The Silent Room Tone

I didn't actually get to see the now infamous Mark Zuckerberg interview yesterday at SXSW, but having read through about six thousand blog posts about it, I feel as though I've seen it. And, naturally, I have some thoughts about what happened, some of which connect to what happened the day before when I was on the same stage talking with Henry Jenkins.

Most accounts of the interview have talked about the role that the Twitter "back channel" played in the event. Clearly it was pivotal, and I think it sheds some interesting light on how face-to-face group events are changing thanks to communication tools like Twitter. 

I probably did more than fifty public appearances last year in front of crowds -- speeches, conversations, interviews, panel discussions, etc. And every time I get up there, the primary thing I'm thinking about -- more than the words themselves, most of which I've said before in roughly the same sequence -- is the room tone. In the words of our commander in chief: is the audience with me or against me? Are they having fun? Are they confused? Am I talking at too technical a level? Am I being condescending and talking down?

This can be very hard to gauge, because the information channels that flow back from an audience to a speaker are very narrow ones. An audience enraptured by a fascinating story is, most of the time, indistinguishable from an audience slumbering at a ponderous lecture. You can't read facial expressions in that environment, so all you have to go on is the sound, and the sound in both those cases is silence.

This is the main reason that I compulsively make jokes when I'm in front of a crowd. Not because I'm a ham (though that's no doubt part of it) and not even because the audience likes to laugh. The big reason to make jokes is because they're the best way to get a quick read on the collective mind of the group you're talking to. The volume of the laugh is important, but so is the lag time. You can tell immediately if they're on your side, and if they're really following what you're saying, by how quickly the crowd responds to your jokes.  And in doing so you open up the channels of information flowing back to you from the audience. If they're slow, you know you have to adjust, wake them up a little. If they're quick, you know you've got their attention.

In our talk on Saturday, Henry took another approach that had the same effect: he had a couple of "rallying cry" lines that set up the audience to murmur or applaud in endorsement. (A bunch were about Obama.) That's a great approach if you can pull it off; you really know you have your crowd if they're clapping mid-conversation.

But most of the time the crowd is quiet and unknowable. The room tone is silent. The one advantage you have as a speaker is that this unknowability extends into the crowd itself. Each individual might be sitting there quietly steaming at the absurdity of your comments, but unless they start openly hissing at you, they have no way of realizing that all of their neighbors are feeling the same hostile sentiments. And because people are more inclined to chuckle, laugh, or clap than they are to boo or hiss, the public signals that flow back to the center stage tend to be positive or indifferent, and not openly negative.

But backchannels like Twitter change all that. When enough audience members connect with each other, a consensus room tone can quickly form, with each member's personal outrage amplified silently by his or her neighbors'. Onstage, of course, you see and hear none of this. All you know is that the crowd is quiet Until something tips, and they start vocalizing as a group, having been empowered by the backchannel consensus.

And that's the irony of it: you have a thunderous room tone that is audible to everyone in the room except the people on the stage.

I'm not sure what to make of this. I think the overall system is on the whole better than the traditional lecture information channels. But I also think it has its quirks and points where it fails outright -- and given all that, Sarah Lacy probably had a case when she said she had a hard job up there. But maybe by thinking these issues through we can make it easier next time around.

Comments

[Matteo]

Hi Steven,

I think this will change positively quite quickly, again with the help of technologies _for_ communication. Just like twitter empowers the audience with a backchannel, so will small displays embedded in eyeglasses, or other tools which will provide visible feedback to the speaker, possibly transparently to the auditorium.

Politicians in particular are already doing it, with visual clues scrapped on signs by staff members on the back of the room, tips through the earphone, or on the podium screen.

Speakers that care about keeping the pulse of the crowd will have to look for tools that go beyond jokes (that people probably don't even listen to if they are busy accumulating their emotional state on a twitter stream).

[DaveP]

Glad you at least "think it has its quirks and points where it fails outright" - I've seen it turn into an electronic stoning of the person onstage (it wasn't me, so this is not a personal trauma). Worst is the projection onscreen behind a speaker of the backchannel. I find this the least useful development in "community" technology - a negation of the power and subtlety of a personal encounter and the atrophy of the attention and courtesy that it requires.

Matteo predicts a tehnological fix? If "people probably don't even listen to [the jokes] if they are busy accumulating their emotional state on a twitter stream" what makes you think they are listening to any of the rest of it? We need new tools to deal with plain rudeness? The speaker now has to split his/her own attention to monitor the instantaneous derision level?

And someone like you, Steven, travels and prepares only to meet this smart(ass) mob? I hope we can do better as a technological and social species.

