Journalism and precision - again

Yesterday I was interviewed by DR ,Danmark Radio, about Bitterfissen Bethany, the blogger I wrote about yesterday. The article that showed up at DR's page was however not exactly what I thought I had responded in the interview. That teaches me to insist on seeing the material before it's published.

Anyway.

DR has picked only the things I said which fit with the journalist's opinions. According to him I consider her real identity to be a disappointment, while I really felt it would be a disappointment to some, to discover that they were being offended by your ordinary housewife. After all, not everybody are in a position to really offend, and an assistant in an office shouldn't really be in a position to take on well-known media personalities. Still, she did.

Further on, I apparently think it's a bad thing to write anonymously, until you're in danger of your life. That is something I distinctly remember to have modified, when the journalist tried that on, by saying that people criticising an otherwise open society may also need to be anonymised. Of course, modifications look less impressive, but keeping that is on your editing, dear journalist, not on me.

Also in the same interview, I pointed out that the main reason why this blogger got so much attention is because she attacked the media, and the media love to write about themselves. She used the media's self-absorption to hit them hard and play around with them, until she had written her book and could use them again, to get free PR for the publication. For some reason that, which I consider to be a vital part of this whole event, was not mentioned by the media. They only mention that through quoting her (in character and rather wicked) address to the media, where she jokes about how she has been playing them. The truth is: she has played the Danish media. By being focused on their own "front", the journalists chasing her have played into her game.

Yes, I think her not being somebody famous has disappointed a lot of people. It didn't disappoint me though. I am still giggling and saving links, for future study, while I take note that journalists still listen with their agendas more than their ears.

Bitterness and anonymity

Last year I started to get phone calls from journalists about Bitterfissen Bethany, "the bitter cunt Bethany", a blogger who spoke where others would call the doctor and ask if they had some help for Tourettes syndrome.

Bethany was suddenly in the media spotlight after she had attacked the established media blogger Anne Sophia Hermansen. And her attacks didn't hold anything back, the language was about as delicate as the Danish delight of hyperbole and direct attacks could make it, as she spewed (when she didn't piss or shit, according to herself) abuse over the targets that would get her attention. Since she was anonymous (surprisingly, there is no Bethany, the bitter cunt in the phone book,) speculations ran high about who she was. I did my best to help that along, by telling the journalists they couldn't know who she was, she might be a man, or a grandmother, or a journalist with a grudge - we had nothing but speculations and guesswork. There were rewards offered for the person who could find her name, and a few potential lawsuits waiting, for when she would come clean.

That happened today, in MetroExpressen. It was immediately picked up by the Danish media, here an example from Danish Radio. So who was she, what happened, and why did she do this?

Bitterfissen Bethany is in the flesh Jeanett Veronica Hindberg, a single mother from Farum. Farum is somewhere north of Copenhagen, and I really don't know enough about it to tell you if this has any kind of significance for Danes. She is an office assistant, 39 years old. She doesn't have four children nor a farm, and she doesn't drink constantly. She also doesn't repent her actions, and she didn't come forwards until she had written a book. Now that the book is ready and can be bought, here she is.

Clever, isn't she?

I have very few opinions about this, exept that touch of glee I feel when an amateur takes the professional journalists for a ride. I suspect a few things are important here though. First, she wasnt seen until she attacked a media personality. Then she discovered, or rather uncovered, how the media really works. The most interesting thing in the world for the media is the media. So do something that puts a journalist on the defensive, and suddenly you have the whole Danish media world snapping at your heels. Jeanett (Bethany) did exactly that, and she enjoyed the trip! She was safe behind her pseudonym, while she also was (in)famous. It must have been a powerful feeling.

Now Jeanett has a shot at fame in her own name. I was never impressed by the blog, and I am not buying the book, but I suspect others will. I wish her all the best, although I suspect we're not looking at the new A. K. Rawlins here, single mother or not. Ironically, most of that fame probably comes from anonymity. As long as she was a mystery, there was a certain sense of danger and exploration, literally anybody could be behind this blog. Now it's just Jeanett.

