Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Nadia Bartel: some shaming is a good thing

By Rob Cover - posted Monday, 6 September 2021


Widespread public criticism of influencer Nadia Bartel for her breaches of COVID-safety and public health orders has been justified. More importantly, it is good for the community but needs to avoid turning into a public shaming pile-on.

Video footage was widely circulated on Friday showing Nadia Bartel appearing to consume recreational drugs at a party of friends.

Bartel, the former wife of Geelong Cats player Jimmy Bartel and well known as a model, clothes designer, Instagram influencer and ambassador for popular brands including Mecca and JSHealth, has been well-positioned as a media personality, style icon and influencer.

Advertisement

While Aussie Rules players' WAGs (wives and girlfriends) have long been subject to public attention, influencers have recently come under additional public scrutiny this year after the Australian Association of National Advertisers tightened their code of conduct on social media celebrities' disclosure of commercial arrangements.

Although the AANA code of ethics does not require social media influencers to be upstanding citizens or adhere to a moral code, the added public concern has meant that those who earn funds from their public profile are increasingly required to recognise their obligations to align their behaviour with community standards.

The scandal, however, is not that Bartel slipped up, possibly took drugs or partied with friends during a period in which visitors to the home are restricted. The footage was always going to result in a police investigation into a breach of Victoria's lockdown rules, much as social media footage of an engagement party in Caulfield North in August attracted fines and widespread public condemnation.

However, where Bartel is in apologising to the public and then breaching the rules again. On 3 September, Bartel circulated an apology on Instagram reading:

Hi Everyone,

I have let you all down by my actions.

Advertisement

I take full responsibility and I am committed to taking all necessary steps to ensure I make better choices in future.

To my family and friends, my business partners and the public health workers trying to keep us all safe, I am embarrassed and remorseful.

I am truly and deeply sorry. I hope I can earn your forgiveness and, in time, your trust.

The embattled influencer became a hypocrite when she ignored her own commitment to make better choices, and immediately hosted visitors at her home in further breach of the current lockdown restrictions.

For an influencer, the loss of credibility, authenticity and trust is damaging. Being publicly shamed by the Premier for her sustained disregard for rules required by the rest of the community is damning. And being dropped by the companies she was promoting really stuffs up her marketability, her public image and her brand.

Relative misery

Mental health has been a major concern of the ongoing lockdowns in Australia and elsewhere. Although false claims about suicide rates have been weaponised in Australia and the United States to oppose necessary public health measures, the reality is that lockdowns not only provide a safe haven from the far worse mental health impact of widespread death, they provide a shared community bond that itself can be at least a temporary protection from suicide.

Why? Because when a population are broadly suffering together-no matter how bad that shared suffering is-that shared experience potentially promotes the kind of belonging and social participation that helps keep people feeling their lives are liveable. This thesis applies even when what we share is loneliness and isolation.

However, when there is inequality and people start comparing their experience of lockdown in negative ways, we have what is called the 'relative misery' hypothesis: suicide rates may increase because vulnerable people see some people as having greater freedoms, benefits, and capability of getting away with breaches than they do.

Premier Andrews and others are, therefore, right to condemn Nadia Bartel for the damage that she does to that shared social bond by attempting to flout the rules that others suffer through, by hoping to get away with contravening the regulations repeatedly, and by expected to be treated differently. And, worse, by expecting that her apology is enough, while going on breaking the rules again, showing herself to be not just above the law, but above the requirements everyone else must abide by.

In slamming her behaviour, this is not about punishing or shaming an individual. It is about propping up a fragile, wounded community with the reminder-or, indeed, evidence-that community standards matter and that equitable treatment under the law is serious for the wellbeing of the community.

Just as the community feels wounded when a chief executive of a multimillion-dollar technology company lies on a border pass to sail his yacht from Sydney into Queensland in contravention of the border rules while others are unable to rejoin families or take holidays overseas, or when a kid boasts about his family sneaking through back-roads from Melbourne to the Gold Coast when everyone else is stuck on one side of a border, Bartel's behaviour smacks of the kinds of inequities, rule-breaking and 'above the law' mentality that wounds an otherwise obedient community.

Policing this behaviour and ensuring the law is applied evenly and equally to all people is one very serious and very important method of keeping at bay the negative mental health impact of our necessary public health orders. A necessary public shaming.

Influencer responsibility and public shaming

Although they are a relatively new form of media personality and content creator, influencers who trade on their public persona to earn money by simultaneously promoting themselves and their products have an added ethical responsibility to the community-not only because they are content creators privileged by a large following but because they do have genuine influence as role models.

Breaching lockdown rules-and then doing it a second time in 48 hours after an apology for the first breach-is role-modelling behaviour that says to the public and to her followers "lockdowns don't matter". It suggests that the rules are unimportant.

This is obviously unfortunate at a time in which the lockdown is a necessary, vital component in public health to keep pressures off the hospitals and hard-working medical staff while the long-delayed vaccinations to reduce the severity and hospital impact are rolled out across Victoria.

Being shamed by the Premier is, therefore, a necessary remedy to the damage Bartel's actions may have done to the credibility and demands of the-however difficult-of the public health restrictions.

That shaming, however, should not be understood as a call for large members of the public to engage in a mass pile-on of hate, anger and condemnation.

Shaming plays an important role in helping to communicate and encourage debate on public standards and expectations, such as when a public figure has, however well-meaning or unthinking, appeared in dehumanising blackface. But public shaming has its limits, too, in the era of instanteous digital reactions and fast-response which can result in aggressive nad hostile mob-like pile-ons that themselves de-humanise, wound and are increasingly recognised as causing harm to the target in unprecedented ways. In extreme cases, suicide.

Online mob shaming and pile-ons are not public debate. At best, they actually promote the person being shamed by making them a victim, increasing their following and boosting their brand. At worst, they position the victim to see themselves as no longer having a worthwhile life, causing mental health and possible self-harm.

At this point, it is likely safest and best to have witnessed the necessary shaming of Nadia Bartel done by our parliamentary representatives and government officers, and leave off with the pile-on.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. All


Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

7 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

Rob Cover is Professor of Digital Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne where he researches contemporary media cultures. The author of six books, his most recent are Flirting in the era of #MeToo: Negotiating Intimacy (with Alison Bartlett and Kyra Clarke) and Population, Mobility and Belonging.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Rob Cover

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Photo of Rob Cover
Article Tools
Comment 7 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy