We like to tell others what we're thinking, what we're doing and what we're just about to do. Above all else we love to talk about ourselves, and we're encouraged to do so.

But whether we're as good at listening as we are at talking, at being responsive, well, that's the subject for today's Future Tense. Hello, Antony Funnell here.

The English writer GK Chesterton once observed that there was a very big difference between hearing and listening. Today we'll explore that difference, and we'll look at two online initiatives where the value of listening, of actually taking notice of people and what they say, has become a priority.

Anthony DiMeo: There's so much negativity on the web, especially with websites like Reddit and Facebook. There's a lot of people who are often saying personal things or saying stuff that they might be looking for support for, and then they don't get it, instead a lot they get the complete opposite. So we thought we would take some initiative and build up a website to go and actively do the complete opposite, to seek out people who were feeling a little bit down and connect them with somebody via our website to try and make them feel a little bit better, counteract some of the negativity on the web.

Antony Funnell: Anthony DiMeo in Maryland in the United States, and his website is called CheerUpper. We'll hear more from him later.

Philip Tirpak: My name is Philip Tirpak. I am the president of the International Listening Association, and I am also an instructor of communication studies at Northern Virginia Community College.

Antony Funnell: And Philip is our first guest today with a message that our issues with listening go way, way back. His organisation alone has been operating since the early 1980s, well before we all became buried in our smart phones.

The devices we now use to connect are great, says Philip, but they can make the act of listening much more difficult.

Philip Tirpak: Part of the beauty of listening is the fact that face-to-face is always the best, and when we're using these social media platforms we're not face-to-face and we are allowed to hide behind the screen, so to speak. We take a look at the platforms that we have—Twitter and Facebook and other social media—they are more attuned to people's opinions rather than really formulating creative thought or just sitting back and listening, because it's instantaneous and there's no time to really dwell on it.

We've learned that it's rapid response all the time, every question needs to be answered immediately. We react rather than respond. When we react, sometimes it's just an instantaneous thing. When we respond, we take time and we try to analyse things as well. Of course there are some areas that we have to be reactive. But it's almost as if every bit of silence…or maybe it's we can't have silence, we have to fill in every single space rather than stop and be silent and think about it. It goes back to the heart of what our education is. We learn how to read, we teach our kids how to read, we teach our kids how to write, we may even teach the principles of effective speaking, but we believe that listening is just innate, listening just happens, listening is the same thing as hearing. And unfortunately it's not so.

Part of the fault I think as well is the fact that when we look at trying to assess what listening is, many of the assessments actually deal with message retention, comprehension, learning and listening styles, rather than the real impact that listening has on relationships.

Antony Funnell: So we're focusing too much on the mechanics of it?

Philip Tirpak: I believe so. I look at listening more as a whole sensory experience and teach it more in the aspect of interpersonal skills and relationship skills. It's a matter of context, and sometimes we can get caught up in the research itself rather than what listening does to our lives and how it improves our relationships.

Antony Funnell: Philip Tirpak from the International Listening Association.

So, modern communication tools can make it harder to listen to others, but they don't necessarily act as a block to listening. It's all a matter of emphasis, according to Dr Tanja Dreher, an ARC Future Fellow at the University of Wollongong.

Tanja Dreher: I think the claim that that we value speaking more than listening, I would definitely support that. But one important factor to note is that if we think about just what we do, it's probably not true that most of us spend more time broadcasting or speaking than we do listening. So the value question is really important there. When we think about particularly the social media environment, the online environment, it's obviously a sort of proliferation of voices, stories, speaking, exclamations. Lots and lots of expression can seem incredibly overwhelming.

But if we take a step back and think about what we actually do, most of us still spend most of our online time listening rather than speaking. We might post a couple of Facebook updates, we might send a couple of tweets, but there's also an awful lot of paying attention, listening in the background that's going on.

