What Sociology Students Do

Here's a little morality tale for our times (via): 

When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he said he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.

His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.

The sociology major's made-up quote — which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer's death March 28 — flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India.

They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia quickly caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it, but not quickly enough to keep some journalists from cutting and pasting it first.

A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets in an e-mail and the corrections began.

"I was really shocked at the results from the experiment," Fitzgerald, 22, said Monday in an interview a week after one newspaper at fault, The Guardian of Britain, became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia.

"I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn't come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up," he said. "It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact."

So far, The Guardian is the only publication to make a public mea culpa, while others have eliminated or amended their online obituaries without any reference to the original version — or in a few cases, still are citing Fitzgerald's florid prose weeks after he pointed out its true origin.

"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack," Fitzgerald's fake Jarre quote read. "Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."

Fitzgerald said one of his University College Dublin classes was exploring how quickly information was transmitted around the globe. His private concern was that, under pressure to produce news instantly, media outlets were increasingly relying on Internet sources — none more ubiquitous than the publicly edited Wikipedia.

When he saw British 24-hour news channels reporting the death of the triple Oscar-winning composer, Fitzgerald sensed what he called "a golden opportunity" for an experiment on media use of Wikipedia.

He said it took him less than 15 minutes to fabricate and place a quote calculated to appeal to obituary writers without distorting Jarre's actual life experiences.

We are, apparently, meant to hail this Shane Fitzgerald as something of a hero. There's even a picture of him looking smug as he poses, fingers poised, in front of his laptop.  

The whole point of Wikipedia, as surely everyone knows by now, is that anyone can make a contribution. It depends on trust. The editors try to monitor new input as best they can, and indeed their system worked fairly well in this case. There are though, inevitably, disputes, disagreements, and questions of interpretation. And then there are out and out malevolent scammers and frauds - like Mr. Fitzgerald here. 

So, journalists took a quotation from Wiki without bothering to check the provenance. Oh dear. Perhaps it's because they hadn't considered the possibilty that there'd be someone so petty and dishonest that they'd actually falsify the entry for a recently deceased minor celebrity for the purposes of their own little academic game. 

Fitzgerald stressed that Wikipedia's system requiring about 1,500 volunteer "administrators" and the wider public to spot bogus additions did its job, removing the quote three times within minutes or hours. It was journalists eager for a quick, pithy quote that was the problem.

He said the Guardian was the only publication to respond to him in detail and with remorse at its own editorial failing. Others, he said, treated him as a vandal.

He had to put the quote in three times! - as though the Wiki volunteer administrators have nothing better to do than remove deliberate falsifications placed by sociology students aiming to get their picture in the papers.

In a system based on trust, there's nothing easier than to betray that trust. To then come across all self-righteous about it is really a little hard to swallow. It's like that old chestnut of someone shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, except in this case they're claiming they've performed a public service by showing up the gullibility of theatre audiences. 

And it's not journalism that'll suffers here; it's Wikipedia again, taking another knock to its credibilty, despite having behaved with exemplary efficiency. 

"Vandal" seems about right to me. Why should pretensions to academic research absolve one from the normal requirements of morality?

Comments

[William]

I think you missed the point here. It isn't about Wikipedia, which as you say is based on trust. It's about the news media, which ought not to be. And which ought not to be using a single source without fact-checking.

[Gordon]

The point of this post is the heading "What Sociology Students Do". Yes, a silly student performing an ethically unsound prank, big deal. Do you really, truly believe that this has damaged Wikipedias reputation? The only damage (a miniscule dent) done is to mainstream journalism, the sloppiness of which needs as much exposing as possible. Surely every half wit knows that you should always check citations before you use them - this applies to academic books as much as to wikipedia. It is incredible that the journalists were that sloppy. It is also a testament to just how much more reliable wikipedia is compared to mainstream media (& some academic books).
But as I say your eye was on the headline - rather in the manner of a print journalist - in which one example is used to make a huge sweeping generalisation that revives a very very old right-wing journalistic stereotype. The only valid point you make is lifted from Jay Walsh's intelligent response in the original piece in the San Francisco Chronicle. You had nothing to add but the dumb headline.

[dearieme]

"Why should pretensions to academic research absolve one from the normal requirements of morality?" Some academics deem themselves to be above petty, bourgeois morality.

[Mick H]

"It's incredible that the journalists were that sloppy"? You have an extremely idealised view of journalists then.

[Mick H]

Just to elaborate on that previous comment....

I don't really believe this supposed horror at what the journalists did. It's faux outrage.

I don't normally defend journalists, but I will here. Basically, with sources, you trust your judgement, balancing your time against the requirements of fact-checking. So, you're writing an obituary for Maurice Jarre. You look at Wiki. It says that he supported Le Pen and the Front National. Or that he was charged with possessing child pornography. Wow. Clearly you double check. These are important issues you don't want to get wrong - and also, knowing Wiki, you know that someone could've been tampering with the facts. Someone who didn't like Jarre.

But here it's a quote; a harmless little quote, quite in keeping with what Jarre might have said. It's entirely trivial. Obviously with the benefit of hindsight you can say, yes, it should've been double-checked, but really, at the time, you think, why? What possible reason could there be for fabricating something like that? What you fail to realise, of course - what never occurs to you - is that a silly student has played a prank in the name of sociological research, and will get his picture in the paper for his trouble. And that a lot of self-important people will then pontificate about the incredible sloppiness of journalists nowadays, oh dear oh dear.

It's a non-story - a storm in a teacup.

[Gordon]

Dearieme. Not sure about these academics to whom you refer but I would certainly regard myself above "petty, bourgeois morality". Why, do you think morality should be petty? Also this joker isn't an academic he's a student and this prank would not be regarded by anybody (except, maybe some journalists) as genuine research. But I'm missing the point here - this post & your response is all about the current trend among semi-educated bloggers for liberal-bashing in which big soft targets are chosen for your rapier-like intellects.
Yes, Mick it's a non-story but then why the post?

[Mick H]

"This post & your response is all about the current trend among semi-educated bloggers for liberal-bashing in which big soft targets are chosen for your rapier-like intellects."

Oh dear. Not sure who this is aimed at: I'm not dearieme.

Why the post? Because people - like yourself - are seeing this as an exposure of the sloppiness of journalism. As I've said, I don't think it is.

[dearieme]

Can't be aimed at me, Mick - I'm not "semi-educated".

[Paul Moloney]

"He had to put the quote in three times!"

As anyone who an ex-Wikipedia contributer like myself knows, the zealots who get into edit wars have no problem inserting tripe into a Wikipedia article three times before breakfast.

P.

[Dom]

I'm surprised this stunt is getting so much attention. There are many quotes floating around that are bogus, but no one seems to care. Oliver Kamm has a little cottage industry fact-checking other people's quotations, and today alone he has two examples, both from Neil Clark. Kamm is kept pretty busy just checking on Chomsky alone, once finding that Chomsky has misquoted himself.

There is a lot to complain about when it comes to journalism, but I agree that quoting something that has been planted doesn't seem like a biggie.