Algorithmic Media: What’s In For Me
Journalists and news outlets usually deliver news that is objective. This is all because of the media ethics that requires a journalist or any new platform to only broadcast news or events that are real and trusted. Journalists should make sure that the information that is being reported is real, valid and far from any personal opinions or explanations .this way the journalist won’t be biased towards or against any certain party. This “technique” of reporting is considered to be the idealistic safe way of broadcasting news because it allows people to be democratic and in control of the information they are receiving, it allows journalists to report what’s happening in a biased stand. Having a neutral stand is more like being on the safe side. According to Stephen Ward objective reporting is non-operational because it limits the journalists to a formatting rule when it comes to reporting news, it doesn’t help the audience analyze the news (sometimes the news are transparent), and thus damages the communication between the reporter and the audience “interactive media world” (2009, p. 71–74). This objective method of reporting is preventing the people from engaging their own views and voices on the news. In a way, the journalists’ task is to broadcast the news as transparent as they can by giving the facts, yet let people engage, analyze, and form their own opinion. Opinions can vary which will probably divide the public into opposing sides, where only the dominant opinion gets to be heard.
Nowadays there is a new platform for news which is social media .Social media and search engines like google deliver the public the latest news and updates in seconds for different and billions of issues. This way, users of these platforms get the access to whatever is online and shared with the public making it easy for them to interact and engage with other people’s opinions. According to Lotan (2013) social media could increase the public’s voice and have information broadcasted to the public equally and at the same time. However, the algorithms of these social media platforms, neglect objectivity and the media ethics principles because they filter out content and information based on a user’s personal bias which make them ignorant of the other’s opinions and prejudiced on theirs.
Google, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube… use their own algorithmic systems that organize stories, videos and ads that target the user’s interest. For example, I once was surfing Facebook and I liked a video of an old song, Facebook’s algorithm automatically started playing other videos which are either from the same page or holds a singing video .at that time, it was great because I remembered being excited about the content that I was finding on Facebook. However, these suggestions limited the news that I was running into. This shows how algorithms control the political choices of the public and their cultural lives (Lotan, 2013, p. 107). Gillespie (2012) explained that these supposing objective information provided to us are actually serving for our opinions. In other words, the algorithms are choosing what we want to see according to what we saw. Then next step is filtering these suggestions to the most one that we would find interesting this way we receive biased and limited information. This is why nowadays we are finding titles that bring attention according to the user’s preference.
One way of attracting the user is by showing what’s trending now for example the hashtags. Trending content would engage the users on what is happening in the world. Moreover, it can show the people’s interests or opinions on international issues. However, trend lists might shed the lights on universal problems or opinions that are highly biased .
In conclusion, I believe that algorithms are giving what the public wants to see, which contradicts with the principles of media ethics regarding the objectives of the news. Algorithms is considered to be biased form of reporting news because by using people’s information in order to recommend content for them limits these users from seeing the other’s point of views .Social media companies should make an adjustment. It shouldn’t only use what would grab the user’s attention but also the different opinions and then let the user decide what’s next for him/her. One solution that should be tried is what Anghami is doing. Anghami has different categories: things that you might like, trending songs , new songs… And then the user choose what to see.
References
Lotan, (2013) Networked Audiences, in McBride, K. & Rosenstiel, T. The new Ethics of Journalism , Sage, London, p. 4
Ward (2009) ‘Truth and Objectivity’ in in Wilkins & Christians (eds.) Handbook of Mass Media Ethics, Routledge, London; New York, pp. 71–83; p. 74