So there's a wonderful academic Kate Crawford who has made the argument that listening actually provides a better concept for thinking about our online participation, even though normally we focus on speaking. And she says part of the problem is that we have really undervalued the importance of the listening that we do.

So she looks particularly at the idea of lurking, which is one way that we…you know, if we do ever pay attention to listening in social media it's often described as lurking, which has very negative connotations, the idea that somehow we are being secretive, we're not speaking up when we should, we are kind of lurking in the shadows. And she says no, no, let's rethink what's happening there when we are listening, when we are paying attention but we are not necessarily speaking up. And she says actually that's crucial for speaking to occur. You know, no one wants to speak into a vacuum. So the kind of lurking, listening work and activity that we do online I think is completely undervalued, but it's actually incredibly significant. It is part of creating that sort of social space in which the speaking happens.

Antony Funnell: Why do we overvalue the speaking side of it? Is it something that we've done for a long time?

Tanja Dreher: Most definitely. I would argue that…and many others do, that certainly in kind of Western cultures, that general trend of undervaluing listening can be traced back a very long way. An American political theorist Susan Bickford actually traces this back all the way through Western philosophy, she goes all the way back to Aristotle and looks at the way in which when we think about social life, particularly when we think about politics or if we think about democracy, the key concept really has been speaking or it has been voice, and it has been assumed that voice is the key way in which we are active, in which we contribute, in which we participate, how we exercise our citizenship. She puts out a challenge to really bring listening much more to the forefront of our thinking.

Antony Funnell: And you talk about listening being a political and a social concept as much as a personal thing.

Tanja Dreher: Absolutely. I think if we do think about listening, we tend to think about it in terms of our interpersonal relationships or maybe in terms of therapeutic interactions, so maybe counselling or psychotherapy. And those things of course are incredibly important and there's lots to be learned and lots to be worked with in terms of thinking in that way.

But listening also operates at a much more complex level, as a social and political process. So one example we might think of here is the national apology to the stolen generations from a few years back. A really crucial landmark moment in Australian history, in Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships in this country.

Antony Funnell: This was the Australian government officially apologising to Indigenous Australians for the wrongs of the past.

Tanja Dreher: Exactly, and particularly an apology to the stolen generations and acknowledging that experience. So it was delivered by Kevin Rudd within weeks of coming to power. And if we reflect back on that event, for those of us who participated, most of us would have participated by listening. That would have been our key contribution and participation in that landmark moment. So yes, the television might have been going, there is a visual element, but the crucial thing, particularly for non-Indigenous Australians participating in that day, was to take the time, to pay attention, to maybe shift our understanding a little bit, to reflect, to make that space, to silence other issues and concerns for a time and really pay very close attention, and also to be challenged to think about, well, what comes next, what comes after the apology or what comes after our particular listening moment here?

Antony Funnell: So, tied very much to that idea of appropriate listening or effective listening is the idea of being reflective.

Tanja Dreher: Absolutely crucial. And it's interesting that all the different sorts of definitions that you can find of listening in a whole range of different contexts. This idea of a space for reflection and, I would argue, also reflexivity, is really crucial. And one of the implications of that is that we have to push some other interests or noise aside for that to take place. So it's interesting when we first start thinking about listening, it sounds like it's going to be pretty warm and fuzzy, it sounds like it's going to be a pretty feelgood sort of practice.

But listening is also really important because it opens up the possibility of change, it opens up the possibility that we might be confronted, that we might be unsettled. So it also involves an element of risk. And I think that's also one of the reasons why it's very socially and politically interesting, because the risk is about opening up the possibility that we might see things differently, that we might be challenged to change.

Antony Funnell: And that risk is particularly difficult for politicians to take on, isn't it. I know that politicians are very fond these days of telling us that they are actually listening to us, they are listening to the electorate and to the messages that are being sent to them, and yet we constantly hear this refrain from the public that you aren't listening to us.

