“Paul starts with a straw man…”

That’s not a straw man. Sorry. It would be a straw man if Carr had said “only I have been claiming that social media…”, thus implying that everyone else thought it was great, and he (and he alone) was a naysayer. You can’t make a straw man out of a reference to what you’ve said, with no reference to anyone else’s actions.

“This is not, however, a reflection on social tools so much as it is a reflection of human nature: Some of what gets done with social media is good and some is bad. This is not news, nor new.”

And neither is he claiming it to be. What he IS claiming is that this is a perfect example which supports his view.

“We do need some proper studies to see just what sort of effect these new social technologies are having, but going off on a moral panic about social tools is neither smart nor helpful.”

Where, exactly, is the moral panic?

“but even now she has only 29 followers, so she most likely thought that she was speaking to a small number of people and it turns out that’s pretty much true”

And yet, as you point out, reporters found her comments and attempted to contact her. Which is what you’d expect, even with a low number of followers.

“So, six journalists get in touch, with Michael Waldon not appearing to have much luck in getting hold of Moore at all.”

Which, I think, actually bares out Carr’s point well. Six journalists *from very very large* organisations tracked her down and got in touch – five, it appears, successfully. And this is someone who’s followed by a TINY number of people!

“But to insinuate that it’s pure selfishness and that Moore should have been ‘doing something’ is misrepresenting Moore’s situation.”

Straw man. Carr said “helping *or getting out of the way*”. By taking out the “getting out of the way” bit, you’re deliberately reducing his argument. I’d argue that if you’re a patient there, in those circumstances, getting out of the way is the only thing you should be doing. Furthermore, he doesn’t insinuate anything: He calls it selfish (“In the actions of Tearah Moore at Fort Hood, we have the perfect example of both kinds of selfishness”). By claiming he is “insinuating” you’re attempting to present his argument as snarky, snidy comment when in fact he’s quite clearly stating something – no insinuation required.

“In the middle of a shooting, in a lock-down situation, is it really any wonder that your average eye witness actually isn’t all that well informed about the bigger picture? People caught up in events can tell us what they see and what they hear, but they can’t necessarily fact check right there and then and I feel it’s rather unfair to expect them to.”

Which misses the point. Carr’s point isn’t that Moore was to be blamed for being wrong, but that media outlets who reported her as if she were a witness rather than a third-hand source were wrong. Hence: “Moore’s eye-witness reports weren’t worth the bits they were written on. They had no value whatsoever, except as entertainment and tragi-porn.”

“A further straw man is Carr’s complaint that social media is making “our humanity [...] leak[...] away”.”

It would be a straw man, if he’d actually said that. He didn’t. He said:

“And that’s precisely the problem: none of us think we’re being selfish or egotistic when we tweet something, or post a video on YouTube or check-in using someone’s address on Foursquare. It’s just what we do now, no matter whether we’re heading out for dinner or witnessing a massacre on an Army base. Like Lord of the Flies, or the Stanford Prison Experiment, as long as we’re all losing our perspective at the same time – which, as a generation growing up with social media we are – then we don’t realise that our humanity is leaking away until its too late.”

That isn’t saying “social media is robbing us of our humanity”, it’s saying that *the way we use social media” is doing so. There’s a massive difference, so I’m afraid that your claim he’s creating a straw man is, well, a straw man.

I could go on, but I’ll leave it with this:

“Paul Carr’s main point appears to be that citizen journalists can’t get stuff right, so they should shut up, and those that record events instead of helping to save lives should be ripped a new one.”

I’m afraid that’s utterly, completely, misrepresenting Carr’s point. He sums it up nicely himself: “As I’ve already said – and I’m even starting to bore myself now – the answer isn’t censorship (which won’t work), but rather in our social evolution catching up with the state of technology.”

That’s the core of his argument, and it’s correct. With all technology, from cars to guns to computers, we learn to use them in a moral way as we go along. We make up what is “acceptable” on the hoof, and and only learn what is acceptable by people doing what *isn’t* acceptable – and everyone else going “no, that’s wrong”. Social media is no different.

You say “some of what gets done with social media is good and some is bad.” And that’s completely correct. But at the moment, as a society, we haven’t had opportunity to understand fully what “good” and “bad” look like when using social media. And we won’t, until the point where something someone does with it fills us with enough revulsion to say “that far and no more”.

Should she have waited until a media person, a professional, was there to synthesize her opinion for us? Why? What purpose would this serve?

