yet? Everything is faster, bigger, better now.

14

bad Jim 04.18.07 at 8:17 am

«it’s clear now that rabid coverage is essential»

Whereas existential coverage…

I spent half this evening reading half the comments at Chez Nielsen-Hayden reading about seatbelts. (Sorry, my brother’s expecting another son, and neither of us drive as conservatively as we should.)

And as anyone might note, this worst ever day in America (as if!) would count as a better day than average in Baghdad. Certainly, if everyone there had been as well armed as my brother and I there might have been at least two more casualties.

I have to say that whenever I encounter YouTube, entsichere ich meinen Browning.

15

jet 04.18.07 at 1:52 pm

Bad Jim,

It seems there might be something interesting in your post, but I don’t see it. Could you elaborate? Because I’m left floundering with your interpretation of the massacre was to try to be more careful in your life, because life is inherently woefully precarious and seatbelts are the low hanging fruit of mitigation. That the news wasn’t really that bad when put in an Iraqi context. And that YouTube makes you want to start a revolution to protect your culture from Katie Curic and millions of YouTube’ing teenagers. Was that even close?

16

Steve LaBonne 04.18.07 at 3:12 pm

How does up-to-the-minute “coverage” of a horrible, but essentially random and meaningless, event make people better informed?

17

Stuart 04.18.07 at 3:12 pm

You could read and view, but not interact in any meaningful sense. The blogosphere—at least the sites I read—were mostly silent about the events.

Where on other sites that you don’t read, posters from within the campus itself, including at least one person that shared a couple of courses with the killer were posting while people were still being killed, and soon after put up some of the guys recent english essays before he was identified for sure by anyone. Very weird to read stuff like that from thousands of miles away.

Of course all of this stuff is done outside of news channels, and is insanely fast and completely unchecked and speculative (and it’s as easy for rubbish to be picked up as truth). It will be interesting if the existing news networks will react to this by taking more risks to try to compete on speed, or realise they can’t win and reverse go back to being authoritative rather than first for each news story.

18

astrongmaybe 04.18.07 at 6:01 pm

There was a curious quote in the NYT today from one of the kids who very bravely fought off the gunman in a classroom. He said:

“I sprinted on top of the desk to the door, because the aisle was clogged with people, and I used my foot as a wedge against the door,” recalled Mr. O’Dell. “It was almost like you had to fight for your life. If you didn’t, you died.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/us/18german.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

That “almost” is interesting, since he did have to fight for his life. The way I read it, it means “It was a scene like those ‘fighting for your life’ scenes that you see on TV…”

19

Mimi 04.18.07 at 7:14 pm

Thanks Scott, for the link, and to everyone for their comments. If I’m to add anything, it’s to say that I as much implied that the media culling information from the web made the events “real” in the sense that they were represented to the world on the terms set up by social web users- but also in recognizing social web use as documentary.

Unchecked crisis-time sources are nothing new. Talk radio? I’m ridiculously aware of the fatuousness of user-generated content: I spend my days trying to teach information literacy to college students. But even in the media outlets “of record”, i.e. the Times (and their “The Victims” feature), they’ve attempted some sense of authenticity through interaction.

And the disparity in coverage and emotive outpouring between the events at Virginia Tech and those of the war aren’t lost on me, especially as I watched the “Writing the Wartime Experience” segment of America at a Crossroads Monday night.

20

C. L. Ball 04.18.07 at 10:50 pm

I as much implied that the media culling information from the web made the events “real” in the sense that they were represented to the world on the terms set up by social web users

That is a good point — radio & TV broadcasters cull from the new web technics rather than interview people or record events as they happen. Contra Stuart’s suggestion, this implies that the media will feed off the web. I will be the target — the media points me to the blogs I don’t read. Or maybe not, they might regard blogs, chatrooms, Myspace, etc. as sources not to be fully disclosed, in the way what jihadist websites are referred to by print journalists without listing or linking to the URL.

The crucial event: an anchor reports based on an IMC.

21

roy belmont 04.19.07 at 1:18 am

Steve Labonne-
“How does up-to-the-minute “coverage” of a horrible, but essentially random and meaningless, event make people better informed?”
Not better informed. More satisfied. Because they get to participate in it. Which is what they’ve always wanted, to go there, be there, stand right next to the grieving and watch the body bags come out of the building.
Four large bombs exploded across Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least 127 people and wounding…

22

tom bach 04.19.07 at 1:24 am

“Absolutely, everyone who has a different solution than you who wasn’t piously weeping in the corner, is just a scumbag.”