 And to Jeanett: get used to being talked about within a feminist agenda. You may think you don't belong there, but you have done a very 70ies thing, by taking control over your inner bad girl to let her out, demanding room in the media and online. Any moment now you'll find yourself with a mirror in hand, admiring your own pussy and considering why society could ever think that such a nice little (I am guessing) shaved fold of skin should determine your right to be harsh and aggressive.

Blaming gaming

This is the link to an interview, in Norwegian, where I say why we shouldn't blame games for what the wannabe did 22nd of July. The journalist understood what I as saying, and managed to communicate that well, all down to the fact that I consider speculation about whether or not games influenced the n00b to be - speculation.

For those of you who came here in order to find proof that my mind has been numbed by too much gaming, if you read Norwegian, why don't you go have a look at this very good description of how a skilled computer gamer thinks. As you will see, "kill, kill" is not on the gamer's mind. It's more along the lines of "optimise routine, check numbers, remember cooldowns, check threatmeter, move with the team, maintain healer safety, balance the output."

At the same time, I don't manage to care that much. In a way, if it makes people feel good, they can blame games all they like for me. They can blame the weather, the radioactive rain after the accident in Tjernobyl, a really bad streak of losses for his local football team, Fox news brainwashing (that's my favourite theory) or the colour pink. Perhaps he was poisoned by his own make-up. It doesn't change what happened. Also, it won't help us avoid these things happening again. It is an anomaly, something totally unexpected and unpredicted, something so far from the minds of regular people that we can't explain it or avoid it.

The only thing we can do, is not to act the way he wants us to. He added those computer game links to his new facebook profile for a reason, just like the deleted the old profile in order to hide what he claims to have been 7000 facebook friends. He wants us to chase down all kinds of paths, causing fear, anger and confusion looking for a reason. The cause is simple: He had a political agenda, and was sufficiently single-minded and ego-centric to go through with it, in an absolutely ruthless fashion. What made him into this monster? We will probably never know. Genetics, upbringing, socialisation - a bit of all, is my uneducated guess.

However, if you feel comforted by keeping your children away from computer games, please, do so. Personally, I take greater comfort in having kept my children away from handguns, single-minded political rhetoric and religious fanatics of any colour, while brainwashing them with analytical thought until they question everything and look for the peaceful middle way in conflicts.

Don't diagnose when you don't know!

While we game researchers are frustrated with how games are used to explain everything, psychologists have to face "experts" telling the media this and that about the wannabe, diagnosing him wildly. The Norwegian psychologist Kristine Tofte is as sick of this as I am of the "too much gaming" angle, and writes an extremely good post about it.

Her post is in Norwegian, but as a super-quick resume, she asks colleagues to quit diagnosing him from what is written in the media, and to remember that so far as she knows, nobody have acted exactly like this, ever, in history. It is an anomaly, and we can't say it's typical for anybody (gamers, sociopaths or trained soldiers), because it is a unique event.

I find this extremely important. We do not know and can not yet start to understand the why of this event.

Thank you, Kristine Tofte.

Games and massacres - again

I thought I had dodged this, when nobody had called me all through Monday, after the massacre on Utøya. I did not want to stand there and sound like I defended a mass murderer, by claiming that no, computer games are perfectly innocent, particularly not after glancing through his manifest. Luckily I don't have to go through the manifest step by step with you myself, Nick Ross at ABC went through it for us all.

Oh, by the way, I am not linking to it. Find it yourself. I am not linking to anything any more, that's written by that wannabe. Actually, from now on I will refer to him as the wannabe or the n00b, because he is a wannabe that doesn't get what it means to be a hero, and a total n00b when it comes to stringent, rational, critical, political thought. I don't even want to hate him. He wants hate. The only thing I want to feel for him is contempt, and I want to drown him in ridicule. Like this.

Anyway, the wannabe was a gamer, and he did great in PvE. He writes about how he uses games to strengthen himself when he is in doubt. This has lead to the inevitable conclusion: Computer games made him a monster. Dagens Næringsliv, otherwise a pretty sober newspaper, neglects the caveat, but at least they are honest enough to tuck it in at the end:

Hun presiserer at dataspill ikke nødvendigvis skaper mordere, men legger til at mennesker med personlighetsforstyrrelser kan være svært mottagelige for slike inntrykk.

