The Discrete Industry that Wants to Change our Minds
“Objectivity was challenged from its inception.” (Ward, 2009, p.76)
Although when people define objectivity, they can have a subjective explanation; this action in its self reflects on the concept of “objectivity” in which mass-though is not applicable. Objectivity does not have to mean strictly reality, or truth because the truth and reality in themselves might be relative among each and everyone in the world since we often determine “what is objective from the point of view of our best most reflective practice” (Putnam, 1994) and people from different ages, cultures, educational backgrounds surely do have different reflective practices. In other words, there is no truth with a capital “T”, there is your truth, my truth, his truth, it all depends on what part of the equation one is standing.
Coming to media ethics, objectivity is (in theory) always the goal of journalists (in practice, questionable). For instance, journalists are often truth -seeking inquiries “the first step is to re-conceive journalists as active inquirers who would seek to interpret their world as accurately, comprehensively and truthfully as possible” (Ward, 2009, p78).
The media in general is often used by people in order to have a public sphere where the multiplicity of opinions is gathered in one place. It is highly important to maintain democracy in media because it only portrays that people are capable of acknowledging other opinions, and thus forming a self-rationale that is the closest to being objective. Simply objectivity in media focuses on impartiality where the journalist keeps his beliefs separate from the story.
While there are countless advantages to social al media, there are also disadvantages that somehow declines the value of objectivity. Social media and with its algorithmic curated content has affected objectivity and enforced an intentional bias element to the equation. The algorithm used in social media has now a strong social power in which it makes social media the Kingdom of Manipulation and reinforces mass-thought which fails objectivity. “As soon as digital information providers add any form of curtain and recommendation mechanism (a common practice within social network spaces), the technology loses its neutrality” (Lotan, 2011, p114). But this is a two ways street; the algorithm is not the only disadvantage that the social media has produced; users, also have an impact on misguiding each other when it comes to sharing news.
For instance, journalism, prior to the current social media decade might have had issues concerning objectivity and roaming around it but at least they were somehow bound to a set of ethics to report truthfully. The current social media decade made everyone report on news through social media and can put up freely his thoughts, opinion, story without being bound to the same set of rules or codes of ethics.
The media has formed a marketplace of ideas; lots and lots of ideas that people can not focus and sort through all of the ideas. Algorithm tailors these ideas to fit in “trending topics” categories. Twitter determines what is the trending topic by highlighting on the topics that are touched upon by sharp spikes and not by gradual sustained growth. For instance what hat happened during the #OccupyWallStreet journey in which the topic was not “trending” because the spike was to Kim Kardashian’s favour since her wedding was on the same day and so her wedding was the trending topic. Facebook, however, sorts its trending topics differently, it depends on whom you follow and what pages you like and of course the Facebook community has a say on that matter.
Because “every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question,” (quoted in Haack, 1998, p.22) the idea of reaching out for the truth through any means; social media, traditional journalism or citizen journalists, is very important because it shapes one’s life. I believe that in order for people to gather the “raw” truth, they should shuffle amongst all medium possible and question every detail because any detail can be only brought up in order to manipulate one’s mind. For instance, news literacy workshops can be given in order for people to know how to manipulate their perception of news, and maybe the news literacy can also unfold the mystery of the “black box” which is algorithm. Let us not ignore the fact that algorithm is separating us from objectivity and, ignorance here is NOT a bliss!
