The internet gave great hopes for the liberation of information. No longer controlled by elitist (or corporatist) editorial gatekeepers, now “all” the news (not just what was fit to print) could truly be accessible to the people. A new era of democratized media was dawning.
Well, that’s not exactly what happened. Writers like Evgeny Morozov point out that political power can still manipulate the internet to meet its ends. And as Eli discusses in The Filter Bubble, gatekeepers haven’t gone away – they’ve just been replaced with a new algorithmic breed, which bring their own set of concerns for democracy.
One of those concerns is what happens when the news we’re delivered is the news the personalized algorithms think we want. I’m a pretty worldly, news-savvy gal, but I admit that I can’t help clicking on those hat photos from the royal wedding or the latest gossip from Dancing with the Stars. If the personalization bots interpret those clicks as “Give the girl the fluff she wants”, how much more trash will be sent to tempt me – and how much “important” news will go missing from my news feeds?
As Eli puts it in his TED talk, the new gatekeepers may be turning us into junk-news gluttons. The old gate-keepers had their problems, but at least they made sure we got our news vegetables along with our dessert.
Or did they?
Today Slate reminded us that even our elitist of elite publishers can sideline the vegetables for sweeter fare. The day after the first GOP presidential debate of the 2012 campaign, an important marker in our political discourse, one would have thought the 4th Estate would have brought the event to our attention. Not so. The debate didn’t show up in print in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal until somewhere between pages A3-A19. What did make the front page? Stories about “Maryland basketball coach Gary Williams, Pippa Middleton, and UFO sightings in Thailand.”
Now, in the editors’ defense, it was a debate populated by few real contenders. But still. Pippa Middleton?
Of course, since the news giants lost their captive print audiences, they’ve been in the same race to the lowest common denominator as have the personalization algorithms. Perhaps the NYT, WaPo and WSJ of 1995 would have had the debate on the front page. Either way, when it comes to getting a balanced diet of food, today we may be all on our own.
reposted from TheFilterBubble
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