John Robinson blogged a couple of days ago about “sticking a fork in ‘man-on-the-street’ interviews” aka vox-pops. To take his point a little bit further, this pooling of public opinion feels increasingly outdated now readers can choose the issues they want to comment upon.
Vox-pops contain a degree of fakery, in so far as the person whose thoughts are being filmed/recorded is aware that they need to sound somewhat informed and intelligent. The people in the Jimmy Kimmel clip linked to by Robinson take this to its end-point, offering seemingly informed opinions on an event that never happened.
In my experience of being vox-popped – I was once quoted in the Daily Mail after attending a medieval food tasting (see the final line), I have been called on to offer opinions on subjects I would not care to comment on. My answer to the Daily Mail journalist on what I thought about the food is tellingly glib.
With internet comments, and I mean that in broadest possible sense with Twitter etc. included, there is a participatory element. The reader wants to add their own voice to the mix and potentially get feedback from the writer. The reader has made a choice to invest their time in your content, not been stopped on the street and had a question forced upon them.
Of course, artificiality – as any ethnographer would tell you – is relative and trolling shows that comments are not always the place to go for genuine opinions. It’s also worth saying that a creative approach to vox-pops can be really effective. However, my gut instinct is that spurring a reader to comment rather than requesting it on the street is usually a far more effective way of getting them to keep reading your work.
getting a fair – and interesting – reaction to issues is tricky; Twitter users & online commenters are by no means going to provide an accurate sample of the population either (if that’s the aim). I suppose the two key questions are: how to represent an offline and online voice on your site/publication; and, to go one step back, what’s the value of ‘man-on-the-street’ type content?
The Jimmy Kimmel clip is wonderful. But surely this has to be the most sincere vox pop of the US election so far:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/10/31/164030712/dear-little-girl-sorry-we-made-you-cry-about-bronco-bamma-and-mitt-romney
I agree, a community is always limited to certain views, but surely vox-pops originate from a similar place as the he said, she said” sort of journalism. The voice of the people isn’t particularly genuine if they are shooting from the hip on topics they do not really have much investment in.
Vox-pops I have seen work well have been focused around particular communities or people who have felt tangibly affected by the issues. One of my favourites is when Edinburgh performers were asked to respond to their reviewers. These guys are a good example as they mostly read any publicity they or their peers are given – as the Youtube clip shows. Similarly, vox-pops that try and do something slightly differently with the form are less likely to feel they are just filling page space/screen time/content flow.
If the fundamental value of vox-pops is signalling the openness of your publication and diversifying the voices represented then there must be more innovative ways to do it.