What social media platforms have done, though, thanks to their increasing market dominance and their emphasis on speed, is accelerate the decline of newspapers and other traditional news sources.
So this is a different way social media has intervened in the constellation of issues here then right? So to combat this issue, we might take different steps.
the veil of anonymity that platforms provide their users
Uh oh. Is this a trial balloon for ending online anonymity?
very specific choices made by the companies that have come to dominate the internet generally and social media platforms in particular
The move to blame specific corporate social media algorithms.
You don’t even have to look up. And it’s made all of us more prone to what psychologists call confirmation bias
Placing blame with users, as if only users were selecting what they see online.
it did fortify a sense of shared culture and it came to the news, at least, citizens across the political spectrum tended to operate using a shared set of facts
the sheer proliferation of content and the splintering of information and audiences
Structural effects of global digital networks: more content, splintered audiences.
We’ll have to come up with new models for a more inclusive, equitable capitalism. We’ll have to reform our political institutions in ways that allow people to be heard and give them real agency. We’ll have to tell better stories about ourselves and how we can live together, despite our differences.
Obama's three strategies: better capitalism, better politics, better stories/communications.
as once marginalized groups demand a seat at the table, politicians have found a new audience for old-fashioned appeals to racial and ethnic, religious or national solidarity
This formulation almost makes it sound like marginalized folks are to blame.
the near collapse of the global financial system in 2008
the rise of China
At the end of the day, tools don’t control us.
Against technodeterminism.
K-Monitor
"We Use Technology, Research & Participatory Action to Unveil Corruption." Visit website >
News Literacy Project
"The News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan national education nonprofit, provides programs and resources for educators and the public to teach, learn and share the abilities needed to be smart, active consumers of news and information and equal and engaged participants in a democracy." Visit website >
MIT Center for Constructive Communication
"Designing tools, methods, and systems to understand and address societal fragmentation." Visit website >
National School of Journalism and Public Discourse
"National School of Journalism (NSoJ) is a highly selective J-school that identifies and trains India's best journalistic talents. Our newsroom-focused curriculum, in-house digital news portal, expert faculty members and unparalleled industry connections prepare our students for successful careers in broadcast, print and convergence journalism." Visit website >
the U.S. Constitution as software
ways to give young people and the rest of us the chance to build up civic muscles
Call for civics.
reinvigorate quality journalism, including local journalism
Call to improve journalism.
online media literacy
Call to improve online media literacies.
An interesting study came out recently
Preprint of study: Broockman, D., & Kalla, J. (2022, April 1). The manifold effects of partisan media on viewers’ beliefs and attitudes: A field experiment with Fox News viewers. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/jrw26
these companies need to have some other North Star other than just making money and increasing market share
Will regulation be able to change the North Star?
Platform Accountability and Transparency Act
PATA via Senator Coons website.
European Union’s Digital Services Act
tech companies need to be more transparent about how they operate
regulation has to be part of the answer
we need to consider reforms to Section 230 to account for those changes, including whether platforms should be required to have a higher standard of care, when it comes to advertising on their site
Possible s230 reform in advertising.
Section 230 of the United States code
s230 first mention
More importantly, these companies are still way too guarded about how exactly their standards operate, or how their engagement ranking systems influence what goes viral and what doesn’t.
the need for some democratic oversight
The problem is, we often don’t know what principles govern those decisions. And on an issue of enormous public interest, there has been little public debate and practically no democratic oversight.
Call for more transparency in social media algorithms, with a little threat of regulation.
the First Amendment is a check on the power of the state. It doesn’t apply to private companies like Facebook or Twitter
Reminder to folks who misunderstand the reach of the First Amendment.
I believe that in most instances the answer to bad speech is good speech.
Pretty close to a "marketplace of ideas" POV.
There are some bugs in the software.
A solution that suggests some fixes to the existing structures will suffice.
the transformative power and promise of the open internet
Putting the "open" in internet.
New technologies are already challenging the way we regulate currency
Russians could study and manipulate patterns in the engagement ranking system on a Facebook or YouTube.
This suggests there is enough transparency in social media algorithms to game them.
the very design of these platforms seems to be tilting us in the wrong direction
Another call to focus on social media platform design.
sophisticated actors from political consultants to commercial interests, to intelligence arms of foreign powers can game platform algorithms
Are there interventions that can be made with these actors rather than at the level of the algorithms?