Tone Matters
Jonathan Dresner at Cliopatra hits the nail on the head.
I don’t think any of us can be objective about our own claimed objectivity. — Daniel Okrent, NYTimes, 4/24/05…
There are three categories of common arguments in blogspace:
* Principles
* Facts
* ToneI don’t mean to categorize posts, or bloggers, but disputes. Of these, I think the first two categories are pretty self-evident, but the third needs some explanation. It might look, to a casual observer, that Tone is an epiphenomenon, coloration rather than substance, the least important and/because the most emotional. But Tone includes subtexts, implications, style and inferences; it is where the issues of audience and the active agency of readership become central. Tone matters.> [My emphasis]”
Media Mental Sets
Have just discovered John Suler’s blog “The Psychology of Cyberspace”, and it’s shaping up to be a corker. He’s got a wonderful entry on what he calls Media Mental Sets.Traditionally, in psychology, “mental set” refers to a fixed pattern of…