Their expert points out that games don't create murderers, but that people with personality defects can be vulnerable to that kind of impressions.

The world is full of impressions a man like the wannabe can be vulnerable to. He quotes them happily, and spends a lot of time for instance on religion. He thinks of himself as a Christian, and struggles with the sin it is to use prostitutes before he plans to go on a killing spree. He decides however that, like a holy crusader, he is about to do so much good that minor sins will be forgiven him. Now you'll claim there are crusaders in games, but there are crusaders in history, in poetry, in literature, as Knight Templars and Freemasons, and in a whole lot of graves all over Europe and the Middle East. If you want to be a crusader, you don't need to make the effort of leading a raid guild to get your ideas confirmed.

And then there are the political debates. Even now, after the shooting, people manage to write things like "we don't agree with how he did it, but he is right, the multiculturalists are dangerous and are ruining our culture, and should be stopped." Even as he was killing people in Oslo, the website "for promotion of Nordic culture" nordisk.nu (where the wannabe supposedly was a member, and where there are people he emailed his manifest to) had members claiming that somebody needed to clear out the multiculturalists once and for all. The n00b didn't need to play games to feel like his ideas were justified.

OK, back to games, violence and wannabes.

Yes, there is research which states that murderers like the wannabe play games, but also research that shows that there is no causal link. Let me link to an article I have linked to before, The School Shooting/Violent Video Game Link: Causal Relationship or Moral Panic?. Ferguson writes: "Although much speculation persists regarding the role of violent video games and school shootings, this speculation is seldom based on factual evidence." Ferguson goes on to cite and quote studies specifically of school shooters, where the scenes tend to look like first-person shooter games. I am attaching a long quote here, because I know many will not go on to read the article itself:

The FBI report (1999) had included ‘unusual fascination’ with violent media amongst its potential predictors. As most young males consume considerable amounts of violent media (e.g. Griffiths & Hunt, 1995; Olson et al., 2007), ‘unusual’ consumption necessitates reaching a very high bar. The report also suggests that incessantly reading/viewing a particular book or visual media with violent, or school violence content, may be a predictor. The FBI report appeared to focus on individuals who approved of hateful or destructive messages in the media, rather than merely enjoying the media for entertainment purposes. For instance, an individual who praised Mein Kampf and its message of racism and hatred would arguably be considered more ‘at risk’ than would someone who enjoyed playing the violent video game Medal of Honor because it was fun. Indeed, related to violent video games, the FBI report specifically stated, “The student spends inordinate amounts of time [although inordinate is never defined and is left subjective] playing video games with violent themes and seems more interested in the violent images than the game itself ” [italics added]. Thus, an overall interest in causing harm is potentially predictive of violence, not exposure to violent media in and of itself, a conclusion supported by the recent Savage, (2008) meta-analysis.

This is what the research shows. If you have learned that violence is the solution to problems, then you may show an interest in violence, including games.

Now who are these experts Dagens Næringsliv have contacted? Deborah Schurman-Kauflin is a profiler. Her list of publications is impressive, with a heavy bias on imported violence and female killers. The other expert is Pat Brown, who offers cost-effective profiling if you have a problem with serial killers.

Two American profilers who have not done research explicitly on games and gamers, where the one with the more impressive list of articles tries to point out that there isn't necessarily a causal relationship between games and mass murderers; and Dagens Næringsliv goes out and reduces the entire political agenda behind the wannabe's horrible act to something to do with games.

I didn't want to talk about this, because I felt it would be insulting and misleading to push the debate into yet another "dangerous media" discussion. This goes far beyond computer games.

The truth is that I have no idea what exactly set the wannabe off. Anything could have caused it. Perhaps he dated a girl who went to Utøya and fell in love with somebody else. Perhaps his teen-age friends who were muslims turned him off multiculturalism by being too conservative islamists and displaying the unlucky, but existing, opinion that white women are all asking for it if they get raped. Perhaps his father wasn't there in those formative years when he could have learned that real men protect others, rather than harm them. And so I was hoping not to have to stand there and say "No, games don't lead to violence."

