Web 2.0, Alive and Kicking

Bian´s Experiment

A Chinese blogger

Bian is a Chinese blogger with a mission. In his own words:
"I first embarked on the journey with foreigner bloggers in China out of raging emotional reactions to the bad press directed to China in August, first over the one-year-to-go party for the Olympics, then over the product recalls. At that time, I did not anticipate the amount of emotional turmoil this journey would provoke. Nor was I able to predict the amount of insight I have gained into myself, my individual and group identity, and their cognitive and emotional impact. I also failed to anticipate the fortitude and courage it would take to face up to these insights, instead of glossing over or running away from them. The journey takes courage because it invokes fear. What kind of bad stuff would the confrontational engagements bring out of me? The most frightening things are those of the unknown. The scariest unknowns are those inside yourself, in your personality, maybe even your genes. The specific contents of these identity fears only crystallized and became encoded in my conscious awareness as I went from battle to battle."

In foreigners´ blogs about China there is often little room for subtleties. Some may hug pandas, and others may bash China, or the Chinese Communist Party, or the system. But in any case, one may think that foreigners write about China because the country fascinates them.

Western bloggers

Bian again is apparently fascinated with foreigners´ China fascination, especially with the darker side of it, which may involve disgust or fear. And on December 16, about a month ago, he joined a discussion thread on the Peking Duck blog about a China Daily report on a criminal case in New Zealand, where three Chinese students had kidnapped a fourth Chinese student to demand a ransom from his parents first, and to kill their victim almost instantly after having phoned his parents. The Beijing Newspeak blog took issue with China Daily´s approach. One point of criticism seems to be that China Daily did not address the kidnappers´ and murderers´ set of motivation as found by the New Zealand judge (which naturally was not flattering to the criminals), and that it didn´t address possible home-made (i.e. China-made) personal deficits of them. Another seems to be that the China Daily article could leave the impresson that its author would rather blame the foreign environment of the convicted students, than the convicts themselves.

To illustrate what kind of reporting he would have expected from China Daily instead, Beijing Newspeak quotes from the New Zealand Herald on the same case: "´They want to drive cars and be free and are not prepared adequately for the different lifestyle here and the culture shock,´ Waikato University researcher Elsie Ho said today. ´Together with freedom comes responsibility and they are unable to handle that.´"

Beijing Newspeak wound his post up by stating that "things would have been a lot different if Wan Biao´s murderers had not been Chinese."

Richard, the Peking Duck blogger, wrote a post on his own blog, praising the Beijing Newspeak post:
"Quite simply one of the best and most devastating posts I´ve ever read. I always knew China Daily totally sucked, but this goes beyond mere sucking. This is ´journalism´ at its most bizarre. You can´t miss it. Just go there now, and read to the last sentence (which really says it all).
China´s propaganda department is still one sick and twisted puppy. I want to say they are self-parodying, but there is nothing funny about this story. Nothing at all. Scary, creepy, deranged, but not funny."

Bian joins the discussion on Peking duck thread as another commenter

The discussion thread that follows Richard´s post got started with an entry by "AC", a reader or guest who didn´t see much of a problem with China Daily´s article. Richard, plus some others, came to AC´s help and told him what was wrong with it. AC then gave the discussion a turn into the direction of cultural difference, and then it all became a rather general debate – about the China Daily jounalistic qualities or fuck-ups, propaganda, hypocrisy, etc., and on December 16, Bian joined the thread and made his fateful first comment about the issue (again, amongst others, about cultural difference). That was at 1:31 PM, blog time.

After two other readers´ entries in between, here comes Richard, at 3:12 PM: "To our new commenter bianxiang above: I went looking through your site, and I think all readers should know your philosophy about foreigners in China..."
Whereupon he quotes Bian´s rather unfriendly assumptions (not from within this thread in question, but from elsewhere on the internet), about foreigners (being "losers" who had no choice but to stay in China, as they lacked opportunities at home). No bright stuff, true, but the world has seen a lot of such niceties, and not only from Chinese bloggers. As said before, there is often little room for subtleties. And it is hard to see why the quotation should speak against the points Bian made within this Duck thread about China Daily.
But Bian´s remote views about Laowais are even important enough for Richard to re-post them on December 17. Plus the remark that "a little further on down in his blog he [Bian] explains that he deleted a whole lot of his own posts because they were so hostile to foreigners in China. Always know with whom you´re dealing."
Alright, it may be disturbing that ppl delete some of their own stuff. But hey, Bian doesn´t deny that he deleted it, and he does not deny that the posts were hostile towards foreigners. Such qualms are actually quite refreshing – and possibly something to learn from. You don´t need to stand by every word you say. You can think again, and correct a mistake.

"You´re out"

To me as a reader, weeks later, the whole thread looks like interesting company. But as it is, SOME people can become TOO interesting. Bian is clearly with company where some people don´t like him, and when you are with company that doesn´t like you, you are bound to make "mistakes". Your fellows will define what a mistake is, and Richard finds one.
"I wonder where Mylaowai [also a blogger and commenter] is. He seems to be a real good subject for this experiment too," says Bian, on December 18, 2007, 9:19 PM.

Says Richard: "Bianxiang, maybe you know this, but I once had a troll commenter here named MAJ who also said he was ´experimenting´ with my commenters, trying to goad and needle them and see just how far he could push before they exploded. I am giving you a chance right now to say you are doing nothing like that. You will also need to explain exactly what you meant when you referred to your ´experiment.´" 9:43 PM.
And at 11:02 PM: "you´re out".

Explaining the experiment

According to Bian´s blog, he did give Richard an explanation, and as it wouldn´t appear on Peking Duck, he says, he posted his explanation on his own blog [update: but later deleted it again – bianxiangbianqiao.wordpress.com/2007/12/18/the-peking-duck-didnt-even-have-the-courage-to-let-my-last-comment-see-day-light/].

Peking Duck readers still added some more comments after Bian was out, and they also quoted more of his older comments posted on other blogs – some of it ugly stuff indeed.

I´m not trying to judge if Bian´s approach (his nasty stuff elsewhere aside) was indeed research. Personally, I´m wondering if web 2.0 isn´t too dynamic, anyway. If everyone would only publish on other peoples´ websites after prior permission of the owner, there would be no threads that anger the blogger, and no blogger would kick guests out by applying (that´s how it looks to me in this case) arbitrary standards after the process has started. By chance, a somewhat more static web would make interaction just nicer, and still no less "democratic", than Web 2.0.
That said, Web 2.0 can be an interesting field to see how communication works – and this thread is interesting. Bian´s approach seems to correspond quite well with the views of the "father of the web" himself, Tim Berners-Lee, as described in the Economist of March 8, 2007:

"[Berners-Lee] has always argued, with characteristic humility, that the web is as much a social creation as a technical one. In fact, social and technical aspects are intertwined, and understanding how the networks of people and computers that make up the web interact and reinforce each other has given rise to ´web science´, a nascent field that blends sociology with computer science."

Experiments included, I suppose.

2008-01-18

Source Links

Related topics (external)

Bookmark?