Tanja Dreher: I think you've really identified a key challenge for our thinking about the contemporary moment and where we might be headed, which is about really unpacking different modes of listening and what are the politically effective modes of listening that we are most interested in. So it's very much the case that in this era of proliferating voices, you know, every institution and organisation is getting much more feedback than they ever used to, so those in powerful and privileged positions definitely want to be seen as listeners.

One of my favourite stories actually was going into a bank branch a couple of years ago where the signs had been changed, the signs that used to read 'tellers' had been changed to 'listeners', and I thought that was a wonderful encapsulation of the way in which very, very big organisations, powerful institutions want to be seen as listening.

Antony Funnell: But it's one thing to be seen to be listening, isn't it, it's another thing to actually take on the responsibility of actually listening.

Tanja Dreher: Absolutely, and I think that's the key challenge; trust in politicians and a belief that they are listening is kind of at an all-time low. There's a lot of disengagement, there's a lot of cynicism. So there's really a point at which we need to cut through claims of listening and ask these questions about not simply are you paying a little bit of attention, but is there an openness here? Is there a possibility being opened that things might change, that the proliferation of voices might actually have an impact?

Antony Funnell: There has to be the possibility that things can change from that act of listening.

Tanja Dreher: Precisely. And we mustn't confuse listening with persuasion. So we can't say, oh, if you listen you then have to completely agree, or you have to do exactly what you've just been told. That would be a very different model, it's a sort of persuasion model. And listening is more interesting but it's also harder to pin down because it's much more about possibility and potentiality. So to listen is to open up that possibility of changing. But you can give someone a very good hearing, you can be fair and just in your listening without agreeing with every single point or without necessarily taking on the precise details of every single claim.

But I think the underlying challenge that I would identify is to think about our listening responsibilities as much as we are increasingly thinking about speaking responsibilities, including in online spaces. So we are increasingly aware and increasingly grappling with the challenges of the way in which new social media and other online spaces have kind of opened up platforms and opportunities for ways of speaking, interactions that are deeply problematic, at times abusive, offensive, all of that. And we've begun a debate about what the sort of speaking responsibilities online might be, a really important debate, but I would like to see…you know, if we are going to take listening as seriously as we take speaking and voice, I would like that debate to be at least as much about what our listening responsibilities might be.

Antony Funnell: Tanja Dreher from the University of Wollongong.

Let's recap now. Philip Tirpak talked about responding rather than reacting, and, as we've just heard, Tanja Dreher also mentioned the need to be reflective and responsive. And that perfectly describes what Anthony DiMEO has been doing with his website CheerUpper which is all about listening to others online and providing support.

Anthony DiMeo: For us specifically, the information that we are interested in getting are tweets that have certain keywords such as 'sad', 'depressed', 'awful', 'stressed'. And so what we do is we query the Twitter database using this API and pull out as many tweets as we can that have these keywords. And then from that we use a second API from a company called MetaMind that's a sentiment analysis API, and we run all our tweets through that. And with that, it's a tool kit that will give us back a number, so it will say 'this tweet is 75% positive' or '75% negative'. It can actually quantify a qualitative emotion. And with that were able to pull out all the tweets are actually sad or depressed, and those tweets are the ones that we put into our database and make available for others to use.

Antony Funnell: So you don't actually respond to these tweets or posts yourself, you just identify them and then you allow others to respond to these, you give other people the opportunity to jump in and respond.

Anthony DiMeo: That's exactly correct. We thought about the idea of either trying to do some type of automated response or maybe we have 100 written responses and one will be randomly selected, or even us just sitting behind a computer for an hour or so a day. But we thought in the end it would be much more powerful, much more heartfelt if it was another human, if it wasn't a computer and it was somebody who genuinely read your tweet and had an interest in making you feel better. We thought that that would just be a much more human interaction.

Antony Funnell: Okay, could I get you then to give us a taste of some of the sorts of sad tweets that you've picked up, and some of the responses that people have made to those tweets?

