Blogs, the scope of offensiveness, and the democratic process.
To legislate against 'offensiveness without intent', whilst at the same time failing to specify the legally admissable scope of offensiveness, would itself be dangerous. There are many countries where this happens. The uncertainty acts to discourage people from speaking publicly, from taking any risks at all.
One solution would be to try to comprehensively define the scope of offensivness. That can of course only go so far, and may only be based on a concensus.
We should step back from this debate and consider what has gone wrong with society to lead to it. To begin with we do want people to be uncertain about the scope of offensiveness, we do want them to be self-critical. But we also want people, especially university students, to be adept at testing out the boundaries and feeling there way through the moral issues in a safe and controlled environment. Indeed we want them to learn how to set up and maintain such environments.
Traditionally, one would have friends with which one would talk, testing ideas (sounds rather Ancient Greek!). Of course that group of friends should not be entirely like-minded people. Friends with whom one can experiment, offend, be corrected, and be forgiven.
And then there must be extensions out from these groups of friends, networks into which ideas and opinions can be tested in a wider and less unpredictable environment.
And finally, once one is certain of one's ground, it is safe to go public.
I had thought that was what universities are about.
The blog system that we have designed aims to work in this way. Blog collections based on existing academic groupings already exist. We will, very soon, have the ability to create our own collections of arbitrary blogs and publish them. This will encourage the operation of the process described above. Temporarily, as a means to publicise the system, we have an entirely open blogs homepage onto which anyone may get their ideas published to the public without developing that safety. This is in some instances has a detrimental effect, but as the system gets more sophisticated in how it encourages groups of friends, this effect will subside.
Personally I see blogs, when properly implemented (and we are near to that point), as a powerful means for developing democratic society.
Robert O'Toole
08 Nov 2004 09:12
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[Skip to the latest comment]Chris May
I don't think you can ever "comprehensively define the scope of offensivness"; moreover because of the problems of context I don't think you could define an appropriate group to seek consensus from.
I think it might be more useful to think about two kinds of offensive posting; firstly the kind where the post deliberately sets out to offend, and the second where it is accidental. In the first instance I personally think that censorship is the right approach – in the same way that we don't allow people to walk around campus shouting obscenities, we shouldn't allow it on blogs.
In the second case I think the first step should probably be (possibly mediated) dialogue between the offender and offended, with the aim of either explaining to the offender why their comments were offensive, and how they could be modified to be less so, or possibly explaining to the offended that the comments ought not to be regarded as offensive. I'm less sold on the second option because it sounds a little like telling someone what to think.
If a resolution isn't reached in reasonably quick time in the second case, then I think that censorship is the right approach. I believe that in the case of WarwickBlogs the good of the community outweighs the benefits of free speech (not something I believe for the internet at large, but then WB isn't the internet at large), and I believe that the good of the community is best served by creating an environment where no-one is made to feel a victim.
08 Nov 2004, 09:29
I agree with you – as far as you go. But it is not to the lawabiding that criminal law is applied, and it is not for the fundamentally non-problematical blogger that rule enforcement would be necessary. There is inherent to this a quasi-democratic idea of what represents a "cyber-crime" and who has the duty and/or responsibility to identify and take action on it. For all of these reasons, I think that procedures and processes, rather than content-based guides, are ther key to progress. However one approaches it (and there are privacy, anonymity, workplace, surveillance, copyright, piracy, fraud, identity theft and many other issues involved) I think we need to build on the extensive work carried out in the US at institutes like the Berkman Center or the Stanford Internet Center
Of course, I couldn't agree more than I do with your conclusion and the expressions in your final paragraph.
08 Nov 2004, 09:36
Robert O'Toole
No, i'm not really talking about the legal issues. They ony arise once the operation of democratic society has gone wrong. I'm talking about ethics, as positive practices and values. One of the problems that we have is that people see legal enforcement as the way in which ethics are best encouraged. This is just not the case. Our social and technological organisation, built into systems like blogs, form an ethics. We should not be detracted from the importance of that by the need to legislate. Not that legislation isn't important, just that it is not how ethics are formed.
08 Nov 2004, 09:44
The problems with Chris May's comments (which are inherently very reasonable) are
1. the assumption that the meaning and understanding of expressions are self-evident and uncontested;
2. that it is completely uninformed by any theory of rights, in particular rights to freedom of speech, self-expression and association;
3. that cyberformums can be unproblematically analysed by analogy to real ones (like the University Campus);
4. it does not take account of degrees of privacy, and of access at one's own risk;
5. it assumes there should be, and that it would be unproblematical to constitute, a censor, who could act with authority to determine first and second order disputed uses, and act legally and legitimately in doing so, before any of the substantive problematics are even identified – suggesting a proprietorial coneptualisation of this area of cyberspace.
