Rolf Harris – Does Google tell us how to feel?
With the news today that Rolf Harris has been found guilty
of 12 counts of indecent assault, we are confronted with a conflicting
emotional response and a dilemma: Many people of a certain age will remember
Rolf with some degree of fondness, the charming colloquial aussie lilt, the
apparent fondness for animals, of course the drawing and even the songs. This
imagery is in direct contradiction to the feelings conjured up by the thought
of the acts for which Harris has been found guilty.
Did you notice what I did there? I used “Rolf”, his familiar first
name, in the positive statement and “Harris”, the more detached and formal surname
in the negative comment. The world does this to us all the time, but doesn’t
always point it out.
There are few things more repugnant than a person who abuses
their position to commit such unsavoury acts. But those acts soil a previously
shiny persona, enjoyed by many.
We often hear expressions of particularly polarised opinion
on matters such as these, totally one sided, probably because of the understanding
that we the readers, the consumer of media, will spend very little time
listening. This requirement to grab our attention can lead to a shortening of
the detail, a summary of the narrative, bullet points of fact. It has to fit
into the short window that we demand.
Modern life, with 24hr rolling news, opinion all around,
sound bite sized snippets and “balance” does not have a great deal of space to
include a more complex view. Black and white are great, but they are seldom the
whole story, what about grey? The media only gives us what we ask for and, increasingly
we are asking for shorter, less complicated information supply.
Herein lies the problem, back in the days when our lives had
space for a morning newspaper, we were able to take the time to have all the
possible sides to a story explained. Of course there was the headline cover
story, bold type, heavy font, but as we read further into the paper it would
become a more subtle variant, explaining the complexities, until deeper still,
we could find the opposing case, the counterpoint. People need time to consider
and process, then we are able to reach a complex and balanced decision, form an
opinion on any subject and it will usually contain a response something like “Yeah,
I agree with almost all of that”.
All this variety still exists, but it is seldom found in one
place. Now, if we want a selection of opinions, they are just a search away, on
the internet, we are training ourselves to find the variety we crave, but we
have to learn to filter the search depending on the speaker (or writer).
So it seems that when people are asked to share their
emotional response to a new controversy, they will often look for support from
the internet. A Google search to help us decide how we feel about something.
Our feelings about a convicted sex offender are usually pretty negative.
Likewise, our affection for childhood memories of lilting songs and colourful
artwork are equally clear. This forms a contradiction that we must wrestle with,
to reclassify the contradicting feelings.
I believe that the inevitable struggle is what really drives
us to hit the search button. My worry is that a little too often, people will accept
the opinions that a perfectly reasonable Google search request returns as fact,
as their own opinion. If this is allowed to happen, then we may be letting
Google tell us how to feel, then they really will be powerful!
I resolve to dig a little deeper, to strive to question and
to not accept the first opinion my media offers to me. Maybe I should try Bing
or Yahoo a bit more? (Are other search engines available?).
Thanks for listening
Dark Scribbler
No comments:
Post a Comment