But here it is. Political terrorism is committed in the name of ideas and conviction. Ideas are the most dangerous thing on this planet. Ideas created the wannabe, not games.

And a last, deeply felt statement: If I thought abolishing games would lead to world peace, I'd never play again. If I thought forbidding rock was the way to go, I'd never dance again. If I thought the reason why people hurt each other was because we have television, I'd break it, right now. But it isn't that simple. We had war, violence, crime and fanatic killers - some of them real crusaders - long before we had modern media.

Cory Doctorow on Ipads and shared content

Rupert Murdoch can rattle his saber all he likes about taking his content out of Google, but I say do it, Rupert.

Cory Doctorow points to the wonderful conenction between new technology and new content, in this careful explanation of why he doesn't want to buy an Ipad.

Brainwashed

There's a program on NRK these days called Hjernevask or "Brainwashing." It's creating quite a stir, as a Norwegian comedian is having it out with his old professors, particularly any who have been doing gender research and claimed that gender is cultural, not natural.

The program has caused a lot of good and interesting debate, and I don't really feel the need to expand on it here. But for those who have been following the debate, here's Evolutionary Psychology Bingo:


By way of TL - thanks!

Invisible

My colleague Svein Brurås wrote about an extremely good piece of journalism in a Norwegian newspaper, and I just want to join him in pointing towards it. Good journalism is worth celebrating and sharing.

What it's about? Nothing really. Just a lonely man nobody noticed, who died from a stroke while he was out on his bike. The story the journalist uncovers through very careful and through investigation is nothing special either, it's just heartbreaking, and very, very good. It's in Norwegian, sorry, other-language-readers. Google Translate may help a little, but it won't give you the tone in which the story has been told.

Dear Expert

I suspect Ian Bogost has met the same journalists as I do, although I am baffled that they managed to track down Ian, seeing as they can't use google and he isn't in the Norwegian phone-book. From his post:

I wonder: instead of doing research myself on the story I am required to write, would you be willing to talk to me by phone for an hour about it? During this time, I would pose a series of basic questions that demonstrate how little thought and time I have given to the topic, not even enough to Google its key terms.

Skype television

There's a show on Norwegian state television (NRK 2) that I didn't know about, it's called Sveip, and runs in the afternoons. It covers net news, and uses the net to do interviews and reportage. My upcoming trip to The Gathering appears to be good news for them, so yesterday I was on the air, live from Volda. It's in Norwegian, but for non Norwegian speakers, I can tell you that we were talking about this research project.

I am fascinated by the ease as well as the quality of the transfer. There was a problem with the light, I drew all the curtains but the sunlight still made me look quite washed out. I don't mind though - not all the details about me look good on television.

Dead blogs

There are a lot of dead blogs out there, and some of them are in otherwise live newspapers. The norwegian paper Dagens Næringsliv - a wannabe Financial Times, right down to the pink paper - has an impressive list of bloggers. Sadly, the last blogpost was written in 2007.

This makes me wonder, again, about the weblog and its function in the public debate. In this case the high-profile, eminently competent people who were asked to blog obviously did not find it worth while to follow up the task. This, while others are still blogging in many a little corner of the universe, calmly talking from much lower soap-boxes in more remote corners of the online public sphere. Is the weblog the commoners' medium? Is the prestige gone out of blogging with the hype, now that the big agencies are all thinking about how to twist the power of facebook to their service?

Hmmm.

13th Norwegian Media Research Conference

This year's media research conference organised the "Norsk Medierforskerlag" is on Lillehammer, and the main topic is television practice and television ethics. Four keynote speakers have been invited, and I am luxuriating in having time to just sit at the back of the room and listen.

So far it's really interesting, and I am remembering why I started studying media at all. Brian Winston replaced Georgina Born, who is delayed, moving his talk on the ethics of 'reality' shows from tomorrow up till today. His well considered and very interesting talk systematically adressed concerns about the 'realness' of documentary and the ethics of reality television that I recognized in that way that you feel when somebody make sense, the feeling of both having things fall into place and being enlightened at the same time.

