AMY GAHRAN: The Right Conversation

Threats, Fear, and the Dark Side of Conversational Media

I'll start by admitting that I don't know the details of the death threats and other abuse apparently received by blogger Kathy Sierra. I've read about the incident, but I haven't verified anything or even looked into it closely. Therefore, the journalist in me prefers to refrain from commenting on that now widely publicized incident.

(BACKGROUND: Sierra's account, and more from Lisa Stone.)

That said, I'll be the first person to admit that there is a scary side to conversational media: mob mentality, threats to personal safety, and more. These problems are real, and they are scary for good reasons.

I don't know definitively whether women experience online threats and abuse more than men. I do know that women tend to take personal, sexual, violent threats more seriously -- and react to them differently -- than men generally do.

To put this in context, according to the US Bureau of Justice most victims of violent crime in the US are male -- that is, "for all types of violent crime except rape/sexual assault." When it comes to sexual violence, women are disproportionately victimized. Therefore, threats of sexual violence, such as those leveled at Sierra, bear a special significance to women. Perhaps for this reason, criticism of women often quickly descends toward sexual slurs and threats. People know it's a proven way to silence and marginalize women.

In my experience, people who threaten others -- whether online or elsewhere -- usually don't follow through with violent acts. Often, the threat is its own reward for them. They threaten mainly to instill fear (which is in itself significant damage and power), and also to show off to their peers. Lame, but true.

Here's what I recommend: Deprive people who deliver threats of their rewards. Here's how...

links for 2007-03-29

• The Diva Marketing Blog (Toby bloomberg)
  "Blogs, wikis, mash-up communities, podcasts, vlogs, virtual communities are vehicles that can help reestablish the corner grocery store relationship. By that I mean a time when people knew who their customers were and what was important to them."
  (tags: PR+marketing conversation human+nature conversational+media blogs podcasting business)

links for 2007-03-28

• Kathy Sierra: Stepping Back after Abusive and Violent Threats
  "She has had death threats and abusive behavior directed at her, in two blogs (meankids.org and unclebobism) that were made to vent . Commenters on the blogs took things way too far. It's a slippery slope, being mean to make fun or be a little nasty."
  (tags: conversational+media content+style human+nature humor controversy problems)
• Susan Mernit's Blog: Kathy Sierra, Jeneane Sessums, handling hate, and being an a-hole
  "People, there's an easy gut check on your own behavior: Would you want someone to repeated the same behaviors and focus them on you? If the answer is no, and you're not an asshole, why go there?"
  (tags: conversational+media blogs problems human+nature controversy)

Links & more thoughts for my BlogHer Talk Today

This afternoon I'm on a panel at the BlogHer Business Summit: An RFP for the Measurement Industry:

"Where is the blog measurement tool that could measure more than "eyeballs," more than "authority" via inbound links, and could begin to approach measuring influence and relevance? [The panelists will] scope out what is, is not and ought to be available."

...Earlier I wrote some thoughts about this topic: Accounting for Community

Here are links for some tools I'll mention today:

• BuzzLogic: Sophisticated analysis, records interaction, looks at more than just your site
• Google Analytics: Simple, free analytics tool, but not my favorite.
• Omniture: Really sophisticated site stat analysis, cream of the crop -- but expensive
• Newsfire (my favorite Mac feed reader)
• CoComment and Co.mments, two comment-tracking tools
• IceRocket and Technorati: blog aggregators
• BoardReader: Elizabeth Lee recommended this in the session, I must check it out -- a search engine for message boards.

Also, on May 12 I'm giving a workshop in Chicago with Heidi Miller: Creating Passionate Communities with Blogs and Podcasting.  Special $40 discount for  BlogHer session attendees with the code: blogher.

UPDATE: Right now I'm in the session preceding mine on the ROI of social media. Lena West of Xynomedia just said something that made me thing of something I want to mention in my session...

Accounting for Community: Thoughts for the BlogHer Business Summit

                                               

Stig Nygaard, via Flickr (CC license)

"Toto, I don't think we're in Boulder anymore..."

I'm in New York right now, and on Friday afternoon I'll be on a panel at the BlogHer Business Summit that I'm really looking forward to. Here's the official blurb from the conference program:

An RFP for the Measurement Industry

Where is the blog measurement tool that could measure more than "eyeballs," more than "authority" via inbound links, and could begin to approach measuring influence and relevance? [The panelists will] scope out what is, is not and ought to be available.

