The reaction to the Hey Hey blackface thing has been predictable from start to finish, from newspapers to water coolers to the Internet. I didn’t watch the show last night but as soon as I became aware of the reaction to the Red Faces skit this morning I knew it was going to be topic of the day on the Internet. And as a keen Twitterer I also suspected that it would provoke and highlight the mob mentality that tends to develop on the forum in response to stuff like this. (It’s not a phenomenon unique to Twitter, by the way.)

My initial intention was to avoid the pitchfork-style shouting I saw as inevitable and that tends to shun reason, lack any point, and feature a decent dose of aggression; I’ve taken part in my fair share of these online mobs but it just didn’t appeal on this particular issue. For someone who is usually such an optimist about the Tubes and social media and stuff, my pessimism on this one set me up to be pleasantly surprise. As the day went on the urge became so strong that I couldn’t help but dive in, and as I got more and more involved I realised that Twitter was playing a really useful role in my own thinking about the blackface incident.

The great thing about Twitter is the way it allows users to chat in realtime and follow many other users’ conversations. I’ve likened this before to “an infinitely overlapping Venn diagram.” By 11am I knew what dozens of other people were thinking about the blackface incident and my own thinking was already changing due to those other opinions challenging my own. Within an hour of getting involved my stance on the issue had been altered by some thoughtful exchanges with some people that I know and respect in the real world and some other people that I’ve never interacted with outside of Twitter. This experience was totally at odds with my fears this morning about the negative role that Twitter would play in measured discussion.

While there are many reasons that Twitter came through for me, I reckon the most crucial reason was the way that I and other people who will have had similarly positive Twitter experiences today chose to use the tool. Just like any debate or argument using any communication medium, the quality of that debate will reflect the attitudes of the participants. If everyone speaks and listens with respect, putting and defending views confidently while keeping an open mind to others’, then everyone will take something from the exchange.

This simple guideline is pretty obvious but unfortunately it is usually the first that is forgotten on the Internets where the impersonal (i.e. de-personalised and anonymised) nature of the communication tends to turn people into keyboard warriors. (I know this from first-hand experience, just in case anyone thinks I’m trying to get all sanctimonious.)

I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that thanks to my experience today I more than ever think Twitter is an extremely powerful and useful tool that can facilitate intelligent and positive debate, but it can only happen if users approach that debate with the right attitude. A few weeks back Jonathan Green said the following about Twitter:

It’s so circular at the end of the day. The conversation is lively, it all seems engaiging, but there’s a nagging sense in the back of the mind that we’re all just talking to ourselves.

He’s kinda right because we are just talking to ourselves, but Twitter has served its purpose for me if it has facilitated a debate that has positively influenced my own thinking. Today I was proud of Twitter because it did just that, but more specifically I’m proud of the dozens of Twitterers that I interacted with who made it possible.