The second keynote speaker of the day is Robin Nelson, who talks about TV fictions. He is the author of "State of Play," a title that woke me up for a moment. (Well, I was awake already, because he was using examples from Carnivale, one of my favourite dramas.) But no, it was not about gaming or playing, it was about television as in plays, or drama, not as in playing.

Returning to a home

Sometimes, going away can feel like going home. For years, I have been going to international conferences, and have found some in which I feel like home. The Digital Arts and Culture conferences, the Internet Research Conferences, the different game research conferences such as State of Play and DiGRA, these are places where I can expect to meet the people who understand what I talk about, what I think of, and the choices which have led me to where I am as a scholar and also a person.

But sometimes it’s possible to get much more home than that. Today I am in the 13th Norwegian Media research Union’s conference in Lillehammer. It’s a biannual conference, so this has been running for 26 years, so if my maths is right the first one should be in 1982. I started in media studies in 1984. Over the 24 years since that I have studied with, worked with, argued with and laughed with a very large portion of those present here. We have aged and grown and developed in different directions, and more have come to. But that is some of what coming home is like: To return to the familiar place, that which we expect to be unchanged, and find that it both is and is not the same.

Battlefields

There has been another school killing in Finland, a horrible tragedy that turns out to have been the result of a long-standing plan. A young man has entered a school and killed students, teachers, a health professional and himself. He killed 10 people.

In the shock of this people look for something to blame. And look, he played Battlefield II just before he committed his acts.

Battlefield II is a multi-user game from the producers of Battlefield 1942. It's a game where they put a lot of emphasis on details and correctness both in images and in the function of the weapons and strategies. A lot of people who are interested in strategy, tactics, weapons, uniforms, history, current politics and a long list of other issues that connect into the playing of a complex game, like Battlefield II.

The two school-shooters in Finland in (2008) and (2007), knew each other, according to witnesses. One of the things they did together was to play Battlefield II.

It's very easy to assume that the game caused the killings, when you look at it like this. But the truth is, it's harder to find a person their age who has NOT played a computer/video game, than one who has. And if your main interest in life is weapons, violence and death, you won't be playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour.

The second killer probably did a lot of very common things the last hours before his act. He got dressed. He probably ate or drank something. He was studying to become a cook, and went to his school. He had a cat. He played a computer game.

These are not the things that turn a person into a killer. A person who wants to kill others may choose to surround himself with things that will make his decision and his task easier and more acceptable to himself. If you believe the only solution to a problem is violence, then you surround yourself with proof of this. There's enough proof. Look at Iraq. Israel. Afghanistan. Or closer: the entire south/east of Europe. People who believe that a problem can be solved by violence are not hard to find. Did the second killer watch the news? Did he listen to the radio? Did he read a newspaper? Did he hear George Bush speak about warfare, and a firm line?

Faltin Karlsen is interviewed in Dagbladet.no, where they discuss games and violence, and the fact that the second killer played before he died. Faltin's research is on games and violence, and his response is as sane as it can be. To plan for six years to kill others is not something you do impulsively after playing a computer game. It's absurd to say there's no connection, as it's probably not a coincidence that a man with his interests preferred Battlefield II. But it's equally absurd to claim there is a direct causal connection from gaming to killing. It's more likely that his gaming is a result of what ever made the second killer kill. He wanted to shoot. The game let him pretend to shoot. So he played the game. Gaming should be viewed as an effect, not a cause.

Karlsen suggests another angle at the end of the article. He points out that the media give killers a huge amount of attention. If you want to be famous, murdering your schoolmates means instant fame. Like terrorists, they use terror to become visible.

A way to dampen this trend might be to stop fetishising the killers. Don't show their pictures, don't mention their names. They are not heroes, they deserve no fame. Give their victims a face, show the lives they disrupt and ruin, show the devastation left in their path, and grieve the deaths they cause. But don't make them famous.

Gamers and researchers

For those of you who read Norwegian, forskning.no had an interview with a bunch of game researchers in relation to the book we all wrote in, recently published from MIT Press.