08 Nov 2004, 09:45
I guess I am responding to the practical problems and the perception that these need to be grounded in ethics. But the ethical issues have to reach to control, direction, dispute, and governance, and hence immediately raise those practical issues anyway. (Can you delete that accidential comment of mine btw?)
08 Nov 2004, 09:49
Chris May
1. With you there, which is why I stressed the needs for dialogue. You coud argue that there should be dialogue in my 'first case' too I suppose
2. As far as I can see, there's no right to free speech etc when using WB . Use of WB is a priviledge granted by the university, with T&Cs attached. We aren't in any way obliged to provide blogs – if you find the T&C's to restrictive, you can always use LiveJournal
3. Is interesting. In what ways is the analogy to Campus I made not appropriate to WarwickBlogs? How do you think conduct on campus (as far as causing offence to others in concerned) should differ from conduct on WB? I think the crux of this point is whether you consider WB to be like a little chunk of the intenet at large, or whether you think it has 'special' status because of the close physical connections of it's users. (Obviously, I think the latter).
4. I was being somewhat simplistic and assuming everything was public; clearly if you write an entry which is visible only to a small group of people you need only be concerned with not offending that group. I don't think that a concept of 'access at own risk' is appropriate in WB; if your entry is public then you should aim not to offend anyone who might find it.
5. There already is a censor. Blogs Admin has banned users and deleted entries which were deemed offensive in the past, and will doubtless continue. It's not unproblematical, but it's certainly feasible.
08 Nov 2004, 10:02
Chris May
My response to point (3) might be somewhat clarified if you change
to
or something like that.
08 Nov 2004, 11:20
Robert O'Toole
The relationship between the physical location (community, physical groups) and the online location is key. Obviously there will be differences, and blogs can extend the physical space, and even feedback to it with improvements.
Traditional blog systems go as far as they can in divorcing the two, and hence create the grounds for extremism. Our system sets out to reverse this.
08 Nov 2004, 11:55
(Somehow I made a post like this and it "disappeared" so if you see it somewhere else, can you let me know!?)
Re: Chris's comments (with which I am 80%+ in full agreement) – numbering as above. I woul add a rider that I do not think commenting in comments boxes is the same as blogging, and different considerations apply.
1. Yes, I think so.
2. (a) I think that certain rights do emerge as soon as you provide a universal system, if you are going to treat some people differently to others on the basis of what they write. If you simply reiterate provider control, then you immediately create the "chill" on expression that was the first thing Robert mentioned in his original post. The presumed right to say what you wish, with certain general constraints the operation of which is guaranteed by procedural rights, is the only way to proide a method to proceed against specific uses without defining every single one of them first, or chilling everything.
(b) There is complication in that within blogging there exists some need to presume that you can read whatever people want to write – not a chilled or censored version of it; and that without this, thought itselft is distorted.
Relevant to both of these are all those publicity posters etc. that draw the most fundamental connection between (free) thought and blogging. Not much point in claiming "I think therefore I blog" or proclaiming "Do It. Think It. Blog It" if you intend to intervene in those processes (or be thought to do so).
3. (and Robert's last comment before this). I guess I am sceptical of any claims that cyberspace is analagously or physically integrated with real space. Certain behaviours on campus are regulated, but not with respect to their speech or image content per se. Shouting obscenities would be a bahaviour, that would be treated as a nuisance, or cause for concern about an individual's wellbeing. Formal speeches to a (putative) audience are another matter all together. Writing (even to be read) is not the same as speaking, and certainly nothing like shouting.
There is no regulation of what we are free to read or write while on the campus, and control of dissemination of written material largely depends on laws that regulate the whole of society. There are, in fact, almost no circumstances in which we disseminate written versions of personal views, except perhaps in work written in fulfilment of course requirements.
As far as separate physicial location, the Warwick bloggers are not an example of that. They can and do blog from anywhere in the world. It is an institutional community, and that is an abstract concept cloer to cyber concepts than real ones. It is the relationship between real and cyber-locations that is the problem, not in some sense the solution.
4. I think there is a lot of problem with the word "offend". The goal is not to "not offend" anyone. Their sensitivities are their own problems. The requirement is not to post material that is offensive by established definitions of what constitutes offensiveness (though not an exhaustive list of examples of such). I don't think it would be very big. Offensiveness would include use of abusive language in order to denigrate a specific person or group, but not use of expletives as an expressive device, or discussion of individuals or groups which is not abusive but which some or all of those so discussed do not like or agree with.
5. This is true now, and it is the heart of the problem. I think that it cannot go on like that indefinitely, without legitimation by more the physicial-historical primacy on which it currently, in effect, depends, without bogging down deep in the problems alluded to above.