Anthony DiMeo: So it's funny you mention that, our website has two tabs, one that is labelled 'Cheer somebody up' and one that's labelled 'Viewer responses', so users can also do this exact same thing and go in and see a couple of tweets and replies that have been put up recently. So just reading off of that, the most recent one we did, a fellow tweeted, he said, 'This is awful, I am heartbroken.' And then only a couple of minutes later somebody via our site tweeted directly right back and said, 'That's really tough, I'm sorry for your loss, whether it's big or small. I'm sending warm thoughts and hugs.' And so that's just something really nice, it probably put a smile on his face.

Antony Funnell: Have you got any direct feedback as to whether the supporting responses help or what people think about the site?

Anthony DiMeo: Absolutely. I'd say probably just on average maybe one in every 50 to 100 tweets we'll get a response saying 'thank you so much, you made me feel so much better', or 'this really made my day'. So we do receive a lot of positive feedback.

Antony Funnell: Is there a possibility though that some of the encouragement might actually irritate people, they might find it odd that a stranger might want to jump in and comment on what they've said?

Anthony DiMeo: In over 3,000 tweets we've only had one instance in which we got a reply where somebody was a little bit wary of a stranger tweeting at them and kind of getting into their business. But then we actually tweeted back at him and did a few direct messages and explained what our idea was and what was really going on. And once he kind of understood what we were trying to do, he thought that it made a lot more sense and was much more open to the idea. So I think maybe at first when someone gets a notification on their phone or gets an email saying their tweet has been replied to, they might be slightly weirded out or curious or something like that, but I think once they read into it a little bit more they realise what's going on and they are much more open to it.

Antony Funnell: And what do you personally get out of this website?

Anthony DiMeo: What me and the other founders get out of running this website, maintaining it and watching all the tweets that come through, is just happiness really. We don't get any type of monetary reward, it's just nice to see other people trying to do a good thing and knowing that we help to facilitate it.

In a world with so much broadcast and so many different streams of information coming into our phones, emails, computers at the same time, a lot of it just turns into noise and we don't actually read or process a lot of what comes through. I think CheerUpper is nice because somebody really does sit down and take the time to process it, to really look at what somebody else is saying, even if the person who said it might just expect it to be part of this stream of noise.

Antony Funnell: Anthony DiMeo and CheerUpper, exactly the sort of responsiveness that's essential to good listening, but one that's often overlooked.

Our next online initiative where the value of listening, of actually taking notice of people and what they say, has become a priority, involves a man named Matt Kulesza.

What pertinent details can I tell you about Matt? Well, Matt lives in Melbourne, he spends an awful lot of time in cafes these days, and he has a blog called 1000+ coffees on which he details his meetings with friends, even takes photos. You see, late last year Matt set himself the unusual task of not just having friends online, but getting to know them personally.

Matt Kulesza: I had some amazing experiences while travelling, and essentially was inspired by connecting with people from different walks of life. And when I got home I looked at my 1,000-plus Facebook friends and initially I wanted to start culling people but then I thought I'm sure there's like a cache of really interesting, amazing people that I could either reconnect with or people that I don't really know that well, and instead of cull down my list I decided that I would try and seek out a one-on-one coffee with each person.

Everyone has a really amazing story to tell and something that they can teach you if you actually give them a few moments to talk to you and you actually really do listen to what they are saying and ask questions and be generally inquisitive about their lives. And so far that theory hasn't proven me wrong. Everyone has had something amazing to teach me. Pretty much 99% of the time I walk away from each coffee feeling energised, it has made me feel I guess more open to communicate with people that I don't know, and yes, it's just had a hugely positive impact on my life.

Antony Funnell: Interesting you say it's about listening as much as connecting with people, as much as communicating with people, because our modern world is one in which we tend to broadcast a lot, don't we.

