Journalism has lost control of its platforms and means of distribution. In many ways, that’s good, because it has brought to an end the monopoly journalists once held on the news and information we need to govern ourselves in a democratic society.
We should be deeply concerned about the mysterious process that determines what we see or don't see in our Facebook newsfeeds.
But the age of information gatekeepers did not end with the rise of the Internet. In fact, the lowering of the moat was only a temporary blip. Now we’re living in a new age of gatekeeping. Our masters are social media — and Facebook in particular, both because of its dominance and the way it manipulates what we see.
Last week Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at the Columbia Journalism School, delivered an important speech at Oxford about the journalistic implications of social mediation. It is worth reading in full. Also worth reading is Mathew Ingram’s analysis. Just as earlier generations fretted over what made it (or didn’t make it) onto the nightly network newscasts, today we should be deeply concerned about the mysterious process that determines what we see or don’t see in our Facebook newsfeeds.
Bell, the former digital editor of the Guardian, neatly summarizes the key issues. First among them is this: the choices you make in deciding what to follow on Facebook are only partly reflected in what you actually see. Facebook uses algorithms to determine what pops up when you log on and what doesn’t.
There’s nothing inherently evil about this. The idea is to keep you on Facebook so that you will see more ads and make more money for Mark Zuckerberg and company. The editors of a news organization’s website want you to stick around as well. But if it’s a quality news site, it will be assembled with journalistic values in mind. You’ll see a combination of what you need to know, what you might like to know and what might be pure entertainment. Facebook, by contrast, handles such tasks automatically. And the algorithm presumably (no one knows for sure) doesn’t care whether you’re staying for news from Syria or for cat videos.
Sometimes Facebook’s values coincide with those of good journalism. Earlier this year, for instance, its programmers realized that viral clickbait from sites such as Upworthy was turning off its users — so they tweaked the code and made a lot of that content disappear. But Facebook has also secretly conducted experiments on its users to see what makes them happy or sad, or more or less likely to vote. Bell observes that Facebook lagged well behind in showing news from Ferguson, Missouri, last summer.
By contrast, Bell has called Twitter “the free press of the 21st century.” That’s because Twitter is almost completely transparent: you see everything from the feeds you choose to follow, and your followers see everything you post as well. But Twitter is far smaller and less influential than Facebook. Its executives have at least toyed with the idea of adopting their own algorithms. And Twitter deleted accounts that carried photos and videos of beheadings carried out by the Islamic State — an act of corporate censorship, but also a useful reminder of who’s really in charge.
Why, you might ask, does this matter? Can’t I go to the home page of the New York Times or NPR and get a comprehensive overview of the day’s news? Yes, you can. And you should. But home-page traffic is plummeting (especially on mobile), as more and more people turn to social sharing to get their news. It’s not difficult to be well-informed. It’s just that most people choose not to.
It’s too bad that speakers like Bell always see the need to conclude with possible solutions. I agree with Ingram and others that her idea that journalism should come up with its own platforms to compete with social media seems dubious. But she has brilliantly described the problem, and that’s where we need to start.
Dan Kennedy is an associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University and a frequent panelist on Beat the Press.
