It became a phenomenon in 2009. No, not Twitter. I'm talking about the use of Twitter as a weapon of mass detraction - as a means of heckling keynote speakers at conferences. As a way to vent your spleen when you feel that the speaker you paid to come to hear is missing the mark. Such heckling using Twitter is now a new word in our lexicon: Tweckle (twek'ul) vt. to abuse a speaker only to Twitter followers in the audience while he/she is speaking. Tweckling (or back-channel-stabbing if you wish) has happened several times over the course of the year in high profile conferences. The first recorded instance had the unfortunate David Galper as its victim. Galper was keynote speaker at the High Ed Web 2009 conference held in Milwaukee, USA earlier in the year. On the conference's social network site the conference backchannel tool Twitter is announced as "what it means to embrace a truly free and open stream of communication in the digital age." And eye wateringly free and open it became during David Galper's keynote. He started off poorly and went downhill from there, presenting what was reported to be an ill-informed, out of date and visually poor presentation (yellow text on a white background and crowded slides). To compound the agony, the sound system failed to function fully for the first few minutes. Very quickly the harsh comments began to pop up on the Twitter stream, and very soon they became a torrent of abuse, disparaging remarks that took on a more and more personal hue, turning the event into a 'car crash keynote'. Ultimately, the dissatisfaction of the conference audience was aired to a wider audience as people from outside the event began to take notice, and joined in. The outcome was that the Twitter stream hashtagged #heweb09 began to trend.
It's not the only occurance of 'harshtagging' either. The now infamous incident of danah boyd's 'Twitter lynching' at the Web 2.0 expo echoed many of the regrettable features of the HE Web conference. Both times the speakers did their best. Both times, they were constrained by the organisation and technical provision of the conference. And both times, they were publicly ridiculed and ritually humiliated by audiences who thought they were free to be impolite and abusive. Regardless of the professional issues, we should ask ourselves, would we have joined in? And the honest answer for most of us (if we were not enjoying a keynote, and were being distracted by humourous comments flowing out on Twitterfall) would be: yes we probably would. This kind of incident is reminiscent of the wisdom of crowds descending to the level of the stupidity of mobs.
I'm left wondering what causes professional people to behave in such a manner? There are clearly many factors, but I would like to propose two in particular: The first is akin to those irrate drivers who yell and gesticulate obscenely to each other from the safety of their own car seats. They wouldn't dream of using such language or threats if they met face to face, but in the car they feel they can get away with it. There is a certain distancing afforded by sitting behind the steering wheel of your own car. It's the same with Twitter. You can snipe at a distance because you don't really know the person you are shooting at, and Twitter allows a certain amount of distancing to occur.
The second relates to diffusion of responsibility and disinhibition when people are in a crowd. Someone lying on a sidewalk is more likely to remain untended if there are many people milling around. No-one feels responsible because everyone is ignoring the body, right? Studies have shown that if there are fewer people in the street someone will usually take it upon themselves to intervene. It's easier to behave like the rest of the crowd and it's even easier to be dragged along with the mob. It is not difficult, and even pleasurable to make snide comments when the mob is egging you on (and retweeting you). But it takes some courage to stand up and challenge this kind of behaviour, especially when it is within your own community of practice and your own reputation may be at stake. How many of us would have tweeted a voice of reason during this Twitter storm? How would I feel if I was the keynote who was being tweckled in such a public manner? It's true that keynotes are booked (and in some cases hired) to set the tone of an event, to provoke deeper thinking and to challenge, and if they do not, it could be said that they have failed in their mission. But when the audience begins to turn into a mob, does tweckling not resemble villagers throwing rotten fruit at the man in the stocks? I would expect that many of those who took part in the tweckling of David Galper might feel a little uncomfortable right now, particularly as the #heweb09 Twitter stream is available for all to read. Perhaps there should be a Twitterquette - but who would write it?
Hammer a nail into the wall. You can remove it, but the hole remains. We're all human and harsh destructive criticism will always hurt. I'm sure we would all hate to see Twitter backchannels becoming so problematic that they receive a blanket ban from conference organisers. Yes, we should engage in academic discourse and we should feel free to criticise the views of others, but let's conduct ourselves in a manner that is constructive, non-offensive and professional. That's what our students would expect from us, isn't it?
Related posts:
Spectacle at Web 2.0 Expo (danah boyd)
The great keynote meltdown of 2009 (Michael Fienen)
Image source (edited)
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