Would most reading tweets about a disaster assume a certain level of inaccuracy. I would assume so. Would they expect more from a professional writer from a reputable source (not talking about TechCrunch)? I hope so.

And the moron who wrote something like “I’m already freaking out, this isn’t helping” is essentially saying more information isn’t helpful. Well freak out somewhere else, and let the rest of us get more information about what’s happening and why, from a variety of sources, including a soldier on the scene.

Thank goodness for Twitter.

I didn’t mean to imply that it was only large news events or tragedies that spur another chapter in this debate so let’s set that straw man aside for minute. It wasn’t the intention in my comment so poof it goes.

In terms of what role professional journalists play in this eco-system, I think there are people talking about this such as the folks at Publish2. However, this probably will spur me on to a post that I’ve been meaning to write for quite a while, the role of the social media journalist or social media in journalism.

In terms of teaching media literary, I’d agree that it’s important. I’d like journalists to talk more about our ethics and our process. Apart from that, what role do you see journalists playing in this process? (I’m genuinely asking, not just challenging you, just in case that is lost in the medium.)

Howard, I think it would be great if more journalists acted ethically but sadly there are lots of tabloid hacks that just don’t. Until we have a more ethical media, it will be quite hard for journalists to begin to talk ethics to the public with any credibility. Journalists talk about the pinnacle of their practice – investigations, the Fourth Estate, accountability journalism – without acknowledging ‘down market’ journalism, much less how popular that ‘down market’ fare is. Moreover, the ethics of elite journalism are often seen by others as political bias, not professional standards to aspire to.

I also don’t believe that it’s journalists’ job to either guide citizen journalists (note: I don’t really like the phrase ‘citizen journalism’, and I certainly don’t think that it describes what Tearah Moore was doing) or to educate the public. I’d rather see educators doing that, preferably as part of a wider effort to teach critical thinking. Finally, the idea that anyone thinks social media is an unalloyed good is really a straw man – I don’t know anyone working in this area who doesn’t recognise the problems that we are coming up against.

Jillian, there is a lot to be said about the problems with armchair activism, I quite agree. But Carr did little more than skirt around the main issues there. We do need to think very hard about the impact of our actions on people in places where simply by communicating with the wider world they may put themselves in harms way. I do appreciate that most Iranians are very aware of what’s going on, although I do think that the media has a fiduciary duty not to expose anyone using social media in places like Ira to additional risk, but that’s another discussion.

Eric, yes, there are networks of networks, but when you look at how many people are on Twitter, the potential reach those particular lists, and MissTearah’s own network of networks, was relatively small. It’s very hard to say exactly how much reach she had, but I can’t see a compelling argument to say that it was notably large, or even moderately large, to be honest.

Norbert, it’s not about whether social tools are “smart of helpful” – generally speaking, they are neither. Specifically, what links do you think are missing? I will try to provide them if I can (although I am on holiday at the moment and trying not to be online too much!). The intention of this post was not to provide “substantive solutions”, because the actual problems that Carr skirts around are very complex, have no simple solutions, and have been under discussion for the best part of the last decade with no solid conclusions yet reached. My intention was to show that Carr’s arguments were flawed and that they should not be taken at face value, not to go over the history of the past discussion.

Matt, ah, that’s an error. I am not sure where the “alone” came from (now deleted for future readers), but it wasn’t supposed to be there! I wanted to give context to say that I’m not a normal TechCrunch reader abut that I had read this piece because so many people said good things about it. For the record I also ignore Vallywag, Slashdot, and a whole bunch of other tech industry sources that tend towards rumour.

Terry, I think everyone has the opportunity to create a media company, but it’s a bit of a stretch to say that everyone is one! There are still a lot of people with no reach and no influence on the web. However, we really should start teaching (or teach more) basic journalism, ethics and critical thinking in our schools.

This is, yes, Kevin, a debate that isn’t new, in some respects, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth renewing. Further, my point is I don’t see many people talking about a _constructive_ role for journalists in this ecosystem. I see a lot tut-tutting on both sides, but not a lot of positive suggestions about accepting reality and saying, “now what do we (or I) do about it.”

To suggest that education can only come at the point of a tragic event such as Ft. Hood is it’s own straw man.

And an other logical fallacy — a false choice — is to suggest that it is the responsibility of the education system rather than journalists. I’d say, it’s both.

Somebody has to start the process of raising awareness and constantly talking about. And besides, what to about the people who have already passed through the education system?