musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

The broken telephone


Recently, after reading an interesting essay on message drift[i], a thought occurred to me: social media is much like the Telephone Game I used to play as a child. A bunch of you sit around in a circle and one person whispers a message into the ear of the child sitting beside him and the message travels around the circle. When the message finally makes it back to the originator, it -and the changes it has undergone- are revealed. A different era then; a modern adaptation now…

Things change with repetition: different versions arise, each with the imprimatur of a stranger. The message evolves like in the Telephone Game, and often, what people react to is a version of the message created through endless circulation on the internet, rather than the message as originally delivered. And research in media and communication studies has apparently shown that meaning rarely remains fixed once a message enters circulation.

The shifts in meaning are small at first, but each iteration affects the subsequent repetitions online: message drift. The message presented gradually separates from its original -but often so subtly, so slowly, that what originally might have had the feeling of gossip, now seems believable, true.

It would seem that much of the online content nowadays panders to  ‘limited user attention, and by platforms that prioritise content which is quick to consume and easy to share. Studies of digital attention show that people engage with information in short, fragmented bursts. Social media platforms tend to amplify content that is easily processed and widely circulated.’

And of course, ‘audiences interpret statements through contextual cues such as captions, commentary and surrounding visuals. The same words can appear sarcastic, alarming or definitive depending on how they are presented.’ Different clips or captions can steer the audience into different interpretations. For example unless an entire political speech is posted, a short clip may be chosen to emphasise a particular interpretation, even when the full speech suggests a different tone or meaning.

Back in the time of newspapers or official press releases, authority depended on who said something and where it appeared. Online, however, ‘authority increasingly depends on repetition. The version of a message encountered first, or most frequently over time, often becomes the version people treat as the most accurate or authoritative account.’

In fact it would seem that ‘conflict is not always about competing interpretations of a single statement, where people disagree about what the same message means. Instead, it often arises because people encountered different versions of that statement in the first place… simplified or emotionally charged versions of messages often travel further than the original. It is quicker to process, easier to repeat and more likely to trigger emotional reactions, all of which are linked to higher engagement.’

Memory is a strange vehicle: its permutations and combinations rival the internet for malleability… and reliability. Back in the day when most of you readers were not yet born, let alone planned; when ‘internet’ was a derisive fishing term, and social media meant posters on school message boards, or waterlogged paper nailed to telephone poles, information was, well, scattered and often unreliable. The word itself comes from the Latin verb informare, which literally means “to give form to.” Posters, if they were in the form of pictures, were largely interpretive, and depending on their location or the mood of the reader, were often subject to widely differing evaluation and analysis.

Of course, the informational posters which a young teenager of the day would be most likely to read, were those on the message boards in the school corridors near the rows and rows of battered lockers. They usually advertised school sports competitions, sometimes dances but rarely more personal things for fear they might be misconstrued. They were the interesting ones, however.

There was a time when misinterpretations intrigued me and I have to admit that my curiosity often ran away with me. Who would have guessed that a short, mouthy, curly-headed, bespectacled kid who always sat in the front seat the class because otherwise he couldn’t read what the teacher was writing on the blackboard with her squeaky chalk, would wonder what would happen if he posted something anonymous but contentious on the school corridor notice board? Something a teacher would never post.

I suppose I was in a phase of my life when I was curious about rumours and how they started. I mean nothing malevolent, or prurient; I was simply interested in how many different interpretations might arise from a simple, coloured crayon question: ‘Wanted: friend. Must be average, not outstanding; intelligent, but not overly; inquisitive not nosy. Reply in kind by signing below (crayon not necessary).’ Even so many years later, I still don’t know why I did that…

I had no idea what to expect, but I kept my ears open, and listened to the whispered comments in the classroom and the curious laughter in the hallways. The first day, I had no difficulty in summarizing the corridor gossip as snide, and jejune (I looked the word up). Soon, however, the guys in the upper grades were positing that the writer must be a real loser; why else would he have to advertise his inability to meet someone. A ‘date’ in those days was often just walking home with a girl, and if it got really serious, taking her out for a soda on Osborne St., or maybe to a Roy Rogers film to demonstrate knowledge of his horse’s name –(Trigger). Juvenile stuff like that. But I had been careful (too careful?) not to specify the sex in my poster, so…

In many of the boys, the very request bought out an unexpected side though: planning to ‘beat him up’ if they ever caught him. They reasoned that only a guy would write a poster like that and whoever it was seemed undeserving of their idea of masculinity: real guys never advertised for friends -they earned them. By the next day, after they had more time to talk about it, I heard groups of them guffawing about how ‘they’ had no trouble talking to girls in person, or kissing them in the movie theatre. And anybody who was forced to advertise himself in crayon must be revealing some secret desires…

The girls, though, seemed more concerned about the life of the crayoner; I mean, what kind of a life did he live to have to advertise to make friends? Which sex wasn’t even mentioned however; it didn’t seem important. Names buzzed around the corridor: I even got a passing mention, I’m proud to say. But the overweening impression was one of pity for whoever was that desperate. One or two girls even signed their names to the  poster, but I decided to remain anonymous and merely glanced at the poster as I passed.

Interestingly, although the girls wondered about the writer’s plea for help, they seemed equally interested why he (in their minds the author was a guy) had used coloured crayons. Was that a hidden identity clue for them? I’d used what I felt were more ‘feminine’ colours like pink, orange, and purple crayons to see if anybody commented on ‘colour’ as opposed to ‘crayon’. It was all great fun!

After a few days though, the rumours had vanished into the corridor’s ether and the crayoned poster became just a memory. I saw a janitor I recognized who was carefully removing it: no ripping, no crumpling – just a sad smile on his face. When I asked him why he was being so gentle, he smiled. “I feel sorry for the writer, G. He – I’m pretty sure it was a guy- must have been desperate to resort to a poster like that.” He sighed and carefully folded the poster and placed it in the pocket of his uniform. “Reminds me of my school days. I never fit in with the kids either…” He hesitated for a moment and then rested his eyes on my cheek. “Tell him that, if you know who it was, eh? Tell him not to worry…”

[i] https://theconversation.com/message-drift-why-things-get-taken-out-of-context-online-and-why-it-matters-278132

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