[Peter]

I like the Word Suicide 3-16-08
Peter Macdonald 465 Packersfalls rd Lee NH 03824 603-659-6217 NH.veteran@yahoo.com
I first want to apologize I have been using the wrong date on my past few letters.
So many of the right people in the right gov. agencies read my letters yet they do nothing. These so called right officials are so set on believing that I am a nut and paranoid, that they ignore what I write and condemn me. I have serious disabilities that I received while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. The NH governor and Judges have so violated the law that using the news media to strip a disabled Veteran of any public dignity, so the public has stereotyped me crazy. Yes you are probably right. I do see the world differently than others. Some thirty years after receiving a head injury in the MC, I still have no memory of my child hood. I broke my back during one Vietnam offensive and was blown off a runway and lost most of my hearing in both ears during another offensive. I learned to love the United States of America because I lived in some of the dirtiest, crude and deadliest conditions before I have any memory of seeing the U.S. I came back to the “World” (US) to a place that I do not belong. Never have I violated the law on purpose. I have volunteered every day to help others just the make the U.S. a better place. I owe this to those that never returned alive.
A criminal is someone whom violates the law with intent to harm others. Judge Peter Fauver did just that. The NH Supreme court is so biased that it refused to hear a case presented by a high school drop out. Fauver made me and attorney to represent a Madbury NH family for a zoning issue because Fauver thought it would allow him to screw this family to benefit the selectmen’s criminal acts. I proved the case beyond any doubt and Fauver ignored the law to harm others. A judge is not above the opinion of the people or the law. The State and local police under the direction of the NH governor and the Sheriff’s dept harass my family at work and home to cover up crimes committed by a judge. For the system to allow a U.S. congresswoman (Shea-Porter) to use her political powers to medically harm me is beyond any belief. For the Inspector General of the NH Veteran’s admin in Manchester. NH to stop my VA medical for service injuries received as a U.S. Marine (two of the three Combat related) can not be tolerated. I write these letters because it is every U.S. citizen’s responsibility to correct the wrongs in government. I may be crazy to put my live on the line for our country. That would make every U.S. military personal crazy also. The right people that do nothing but sit idle and allow the NH Judges and government official to harm a disabled veteran are not bad people. These right people are just believing what powerful people tell them. I tell every news paper in the U.S. to print my letter with a disclaimer and allow me to suffer the consequences. The unedited opinion of the people is the most important part of the news media’s ethical responsibility. I think as a 100% disabled U.S. Marine I have earned the right to have this letter printed across the U.S. unedited. “truth is a powerful weapon”
Peter Macdonald Sgt USMC Semper Fi

[Mark Bauerlein]

I enjoyed your discussion with Jenkins at SXSW, Steven (rendered at http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17829), but I notice he didn't answer your question about any research demonstrating "empirical measures of those new skills"--that is, the "new literacies" Jenkins highlighted.

[Kieran Wild]

Off topic,

There is a good review of your book The Ghost Map on the BBC Radio 4 - A Good Read
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/agoodread.shtml

Bests,

Kieran

[Peter]

Interesting post. In the light of Barack Obama's recent speech on race, it is worth noting one major difference between most black and most white religious gatherings in the USA: black congregations respond vocally (and sometimes also physically) throughout a minister's sermon -- they affirm, they laugh, they applaud, they clap hands with one another, they even stand up and dance. In your terms, this means that both the speaker and the congregation itself get continuous and immediate feedback on the room tone as the sermon proceeds.

[Jeff]

I would assume that as feedback like this becomes more sophisticated speakers will have to develop a new way of speaking, one that incorporates "pauses" while they read and then adjust to that feedback.

In addition, as part of the development of these social channels it would be nice if we could develop a loop, one where audience members can both take credit and be accountable for their comments (how would the balance of power shift if every tweeter's live image was projected on the stage screen as they posted their comment -g). I see the cloak of invisibility allowing for a magnified reaction to speakers, analogous to blog and forum anonymous flames. And what's the value of those to anyone?

[Eileen]

If everybody is twittering, is anybody listening?

[Ann DeMarle]

This post reminds of the Abenaki storyteller, Gray Wolf, from Vermont. He "taught" the audience to respond at the outset of his story. We were instructed that in Abenaki storytelling, when a storyteller paused, the audience was to vocalize a word akin to "aya" to which the storyteller would respond in turn. It was in this way that the storyteller and the audience became a community each with a role and a feedback loop in the communication that kept the story living.

[DaveP]

FYI - commentary on this phenomenon at this post:

http://www.news.com/8301-13772_3-9910962-52.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20