Tired and confused by the news?
The advent of the Internet has completely changed how people find and consume media. No more are the days when everyone you knew got their news from the same local paper. This shift has caused significant strife within the media due to the proliferation of fake news, clickbait, and low quality journalism, as well as pressure against media distributors and independent news outlets alike. Speaking to experts in journalism, fact checking, information philosophy, as well as everyday people, we grouped our insights into four broad categories:
Authenticity/Credibility
Trust for mainstream media is at an all-time low, leading people to seek unconventional news sources such as youtubers or bloggers. On the internet, anyone can seem like an expert. Real news is labeled as fake news and vice versa. And because of cognitive bias, people are more likely to reinforce their prior beliefs.
Discourse
Conversations often lack any evidence or data. News stories can go viral online whether they are true or not. Many people adopt the political stances of their family members without a second thought. Corrections made on stories often go unnoticed as people generally only remember headlines rather than substance.
Information Landscape
The media is dominated by sensational stories, lacking in historical context and objectivity. Investigative journalism is not well funded. Technology has allowed for more variety in news sources, including podcasts, live streams, long reads, email newsletters, and citizen journalism.
Alternative Agendas
Media companies are often owned by wealthy elites and multi-national corporations. Influence from the top affect which journalists are hired, which stories are covered, and what ideas are propagated. Tech giants such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google hold a monopoly on the flow of information online, raising serious concerns regarding the influence these companies have on the media.
Navigating the Information Landscape
To combat this proliferation of ‘Shit News’, we’ve created Unfold. Unfold consists of two parts: A verification system that promotes good journalistic standards and transparency of news sources and a platform that enables users to read the news in context and have control over their news feed and reading habits. These two parts act like a boat and compass, the boat being a better medium for a person to navigate the news infrastructure more comprehensively and the compass being a tool that would allow a person to be more critical of the information they’re reading and adapt accordingly.
Ethical Journalism
At the heart of the system are the journalistic standards, compiled with the help of ethical journalism organizations and international professional orders that regulate the conduct of their associates from an impartial perspective. These are translated into quantifiable parameters and algorithmic tools that can assist in the process of validating a large corpus of news content. Media outlets and content that pass these standards are allowed onto the platform.
Unfold the Story
The user facing side is a news app which brings readers personalized content based on their habits and interests. The app allows you to ‘unfold’ relevant keywords and diverse opinions within the text, allowing you to choose which parts of the story you want to dig into and become a more informed reader. The user is given full view of their data that is used by the application, showing the user their habits and biases and allowing the user to control what is shown on their feed.
Algorithmic Agency
Unfold curates the day’s relevant and trending stories, and presents them in a personalized news feed, ranked to the user’s interests and preferences. The user is able edit their interests, favorite sources, and other data that affects their personal feed, allowing the reader to be presented with content that they wish to read, not what an algorithm wants them to read.
Dynamic Content
In Unfold, a news article becomes a choose-your-own-adventure story. Green highlighted links and keywords allow you to ‘unfold’ more context about the story and really go deeper into the information you’re interested in. Relevant opinions on the story from across the political spectrum are also just a fold away, allowing you to become a more balanced and educated reader.
Critical Reflection
Your reading habits are shown to you in the dashboard, giving you feedback into which topics you’ve been reading and your personal political biases. By confronting users with their data, we are encouraging people to change their habits and their algorithms to suit their aspirations and become better informed about what they care about.
Demo
This demo of Unfold was built on a web stack utilizing Django, a Python based web framework, PostgreSQL, Redis, and was hosted on Heroku. It was designed to be mobile first using Bootstrap for front-end development and JQuery to create dynamic content and interactions.