08 Nov 2004, 12:45
Robert O'Toole
"There is no regulation of what we are free to read or write while on the campus, and control of dissemination of written material largely depends on laws that regulate the whole of society." – this seeks to still be missing the point of my original entry. I'm not talking about legislation or rights, that's a different issue. I'm talking about social and technical practices that form behaviour, that avoid confrontation and offensiveness, whilst still encouraging people to develop and try out ideas that may or may not be controversial. That's a different, much more subtle debate.
08 Nov 2004, 13:00
John Dale
This is a mildly interesting discussion, but I have to say I have absolutely no idea what is meant by this. I see no evidence for the claim that the current system of censorship for breach of T&Cs is not working, or is likely to stop working.
08 Nov 2004, 13:08
Robert – I couldn't agree more. But I'm not sure, apart from endorsing technical innovation, encouragement and participation, what there is to be said. What would you define as the central problematics of the ethical issues as you outlined them in your first posting? What are the choices?
08 Nov 2004, 13:12
Robert O'Toole
And it's not my discussion. I've been blogjacked!
08 Nov 2004, 13:13
Robert O'Toole
Why can't someone write something nice about my David Burrows review instead?
08 Nov 2004, 13:14
Robert O'Toole
The choice is this:
either blogs encourage discourse as situated in a disembodied and fragmented place beyond the communities that support moderation and reflection
or we use them to create and support communities that support intelligent discourse, which is a subtle and complex process.
08 Nov 2004, 13:21
Robert – sorry for taking things in a different direction to what you intended. It's one of the problems with comment boxes, which I have to say are far more extensively used here than in blogging at large. I've never been all that comfortable with long debates in the comments boxes with several participants – precisely because they lose the original theme (sometimes immediately and by a very long way!) I have always favoured writing on your own blog about it. Before blogging here at Warwick I always confined myself to one (or at most) two comments as my response to a posting on someone's blog, not as a contribution to a discussion, and tried to restrain myself in replies to people who commented on my blog.
John – I am certainly not contending that there have been any problems with the Terms and Conditions as applied, or decisions confirmed by the University, and I don't predict that, as things stand, there will be or need be.
What I think is that there might be a contradiction between that, and some of the many, many goals that other individuals (but certainly not the University, or anyone speaking for the Univertsity) might feel they want Warwick blogging to achieve. That is what I think makes the whole thing worth discussion. Otherwise, it's not even mildly interesting!
08 Nov 2004, 13:49
Robert O'Toole
In my opinion blogjacking is the worst crime of all.
08 Nov 2004, 14:41
Robert O'Toole
And yes there is a contradiction between:
1) the commonly held belief that blogging are about publicly and anonynously spouting ill-founded opinions;
2) the sense of personal ownership and personal responsibility that we are trying to encourage;
08 Nov 2004, 14:43
The kinds of things I am talking about are discussed (very briefly) here
09 Nov 2004, 04:08
David Metcalfe
The very word ‘university’ derives from the Latin for ‘whole’, meaning everything. Everything, that is, and every point of view. In a democratic society, the role of the university is ideas. Students and academics should be intelligent enough to process any opinion conceived by the human mind and, where it is conceived in error, to correct it. Anyone to whom a simple idea can cause offence is either closed minded or deficient in that rarest of human qualities, empathy.
Racialists are offended by what they see as the colonisation of their country by foreigners. Liberals are offended by the racialist will to keep those same foreigners out. There are two sides to each story and someone will always be offended. Offence is simply the collision of a new and fresh viewpoint with the ingrained prejudices of the person taking offence. Anything which challenges prejudice should be welcome, especially on a university campus!
The only way to measure offence is with the ruler of established and accepted ‘facts’. If we uncritically accept what we already know to be true then we betray both our own intellects and the concept of academia. When we only know our side of the argument, we barely understand that. It becomes, as J. S. Mill wrote, “stale, soon learned by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth”.
We are not children and do not need protecting from ‘offensive’ posts. If a blogwriter is wrong, real scholars will not take offence. We will instead accept the remedy of Mr Justice Brandeis and prescribe “more speech, not enforced silence”.
10 Nov 2004, 11:39
Robert O'Toole
I think the problem is that we people, even in Universities, just don't have forums, or discursive techniques that test out ideas in a rational way. Do I see people writing things that begin with:
"Here is a proposition, 'homosexuality is evil', what are the assumptions that are made in asserting that proposition? If I were to assert this as true, what else would follow?"
I am instead reading:
"I believe that homosexuality is evil. It says so in the bible. It is a filthy practice….blah, blah, blah".
Lets be (Classical) Greek about this. What does it mean to speak freely (parhaesia)? Does it mean to speak without consideration, without self-criticality, without testing and challenging one's words before and during the act of speaking, merely repeating opinions? Would that be to simply surrender to the tyranny of the past, to the dogma of others? The second of these utterances has no freedom in this sense. Whereas the first, the discursive consideration, the philosophical attitude which is always open to new concepts and new ways of thinking about the world, is free.
