SanityFeed: My Mission to Counter the “Angertainment” Culture in News Media
During my time in the Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program at CUNY, I worked on Sanity Feed. It’s an app that aims to counter the “angertainment” culture in news media for saner minds and societies.
I’ve first conceptualized the idea for SanityFeed and shared it with the world during TEDxFrankfurt, where my talk was later curated to be included in the official TED selection.
The Dilemma of the Homo Smartphonicus
Information saves lives, and that’s why we evolved to be sensitive towards dangers and threats around the world. But when the average internet user consumes 34 GB of information every day, are our brains equipped to deal with this overload and process it in a healthy way?
Overwhelming research says no.
Anger and outrage are addictive, and that’s why social media and digital platforms proved to be so profitable. The “angertainment” culture in news media isn’t only harming our mental health, but also threatening global peace and democracies.
Why SanityFeed?
Hence, here’s the solution I propose: We must diversify our media diets.
We wouldn’t eat chilies all day; it’d hurt our stomach. So, why should we keep exclusively consuming the news that makes us angry and upset?
If we are what we eat, our mind is the information it consumes.
We hear enough about the villains on our planet. But how about we tuned into solutions and what worked more? If we incorporated more stories of resilience, courage, and hope in our media diets, how would that alter our common subconscious?
I believe that when we keep handing the microphone to the “bad guys” and become so fascinated with them, we elevate their platforms and endorse them a little bit. Yes, as journalists, we must cover the “bad guys” and hold them accountable. But what if we gave more of our bandwidth to solutions and decent people?
Thus, what if we had daily access to a thoughtful and personalized curation that simply answers the question: “What works in the world today?”
SanityFeed will aim to fill this gap.
Homo Entreprenaurus: When a Tech Rookie Works on an App
Parallel to my course at CUNY, I participated in a programming workshop using a no-code tool called Bubble. While I’m by no means a tech expert or a software developer, I found Bubble to be quite intuitive and powerful.
I’ve collaborated with another developer, and I currently have an MVP that I keep testing and tweaking.
All in all, as a complete tech rookie, I’m proud of how much I’ve been able to learn and build during my 100 days at CUNY.
What’s Next for SanityFeed?
Just as I’m graduating from the Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program, I’ve been named a LEDE Fellow by the Solutions Journalism Network, which will help me to continue working on SanityFeed.
I hope to refine my MVP by mid-2021 and launch SanityFeed by the end of the year. Afterward, I might contemplate applying to accelerator programs to get some more support in areas where my skills and resources are limited.
As my needs as a journalist-entrepreneur evolve, I’m open to new partnerships, skill exchanges, and opportunities.
Building an app is admittedly an ambitious and complicated project for a sociology graduate media practitioner like myself, but I hope these challenges will also make the results even more rewarding.
Whatever the outcome will be, I doubt I’ll ever regret spending a pandemic year learning more about media entrepreneurship and technology.
About the author: Didem Tali is a multi-award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker working in her native Turkey and beyond. If you have any feedback on SanityFeed or would like to keep up to date with this project, please get in touch with her at didem. tali [at] Gmail. If not, you can still find her on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram and send her cat pictures.