And Jet, questions about the Sargent Major to one side, what is my “solution.” Not sure how condemnation of those who seek to use the event to forwards their own agenda (and to complete the circle I heaved a heavy object at the radio this AM when a gun control advocate asserted that a knife wielding manic would have led to fewer deaths, as if it is the number of the dead instead of the stupid senselessness of their deaths that matters.

Plus, how on earth do you know that my weeping was “pious,” which I confess I take to mean you doubt its sincerity.

How does someone with as little comprehension of the viseral revolusion that the use of these kinds of tragic events to forward any given policy preference convince Paul to write a song in your honor is beyond me.

In short, sir, go screw.

23

jet 04.19.07 at 4:17 am

Tom Bach,

You are absolutely wrong in which sense I meant “pious”. You grief was obvious. My point was that your only acceptable response was grief. And anyone who presented a possible solution didn’t really care about the deaths, which is an extremely uncharitable interpretation.

But I’m sure you are a smart, interesting fellow when you aren’t angry at the stupidity of it all. Although, I expect you’ll be angry for a long time.

24

Firstname Lastname 04.19.07 at 9:56 am

I’m more concerened that it is considered important that the kind gentleman who stepped in was a Holocaust survivor. In my opinion that is as relevant as what he had for dinner three days ago.

25

Ned 04.19.07 at 11:56 am

“Faster, bigger, better” I am so grateful for this discussion and I object to the commodification of grief. I am not a product to drive “news content”. Breathless live shots are interrupted by commercials followed by Brit Hume. All Nazi all the time.
Those students who say “It was almost like you had to fight for your life.” are like, the killer’s roomate who had to listen to Seung play the same repeated Collective Soul song HUNDREDS of times at full volume, but wouldn’t ask him to turn it down because “we didn’t have that kind of relationship. It would have made me uncomfortable.” This stupid young man was not able to adequately respond as a human being to a clearly deranged individual that he was living with in a college dorm room. Obviously, a lot of other “adults” dropped the ball as well.

“so it goes”

26

fred lapides 04.19.07 at 2:36 pm

No doubt that net stuff gets up faster and spreads more widely. But then it is People Magazine-like stuff. And more thoughtful stuff comes out a bit later on more nearly “tradtional” sources: newspapers, magazines, journals. But given the electronic and celebrity stuff that is a part of our lives, not be chand=ce then that the shooter made videos, worte a (bad) poem-like “explanation,” and sent it to–TV.

27

asm 04.19.07 at 4:22 pm

Tom Bach,
Thanks for pointing out the post by Debbie Schlussel (comment #2). She has since deleted her original comments, and replaced them with a one-liner. I don’t think that one-liner can be meaningfully considered as some sort of apology for her usage of the ethnic slur ‘Paki’ or for the rest of the post. You can take a look (if you must) at some of what she said in her original post under the post on the Sepia Mutiny blog linked here.

I suppose we cannot assume that new media will nescessarily approach topics such as these with the sensitivity they deserve or indeed even with responsibility. As we look at the way new-media is interpreting these events, I would like to observe that what gave old media a “voice” in the first place were credibility, responsibility and accountability. These do take time and effort to build.

28

asm 04.19.07 at 4:55 pm

Tom Bach,
Thanks for pointing out the post by Debbie Schlussel (comment #2). She has since deleted her original comments, and replaced them with a one-liner. I don’t think that one-liner can be meaningfully considered as some sort of apology for her usage of the ethnic slur ‘Paki’ or for the rest of the post. You can take a look (if you must) at some of what she said in her original post under the post on the Sepia Mutiny blog linked here.

I suppose we cannot assume that new media will nescessarily approach topics such as these with the sensitivity they deserve or indeed even with responsibility. As we look at the way new-media is interpreting these events, I would like to observe that what gave old media a “voice” in the first place were credibility, responsibility and accountability. These do take time and effort to build.

29

asm 04.19.07 at 5:09 pm

Sorry for the double comment. I forgot to add the links in my previous comment. Here is a link to what remains of the original post and one to the post on Sepia Mutiny extracting from Schlussel’s original post.

What remains of the original post :
I’ve removed this entry, mostly because I am spending too much time monitoring the slimy comments from the Nazi-infested Media Matters for America cretins.

30

Bill in OH 04.19.07 at 5:23 pm

firstname lastname (#24),

I think the significance of the fact that the gentleman who stepped in was a holocaust survivor is nothing more than shear tragic irony. I’m at somewhat of a loss as to why you find that concerning.

31

firstname lastname 04.19.07 at 5:56 pm

Ironically, ‘Pak’ means ‘pure’. Hence Pakistan, land of the pure. Paki should be worn with pride and not just out of spite.

32

tom bach 04.23.07 at 2:43 am

Jet,
Sorry for the confusion.

Comments on this entry are closed.