Do I sound like Plato? Yikes!
10 Nov 2004, 17:33
Robert O'Toole
For more on parhaesia, fearless and free speach, read this book by Foucault.
10 Nov 2004, 19:06
In comparisons of censorship of web pages controlled by the university with the campus environment controlled by the University it's worth noting that the University has a legal obligation to allow freedom of speach where reasonable. There are exceptions to this obligation the notable ones being activities deemed intended to cause offence and activities involving non-members of the University. If this were carried over to online systems this would allow the vast majority of comments to be published – so long as viewing was restricted to University members.
10 Nov 2004, 20:59
Robert O'Toole
It would be interesting to know more about that legal obligation, and how that relates to IT provisions. Is it Birmingham that has recently banned all private web pages?
But that's not the point! This entry is definitely not about the legal rights and wrongs, it is about the ethics of blogging, how that relates to discourse in a democratic process, and relating that to a more sophisticated notion of free speech. At a deeper level it is a critique of the legalistic mind set that seems to drive reactions to all new technologies. The message is this. When introducing a technology that has a transformative effect on social and ethical practices (and this may well be a disruptive technology as the economists say), one must consider first the new ethical questions and processes that it creates, and only once that is settled and we can see the imperfections of that should we respond with legalistic solutions, which are only ever reactive and heavy-handed. Think ethics first, then law.
11 Nov 2004, 08:29
Robert O'Toole
I must add that I probably have a different concept of ethics to most people, one that isn't primarily legalistic, universalising and transcendental (Kant) but rather is immanent to the technologies, habits, habitats and inhabitants of the present (Spinoza).
11 Nov 2004, 08:33
Yes, it was Birmingham – Birmingham staff defend right to personal websites
See also – Guidelines for Personal Website Owners using the Corporate Web Service
Obviously blogging differs from personal web sites – but maybe we need to define how…
11 Nov 2004, 10:37
I think we do. It would help us to understand whether or not it differs in any way that actually permits us to "regulate" it differently from personal websites (or indeed, corporate ones). I don't think it does – many of our regulations are the results of external drivers, such as the JANET AUP, which are ignorant of the main differences I see – but I would be interested in watching the process of my being proved wrong.
11 Nov 2004, 22:08
Robert O'Toole
Blog-jacked again!
12 Nov 2004, 08:42
I wasn't aware that the philosophical origins lay in Spinoza, but I fully agree with the idea that new technologies and methods of creating and transferring information transform social consciousness and personal identity, and that this presents questions that we feel relate to right and wrong, good and bad, free and unfree. I think that is implicit in half the blog entries I ever read, and is perhaps most extrusive in the "how and why" questioning that peppers Warwick blogging. I would say that the issue that is most urgently posed is that of the nature of the self, or selves, and their relation to self in non-cyber time and space. I would rather examine these issues that worry about censorship.
But all of these ethical-psycho-social questions intersect significantly with issues of conflict, ownership, control, direction and constraint. While they are legal-political in the way we conceptualise them, they have a profound significance for the terms on which we are able to engage the other issues. If the outcome of the ethical exercise is to be open, then steps have to be taken to ensure that its terms and processes are self-governed, and that requires (intellectually, and for the most immediate practical reasons) addressing the forces that would otherwise compromise or close down transformative efforts.
(I think the last blog-jack comment urgently deserves addressing separately, because it is an example of how the transformative potential can be squashed completely – or stranged at birth.)
12 Nov 2004, 09:20
btw, I would say that the identity issues also lie well within the intellectual tradition stretching from Freud and Neitzsche; and the legal issues from libertarians and neo-conservatives who certainly reject Kantian, Hegelian, Marxist and neo-Marxist and socialist ideology.
12 Nov 2004, 09:23
In my comment above I wasn't entirely clear I only know that the University has freedom of speach obligations on it's campus and have no idea what applies to it's websites. The reason I thought this was interesting was that one of the few areas where a government (even the Thatcher government) has legeslated to ensure freedom of speech was on University campuses. This is presumably (although I could easily be wrong) because freedom of speech is vital for true accademic debate and was held to be more important than whereabouts the consensus on any given issue was.
12 Nov 2004, 18:59
John Dale
I imagine that you're referring to Section 43 of the Education (No 2) Act 1986. Under this section, the University is required to take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for staff and students of the University and visiting speakers. This requirement includes the duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the use of University premises, (including those controlled by the SU, interestingly), is not denied to any individual or organisation on any ground connected with the beliefs or views of individuals or the policy or objectives of that organisation.
As far as I know, the Act applies only to physical access to premises and rooms.
14 Nov 2004, 14:34
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