Algorithmic media vs Objectivity in the News
The difference between algorithmic media and legacy media is not just a philosophical agreement. Algorithmic media is all about data, it bases the value of news or information based on instantaneous tracking through likes, pages visited, hashtags, etc. unlike Legacy media, which took more time and real people were taking the decision of what information and news to put out for the people to have. Algorithmic media’s procedure completely transformed the process of editorial decision making from a qualitative assessment of needs and demands to quantitative measurements. Therefore, programs now choose for us what is important to know with respect to numbers and not values.
This takes us to question the presence of objectivity nowadays, how has the presence of algorithmic media influence this long known human value? Do algorithms fall in the favor of objectivity or do they work against it? The value of objectivity consists of being fair, calling for justice and neutrality. If we translate this in the world of information production and news (journalism) Charles G. Ross puts it perfectly saying “news writing is objective to the last degree in the sense that the writer is not allowed to editorialize” meaning it is something of a myth, almost impossible to create. Through legacy media, the audience received superficial and dominant point of views and therefore were not allowed to interpret different sources and perspectives and analyze and even get to choose what’s right and wrong for them. According to Ward “Democracy is better served with a diverse and opinionated press in which contrasting views complement each other.”
On the other hand, according to Tarleton Gillespie introduced “the promise of algorithmic objectivity” and according to him it is “the way the technical character of the algorithm is positioned as an assurance of impartiality, and how that claim is maintained in the face of controversy”
But come to think about it, algorithms show what is relevant, based on your own activity and categorize news based on fixed criteria from spikes, clusters, and being new. It is a system no one understands and therefore if we were to check its objectivity we’d have no solid key performance indicators since no one has control over the current media system.
One must put a lot of effort to achieve impartiality and neutrality, social media does offer free unlimited information, but algorithms dictate which information reaches people, so unless they are involved in an unpopular yet valuable topic, they most probably won’t know about it if it were surpassed by other topics which seemed more important to the algorithms (Kim k vs occupy wall street.)
in other cases algorithms helped valuable news to reach more people such as the black lives matter campaign, due to the algorithms finding it as a “trend” everything related to it was found online whether people searched it or not, and therefore people got to see different realities and different perspectives on the matter and therefore take a genuine stand.
In conclusion, algorithms can only go so far when it comes to neutrality, it is a vague system that gets to choose for the people, it lacks the logical human judgment of real vs fake news, of information people, need to be knowledgeable about even if it is unpopular, some trends are not important but are prioritized. I’d say algorithmic media serves the people as much as it harms them since they get what they want but on the other hand, they are completely blindsided from so much information that could potentially help them. It does threaten the role of media in maintaining a democratic sphere, but I believe awareness is one thing the audience must seek regarding algorithms. Social media platforms to make our lives easier and more entertaining, but they can also reprogram algorithms to become more sensitive regarding unpopular yet humanitarian, vital news. Algorithms work the way its creators want them to so striving towards algorithmic objectivity is not wrong, they can get as close to it as possible, but I believe it is a fluffy promise that won’t be happening soon. Many people and corporations benefit from the way algorithms work today.
