Information Sharing
Watching the video on the Syrian conflict we saw the power of Internet platforms, specifically Facebook, had in connecting people with shared concerns and values who may not be visible to each other before and we saw how these new technologies allowed protesters to share their story with the world when in the past sharing these experiences would have been much more difficult and easier to suppress by those in control . This showed the ability of new technologies for people to both create and share a common narrative without needing the structures and support of a position of power. However this same ability to connect people and create and share a story which can ignite revolution and bring down oppressive regimes is equally effective in the hands of “bad” actors (See Russian interference in US election). How do we manage this new ability for anyone to connect and share? A pew research center study asked experts how they see the future of misinformation online — below are a few interesting quotes.
David Harries, associate executive director for Foresight Canada, replied, “More and more, history is being written, rewritten and corrected, because more and more people have the ways and means to do so. Therefore there is ever more information that competes for attention, for credibility and for influence. The competition will complicate and intensify the search for veracity. Of course, many are less interested in veracity than in winning the competition.”
“ A retired public official and internet pioneer predicted, “1) Education for veracity will become an indispensable element of secondary school. 2) Information providers will become legally responsible for their content. 3) A few trusted sources will continue to dominate the internet.”
Stowe Boyd, futurist, publisher and editor-in-chief of Work Futures, said, “The rapid rise of AI will lead to a Cambrian explosion of techniques to monitor the web and non-web media sources and social networks and rapidly identifying and tagging fake and misleading content.”
Jeff Jarvis, professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism, commented, “Reasons for hope: Much attention is being directed at manipulation and disinformation; the platforms may begin to recognize and favor quality; and we are still at the early stage of negotiating norms and mores around responsible civil conversation. Reasons for pessimism: Imploding trust in institutions; institutions that do not recognize the need to radically change to regain trust; and business models that favor volume over value.”
What would it look like for companies to really start favoring “quality information”? Can structured changes in education and society keep up with advances in technology? Would changing these structures and increasing the scrutiny on sharing information make it harder for dis-empowered people, like Syrian protesters to get their story out? And how much is the nature of those revolutions and social movements across the world shaped by the values and structure of these tech companies — how might future regulations and changing internet ethics affect this relationship? The Internet is allowing people to connect and stories to come out that couldn't before, but how and why those connections form and the impact and veracity of those stories is important and will/should be key to the structure and regulation of those who control these systems going forward.
