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Sunday, September 23, 2007

Football Sociology

It is a great pleasure to sit in the Emirates and watch Arsene Wenger's Red Army play Total Voetbal. But for the sociologist the culture around the beautiful game can also be a goldmine of sociological insight and investigation.

For example, the unexpected and rapid departure of Jose Mourinho as manager from Chelsea to be replaced by relative novice Avram Grant. It was fascinating to see the initial press reaction and comment mania in the blogosphere. One particular exchange of particular interest to media ethics and sociology featured the Times Chief Football Correspondent Martin Samuel, the Times editorial staff and their online newspaper readers.

Let me explain. On 19 September, 2007 Chelsea held a series of talks that resulted in the replacement of Mourinho with Grant. On 20 September Samuel wrote a column for the Times that appeared in the daily edition and online. This moment was a massive one for football writers across the country and few are as influential as Samuel. Wenger famously said that Mourinho needed to do more entertaining on the pitch and less in the press room. An icon of the game was leaving and Samuel chose this moment to expound on a particular theory.

"There is no doubt that these ties are strong and, with Abramovich as owner, Grant as manager and Zahavi a trusted confidant of the pair, Chelsea are not so much Russian these days as kosher." (Samuel, Avram Grant appointment makes Chelsea no more than rich man’s plaything, Times).

On the evening of the 19th it was also very interesting to see how few online publications responded within half an hour to the news that Mourinho was on the way out. TV and radio were all over the story but the sleeping administrators of vaunted 24-7-365 online sites remained largely out of view. When Samuel's story went live on the Times site an initial well articulated reader comment was published by "David Silver" along the lines of "... in speaking with others and reading this story on the train we find it the most anti-semitic piece of writing in a major UK newspaper in recent memory".

To understand how this comment got there it is important to note that the Times' online editors review each potential comment posted to the site for approval. So this comment had passed the editorial gatekeeper for the online version of the newspaper. It was shortly followed by a response post by Koldo, Galway, Ireland: "... can in europe, in 2007, a newspaper have an opinion and a comment on israel and its citizen that it is not consider (sic) antisemitic". In typical dualistic fashion for online comments the debate raged on in the form of those claiming anti-semitism and those denying the charge. Yes it is, No it's not ... Yes it is, No it's not ... that kind of thing.

This is where it gets really interesting. Logging in to the story 15 hours later that evening the comment from Silver was deleted, leaving Koldo's response dangling as the first comment on the post, part of an online conversation now interrupted by the editorial staff at the Times. In fact several of the comments claiming anti-semitism in the article were deleted. For a reader arriving at this time, or anytime after, the comments now read very strangely as ... not it's not, no it's not, no it's not, etc. The readily apparent question at this point is who on earth is saying it is?? The remaining fragments of comment make up not so much a conversation as a bunch of censored letters from a warzone.

It is apparent that someone approved the comments, someone advised deletion of the comments, and readers (and history) are left with the remains. An email query to the Times editorial staff asking why the comments were deleted went unanswered. So what about the ethics of deleting a standards meeting comment posted to the public record?

In order to analyse the situation it was first necessary to get a copy of an archived page from the Times that contained the original post. Many Internet users are not yet aware that this facility is available through use of the Wayback Machine that keeps a daily archive of every indexed web page on the Internet.

Or at least that is what I thought. In trying to access a Times archived page from the 19th the software informed that the Times was blocking access to the Wayback automated archiver. Debate on the impact of the Wayback Machine on copyright and intellectual property has been going on since its inception. There have been several attempts to use archived pages from the Wayback Machine in legal cases as evidence and this has also been cited as justification for blocking it. But I had never actually encountered a mainstream media publication that took this approach, let alone one with a long-standing claim as Britain's "newspaper of record".

In the weeks following Grant's appointment Chelsea executives spoke out about a need to stop anti-Jewish chants at games, insisting the club would not tolerate such actions "whether in written correspondence, on the chat pages, on posters or banners or through singing and chanting". Jewish publications ran several stories warning of potential racism. Samuel - who reportedly has Jewish ancestors (if it matters) - wrote another column, this time insisting that Grant's hiring had nothing to do with his faith but was instead just a typical old boys club act. Samuel writes: "Chelsea believe that much of the negative reaction to the appointment of Grant is suspect, but that which is tainted by prejudice can easily be identified and acted upon or ignored, and the rest does not deserve to be disparaged so glibly". Would that be glibly as in accepting comments from your readers into the public domain, subsequently deleting these comments, offering no explanation for the actions and ignoring further public queries for clarity on the process?

So if a tree falls in the internet forest with no one to hear it and it is later dragged away and all evidence of its existence erased, does it make a sound?

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Monday, September 11, 2006

Reflections on 9/11

The World Trade Center three weeks after 9/11

It feels fitting on the fifth anniversary of the planes crashing into the World Trade Centre in New York to watch the film United 93 -- an informed fictional account of the only plane not to connect with its target on that fateful day.

What strikes the viewer is the suffering of the innocents as the plane descends into the Pennsylvanian countryside. Everyone fights for their lives and are shocked to find themselves in the situation. We have all run the thought experiment of what you would do in the last minutes of your life if the end was inevitable. Most of the actors in the film declare their love.

Is it interesting that North Americans (perhaps westerners) can so easily understand the context of the film. Innocents are caught in the crossfire of global political tension and the result is tragedy. But we don't seem to be able to extend this to people from other lands and cultures. Over 40,000 civilians have been killed in the was in Iraq. One can imagine if they could make movies that reached North American audiences the same impact would be felt.

The photo that accompanies this post was taken three weeks after 9/11 on a trip to New York for a friend's wedding. It is absolutely true that if you visit the site when people are thinking about what happened a fog hangs in the air. On the plane from Toronto to New York an Egyptian man sat three rows behind me. I noticed him as soon as I got on. I watched his movements as he went to the bathroom with his bag and was about to say something (feeling guilty of racial profiling later) when a 10-year-old kid between us told the stewardess: "... that man has been in there for a while and he has a turban". She banged on the door and there was some excitement in the plane before he emerged a minute later. Turns out he was a Coptic priest with piles.

Nothing speaks with greater urgency to our understanding of the world than 9/11. Perhaps it is because it represents the anarchy of the unpredictable. A bomb on our plane is no different from a sudden bomb in our house. The continued tragedy of the innocents does not speak well to the development of humanity.

See also Evil Genius and Misinformation and Spin on the Chris Brauer Media Project

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