Mottos are used widely in Web 2.0. This is not surprising, as the system wasn’t created for democracy or participation, but for the consumer society and business [1], and we all know that mottos and their close relatives, the slogans, are the ABC of advertising. Moreover, the consumer-seller relationship does not occur as peers. Although it is constantly echoed that the client is the boss, I doubt it.

Peer dialogues have became monologues
successions.

Business relationships conventionally use mottos and slogans. However, it should not be so present in peer exchanges. However post-modern values require “direct communication without waiting, instant, fast, fluent and easy” [2]. So this post-communication is asking to use slogans. New peer communication model mimics ubiquitous, hierarchical mass-media, along with unidirectional trends in speech. Preferential use [3] of one-way media like Microblogs/Twitter [4], as opposed to bilateral communication and/or cooperation like the different Wikis or the message boards [5]. Consequently, peer exchanges are too often converted in just series of monologues, instead of a real dialogue.

Deep thinking or audience?

This allows multitasking in exchange of concentration and more profound thinking [6]. Carr warns about the risks of superficiality, repetition -echolalia-, lack of accuracy and tendency to absolute positions in the Internet speech. He also mentions the presence of motto-slogans.

As a consequence, says Habermas, intellectuals are no longer leading the public debate. The reason could be that the detailed but slow explanations of the intellectuals’ speech cannot counterbalance the power of a good slogan. Pandora’s box has been opened −giving everybody the possibility to say what they think−. So if you want to be listened, no matter how interesting your information may be, you should learn first how to create a slogan out of it. Other way, few people are going to be patient enough to listen to you.

Raúl Antón Cuadrado

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Refs.

[1] (Carr 2005)

[2] César Bernal Bravo and Ángel Barbas Coslado, “Una generación de usuarios de medios digitales”, Chapter 7 of (Aparici (Coord.) 2010), page 126.

[3](Alexa.com s.f.).

[4] Facebook content creation was answering to “What are you thinking?”; in Twitter, it changed from “What are you doing?” to “What is going on?”

[5] Or Google Wave, abandoned in August of 2010.

[6] César Bernal Bravo and Ángel Barbas Coslado, “Una generación de usuarios de medios digitales“, Chapter 7 of (Aparici (Coord.) 2010), page 126.[