Two episodes this week make a handy comparison:
- Alan Rusbridger (@ARusbridger) of the Guardian answered useful questions for over an hour online, and only one question was deleted after failing to meet the community standards for the site.
- JP Morgan Chase cancelled a promised Q & A session with its vice chairman, Jimmy Lee, after huge numbers of people used the event's hashtag, #AskJPM, to register all manner of protest and satire: "Tomorrow's Q&A is cancelled. Bad Idea. Back to the drawing board."
Why the difference? Not so hard to explain. For one thing, the Guardian has spent several years building a relationship with a live audience, sharing opportunities for conversation and debate, establishing standards for writing on their site, and aiming as much as possible for transparency and partnership. In fact, Rusbridger's major public addresses over the last several years track the paper's efforts to understand how those values can work for a newspaper, to innovate accordingly, and to commit to them.
But the venting that JP Morgan Chase experienced was quite different. I thought when I first saw it that it was a reminder that corporate power on that level typically depends much more on the silence of the general public rather than engaging them in conversation. There is a sense of entitlement and a dose of oblivion there too, a taking for granted that corporate ways are seen the way the corporation wants them to be seen. And @squirrelinNH described it as "more an outpouring of rage in the one media channel not owned and operated by, and kowtowing to the banks." [Updated.]
So, two corporate leaders seeking to talk with a public audience on social media, with profoundly different results that give clues about the deep appeal of real democratic exchange, the privilege that some are accustomed to, and the media-supported silence that hides simmering issues. Not hinted at in these exchanges: how to strengthen those voices that came bursting out via the #AskJPM hashtag so that they come to matter in the country's decision-making. Draw out those voices, help them affiliate, find or make structures that amplify their speech...