Social media killing off quiet reflection?

It's possible that I'm about to disagree with Justin Welby -though mostly it's a disagreement with the Torygraph's headline (Social media killing off quiet reflection, says Justin Welby ) and soundbite reporting a recent speech of his.

 “Instant reaction has replaced reflective comment.

“That is a reality that you deal with in politics and it demands a new reality of ways in which we accept one another, love each other, pray for each other.

“The best answer to a complex issue … is not always given in 140 characters.



Basically, it looks to me like the Torygraph headline writer is seeking to build and feed something of a moral panic about twitter by co-opting 'the church' into a 'modern life /social media is rubbish (things were better in the old days)' trope.  The effect of that kind of contextualising is to psychologically elide Justin's caveat phrase 'not always given in ...'



My response to this kind of trope is to recall that we human beings have always (I suspect ever since we have been able to have conversations) struggled with immediate reactions, over-simplification on the one hand and on the other hand trying to encourage more considered and generous responses. From one point of view, Twitter is just a further medium for this age-old bifurcation of response. Now, admittedly, the brevity does make it easy to offend -but then in many an animated conversation we are reacting quickly and offense is easily given and taken (and sometimes apologies and explanations are given -which can happen in tweeted exchanges too). Nor are printed media proof against cavalier dismissals and gross oversimplifications. What Twitter can do positively is to give the possibility of an extended dialogue of short interventions in which people could, over time, explore more thoroughly some issue. I've been part of many a conversation verbally and even on newsgroups (remember them?) where instant brief reactions have given way to longer discussions -sometimes thoughtful and sometimes intemperate: both of which can happen on Twitter.



it is true that 140 characters make nuance difficult (in one tweet at least), but we should observe what actually happens when twitter is used for discussions or arguments involving more depth and breadth of topic: people give hyperlinks to blog posts, articles etc and briefly state why they think it is important/helpful etc. Tweets then come to act as a kind of newspaper headline drawing attention to the content they head up.



So we should be wary of essentialising Twitter as if it is only 140 characters and that we have only come up with one usage for it. It is, in fact, part of an evolving media ecology. Part of the evolution is in the way it references, contains and is contained by other media. Another part of the ongoing development is of the social dance of developing mores and conventions: what counts as polite and rude and so forth.



At base we have human beings trying to communicate for a variety of reasons with a range of imagined and actual audiences. Human beings who are very adept in the aggregate at making communication work well enough within the constraints of bandwidth, signal noise and contextual meanings. One tweet does not a conversation end; we should not judge the medium by static standards but rather take it in as a dynamic of human communication and observe how people actually overcome the constraints -such as the brevity of 140 characters in the face of the desire to communicate a whole lot more.



in fact, what I think is most important about that bit of +Justin's speech is the call for generosity -charity- of interpretation given that widespread messaging is possible. In effect, is this not a call for us to see past the possible elisions and misunderstandings of short messages and to engage with open-heartedness with the possibility that there is a whole hinterland of understanding and perspective by human beings who are, in many ways, very like ourselves. Can we not exercise generosity by asking for further information and seeing through the exchange to an end in greater mutual understanding? That too is possible via Twitter.



Is this not the age-old challenge of communication?