Matt Kulesza: Absolutely, yes. I think that's also something that I found interesting about Facebook is that a lot of the time I will go into these coffees with someone from Facebook, and I have very much this picture in my mind of what sort of person they are going to be based on their output on Facebook. And again, most of the time I find that the way that we promote ourselves online is often very different to the reality of actually sitting down and speaking to someone face-to-face and asking them questions about their life and what they are doing. For me I've just learned that Facebook is just one very small section of what's going on with people.

Antony Funnell: What has been the reaction from your Facebook friends when you've contacted them and you've suggested a real meeting?

Matt Kulesza: So far everyone has been really into it. I think Facebook and social media has reached a point where people are questioning what the purpose of it is. I've had Facebook for I think eight years now, so that's a lot of people that I've built up over the years through different jobs and through university and through ex-girlfriends, groups of friends, and yes, I think it has just reached a point where people are like what are all these people doing here and why do I have these connections? So people so far have been really supportive about just taking that online relationship into the real world.

Antony Funnell: Has anyone the said no yet?

Matt Kulesza: No. But if people don't want to, that's totally fine. There's a bit of an audience there now so I totally understand if people have any privacy concerns. The other thing though that I sort of figure is if you can't get a coffee with someone, what's really the point in being friends with them on Facebook if you can't tolerate that 45-minute coffee.

Antony Funnell: You are at 73, you've had coffee with 73 of your Facebook friends. Do you think you'll make the full 1,000 distance, or doesn't it really matter in a sense?

Matt Kulesza: Yes, it doesn't really matter in a sense. I think I feel that the project has had a hugely positive impact on my life. I hope that it has made people think about the way that they use social media. I don't really like to use the word 'inspired' but I hope it has inspired maybe people to just take a punt and get in touch with someone that they might want to get little bit more and get to know people in their online networks in the real world.

But the catch-22 of this project is that it is impossible to actually maintain this amount of friendships. That is the kind of cruel twist to it, is that I'll have this coffee with someone, I'll really click with them, we'll get along really well, and then it's like, all right, well, can we actually maintain this friendship, because in the next couple of days I'm going to have another coffee with someone else. And that's the hardest thing for me, to balance actually maintaining these new reconnected friendships. But if anything I think it's just important to reconnect with people outside of your usual circle of existence and to share ideas with people that I usually wouldn't speak to has been my biggest take-home message from the whole project.

Philip Tirpak: An effective listener sits down and faces the other person and expresses things like…we call them communication, the minimal encouragers, head-nodding, things such as 'mm-mm', 'that's right', 'go on', to encourage another person to talk, to converse, to dialogue, and doesn't interrupted.

I have one exercise that I might share with you that can help others to try and deal with the distractions. And this is something I do every semester with my students, I send them outside and I tell them, okay, for 15 minutes, just for 15 minutes, early in the morning, late in the evening, whenever it suits you, just go outside, leave the cell phone in the house, just sit there, you might close your eyes and just listen to the sounds around you. At first you might hear those distracting busy sounds of traffic, but what other sounds do you hear? What's the world saying to you?

And I am always amazed at some of the things that my students say. They started out reporting about the traffic sounds and the machinery sounds, and then they go on…I remember one this semester where one of my students said he could actually hear the rustling of leaves but what he also thought was insects chewing on the leaves. And so he really allowed his mind to hear the other sounds. So if we practice sometimes just going out, being quiet, being still and listening to the world around us, it could help us with distraction.

So if I were to give a down and dirty, so to speak, over what an effective listener is, it would be somebody that takes a step back, that allows the other to speak, that gives their full attention, that hears the message with their ears, with their heart, with their mind, with their emotional intelligence, that suspends judgement and makes a connection with the other individual.

Antony Funnell: And our last speaker there was Philip Tirpak from the International Listening Association. We also heard today from Matt Kulesza, Anthony DiMeo and Tanja Dreher from the University of Wollongong.

Thanks to the production team Karin Zsivanovits and Steve Fieldhouse. I'm Antony Funnell, until next time, cheers!