Be nice - it's good for you

From the journal Human Communication Research, vol 33, number2, April 2007, "Affectionate Writing Reduces Total Cholesterol: Two Randomized Controlled Trials" by Kory Floyd, Alan C. Mikkelson, Colin Hesse and Perry M. Pauley.

In two 5-week trials, healthy college students were randomly assigned either to experimental or control groups. Participants in the experimental groups wrote about their affection for significant friends, relatives, and/or romantic partners for 20 minutes on three separate occasions; on the same schedule, those in the control groups wrote about innocuous topics. Total cholesterol was assessed via capillary blood at the beginning of the trials and again at the end. Participants in the experimental groups experienced statistically significant reductions in total cholesterol. Control participants in the first study experienced a significant increase during the same period, whereas those in the second study did not. Cholesterol changes were largely unmoderated by linguistic features of the writing produced in the intervention. Potential therapeutic implications are discussed.

Imagine the implications. In the risk group for high cholesterol? Sit down and write about somebody you love and care for. Consider the good things in human relationships. Look for the things that, literally, heals your heart. It also gives a new meaning to the idea that a broken relationship can mean a broken heart. It can, really.

Now excuse me, I am off to spend 20 minutes writing about my favourite people, and why they are so special.

Abuse, media and fame

A controversial issue was raised by the Norwegian artist Marianne Aulie, when she, on the air, named two well known Norwegian males who attempted to drug and rape her 14 years ago.

The men in question can not be charged with anything today, it's too long ago. Marianne Aulie still felt she needed to name them in public. This has met some very aggressive reactions, but the men in question do not wish to press charges.

One of the interesting side issues of this was how the newspapers made a big deal out of the fact that some feminists do not choose to support Aulie's claim that she as a feminist needed to come forwards with her experience. What does that have to do with it? Is being a feminist being part of a club where I have accepted that some people have the right to speak for me? And I mean both sides of the issue in this case: I want to speak for myself, both when it's about sexual abuse, and when it's about what other people should say about sexual abuse. Neither Aulie or "certain feminist editors" have that right.

When that's said - this is a complicated issue. Should she speak or should she not? A Norwegian editor who initially supported Aulie's openness had her name blown up all over Norwegian media to the point that it became too problematic for her to maintain the support. Martine Aurdal had to publically recall her support of the act, and say she regretted saying it was "tøft" or "cool" to speak out.

Marianne Aulie is a hypersexualised artist. She knows her very good looks sells, so she uses it for all it's worth. More power to her. I am sure she can deal with her fan letters admirably, no matter what they contain. But we all have a limit, and too many have a story that was never told.

Aulie's story is about a party where she was too drunk or too drugged. Suddenly she was alone with two men. When she tried to leave by jumping from the fourth floor balcony, they stopped her and got a taxi. The taxi didn't take her home, but to the apartment of one of the men. When he left her alone there for a while, she managed to escape. She was just past 20 years old at the time.

Who wouldn't be troubled after an experience like that, no matter if she was drunk or drugged? Why shouldn't she talk about it now? OK, so she might have chosen the wrong moment, slander is illegal, but so was what she perceived had happened to her. And this kind of thing festers. It may appear to be unproblematic, but suddenly something happens, and everything you think you had supressed blow up in your face. It's a classic pattern.

Marianne Aulie might manipulate the media heavily with her good looks and her dramatic appearance. She might count on the shock value of revealing what happened to her, and she might expect the news to make her work sell better with the publicity. But I don't think these things make her stupid. I think she knew what she did when she named names, I think she knows what she experienced that night, and I don't think it's my (or anyone else's) job to take the decision of pointing fingers away from her.

Perhaps she'll get in worse trouble for it. Perhaps she'll find herself shut out of the artist communities and denied access to the media for having used her fame and access in order to spread slander. Perhaps she'll find that she is now old enough and strong enough to tell, and live with the consequences of what she has experienced and what she has done. I think Marianne Aulie may not be a brilliant tactician, but she has the right to commit her own errors. She is a grown woman, and has the right of her voice.