The panel will also include Edelman PR's Elizabeth Lee and LiveWorld's Jenna Woodul. Jory Des Jardins, one of the BlogHer founders and a gifted blogger in her own right will be moderating.

Gee... No pressure...

Frankly, I've been stressing a bit about this session. For a long time I've felt I was missing something very obvious about this topic. I've been worrying that I'm going to get up in front of an audience of people I respect and look like an idiot. Perhaps I'm about to do just that.

Regardless, something just occurred to me. I'd like to hear what you think about it...

links for 2007-03-21

• How to Save the World
  "interview on the radio the other day. What made it fascinating was that the interviewer's voice, and questions, were entirely edited out. What you heard was a very eloquent explanation of a difficult topic, in which the questions were tacit, unheard."
  (tags: conversation interviews audio radio conversational+media content+style tidbits+fodder)

May 12, Chicago: My Workshop with Heidi Miller!

Ok, here's something I've been working on that I'm very excited about. On Saturday, May 12, I'll be teaming up with the Podcasting Princess herself, Heidi Miller, to offer a special one-day workshop: Creating Passionate Communities with Blogs and Podcasting. Attendees will get a fun, practical jump start toward using the Internet to support your work -- and your bottom line. 

Is this workshop for you? Quite possibly.

• Do you love your business, organization, or project -- but hate doing traditional marketing or outreach?
• Do you love connecting with people who might want to buy your products or services, support your efforts, or just spread the word about what you're doing -- but hate creating ads and press releases?
• Even more importantly, do the people you need to reach tend to tune out traditional advertising and marketing? Also, do they like being heard?

Register now to get the early bird discount rate. (Right Conversation readers, enter the code RC01 to receive an extra $25 discount.)

Here's what our workshop will cover...

My Blog Break, No Excuses

Well, I haven't blogged in Right Conversation for a little while, and I'm not going to make any excuses. Letting a blog lapse for an extended time isn't a good thing. I just let this one get away from me.

I've had to cut back on my own blogging projects because my workload has been especially heavy for the last couple of months. So it's not that I haven't been blogging at all -- I've just been blogging for other clients. Especially for Poynter's E-Media Tidbits, which I edit. (Here's a rundown of my postings there.)

I've also been working with my I, Reporter partner Adam Glenn to compile a searchable database of citizen journalism sites for KCNN, a new citizen media resource site from the Knight Foundation. We still need to do a few final tweaks on the search page, and upload some explanatory text of the project (which will officially launch at the end of March). But you can get a sneak preview now.

And I'm working with my colleague Heidi Miller, the podcasting princess, to create a one-day workshop called Creating Passionate Communities with Blogs and Podcasting. I'll have more to say about that in my next post, but for now you can check out the information already online from that link. We'll be debuting this workshop in Wheaton, IL (not far from Chicago) on Saturday, May 12.

Thanks for your patience, and there's more coming!

links for 2007-03-20

• John Battelle's Searchblog: Packaged Goods Media vs. Conversational Media, Part One (Updated)
  "Companies in Conversational Media require quite a different set of skills, and radically different economic and business models which, to be perfectly frank, conflict directly with the models that support and protect Packaged Goods Media-based companies.
  (tags: conversational+media content+biz business)

links for 2007-03-10

• Steli Efti: I used to stand upon the round table to blog. Boy that was stupid!
  "Now here´s how I see blogging today: Nobody stand UPON the round table! Everyone is sitting AT the round table talking to the people next to her."
  (tags: blogging conversational+media mycoverage)
• Susan Mernit's Blog: MySpace: Launching news aggregator?
  "MySpace can claim it's getting into the news business by doing something as simple as launch its own branded newsreader and/or blog feeds. Think about all the magazines and media properties that have done this--why wouldn't MySpace?"
  (tags: social+media)
• Beth's Blog: Get Your Damn Tags Right! A Tagging Community
  "On the public forum, the discussion threads range from making fun of sloppy taggers "What's the worse tag you've ever seen?" (Answer: Pink Floyd as Punk) to threads asking for advice about what tag to use when tagging, Opera, for example."
  (tags: tagging collaboration community forum)