Transparency is the new social media Panacea?

David Weinberger has written a post today on the subject of Transparency being the New Objectivity:

Objectivity used be presented as a stopping point for belief: If the source is objective and well-informed, you have sufficient reason to believe. The objectivity of the reporter is a stopping point for reader’s inquiry. That was part of high-end newspapers’ claimed value: You can’t believe what you read in a slanted tabloid, but our news is objective, so your inquiry can come to rest here. Credentialing systems had the same basic rhythm: You can stop your quest once you come to a credentialed authority who says, “I got this. You can believe it.” End of story.

We thought that that was how knowledge works, but it turns out that it’s really just how paper works. Transparency prospers in a linked medium, for you can literally see the connections between the final draft’s claims and the ideas that informed it. Paper, on the other hand, sucks at links. You can look up the footnote, but that’s an expensive, time-consuming activity more likely to result in failure than success. So, during the Age of Paper, we got used to the idea that authority comes in the form of a stop sign: You’ve reached a source whose reliability requires no further inquiry.

In the Age of Links, we still use credentials and rely on authorities. Those are indispensible ways of scaling knowledge, that is, letting us know more than any one of us could authenticate on our own. But, increasingly, credentials and authority work best for vouchsafing commoditized knowledge, the stuff that’s settled and not worth arguing about. At the edges of knowledge — in the analysis and contextualization that journalists nowadays tell us is their real value — we want, need, can have, and expect transparency. Transparency puts within the report itself a way for us to see what assumptions and values may have shaped it, and lets us see the arguments that the report resolved one way and not another. Transparency — the embedded ability to see through the published draft — often gives us more reason to believe a report than the claim of objectivity did.

I was fairly uncomfortable with this post on a number of points, and turning to the comments I found I was not alone - here's Dean Procter:

The objective is eyes on page, and there goes the objectivity. From that point on all objectivity is lost. If you don’t point out your sources either someone will ask, and it becomes a discussion, or the readers will accept it at face value because they want to, or they’ll go somewhere else, either because they don’t believe you or perhaps because they want a different viepoint which agrees with their sensibilities.

The web creates the infinite argument problem, because the number of links possible to support a balanced and ‘objective’ view would in all probability swamp the reader or lead them astray on some tangent. Where do you stop being ‘objective’?
One man’s objective is another man’s bias.

Media is just a filter through which people get a packaged view of information, like coffee, some want instant, others require a specific blend and grind. For a writer you need to decide whether you are a Starbucks, supermarket or boutique coffee shop information grinder and hang up your shingle for all to see. Sticking to your shingle will see you get a following.
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The conclusion seems to be admit it and get on with it. The great thing about the new media is that there is plenty of other new media. Everyone is a star with their own channel.

In other words. just delivering "transparency" will achieve very little, it just allows a plethora of different parties to filter the information for their own ends. And as Dean notes, those ends often have more to do with being stars in their own personal channels than any objective commentating.

I have a related concern, which is the old User Generated Activity issue - roughly 1% of the readers will interact with the work, c 9% will read it, and 90% will just ignore it.

My second (related) concern is that pure "transparency" just generates a surfeit of unfiltered data that drowns the average reader. Without objective filtering, into this breach steps the classic case where an active and vigorous minority can seize and divert the transparent flow into a curated stream that suits their own (non-objective) ends, and the silent majority won't realise (or in too many cases, care). In other words, Transparency in and of itself will not increase the sum of human objectivity.

What is true is that Transparency reduces the transaction costs of getting the data, and in theory then allows more resources to be spent on the analysis - but it does not in and of itself create objective information. In order to create Information from Data, what is still required is energy and effort input into the system, and to be objective that energy and effort has to come from an objective source, and it needs to be rewarded for objectivity.

My third concern with this model is that it makes the implicit assumption that the Social Media cycle - links to 3rd parties, wisdom of crowds and/or friends, whatever - provides that input of energy and effort. But, as Procter implies above, the people inputting the effort into such a system have (not necessarily transparent) agendas of their own, and are thus systemically unlikely to be objective.

Thus the onus is thrust on the end-reader - who in most cases does not have the time or interest to read every commentator, follow back every link etc. Thus they will still need the role of the "Trusted Editor" - the function that aggregates the inputs, prunes the cr*p, simplifies and structures the data to provide information, and then distributes it in a trusted form. That function does not disappear. Transparency and Social Media systems just move it along the value chain a bit.

So far the "New Media" has not exactly set the world ablaze with its increased objectivity - all we seem to have got is a massively increased number of mutually contradictory non-objective sources. The credentialed commentator role may shift, but still retains importance as they take the load off the end reader.

For the record, I also don't buy the view that paper implies lack of transparency or non-objective thinking either. A good essay or book provides links, footnotes and arguments so that one can get back to source. (As Dean notes in an earlier comment, the number of people who follow an online link back is tiny). The Weinberger post is probably correct for daily print news and blogs, but even by the time you get to weeklies like the Economist, never mind papers and books, it is starting to look less applicable in my view.