How Technology Assists the Blocking of Alternative Political Views
For first time in perhaps months, I sat down to read a newspaper. For all its conservative leanings, the local paper in San Diego tries its best to look well-balanced, providing views from across the political spectrum on its op-ed pages. Big bold titles with completely diverging opinions line side by side on the same page, giving the audience scanning through the content an ability to look at every view possible at one-go. Even if a certain reader does not have any particular affinity toward a particular piece, s/he is bound to look at it somewhat simply because it sits next to another piece that s/he would agree with.
Such visual, side-by-side presentation of opposing political views is unfortunately a dying phenomenon in the days of technology, just as the printed newspaper is quickly being phased out. To maximize readability, online versions of newspapers tend to put only one article at a time to the audience, who would first select want they want to read from a simple, clear menu. Theoretically, major newspapers can replicate what they do in printed newspapers on the list of articles for selection. Titles of opposing viewpoints can be put down side by side, so that the audience can at least get a gist of how different camps think differently.
But online versions are not pieces of paper. What are printed cannot be moved, but online content certainly can be filtered. The fact that people increasingly choose to news not through news website where at least there is a semblance of balance, but their own customized newsfeeds. Whether it is through old-fashioned XML or more nuanced Facebook feeds, these newsfeeds are designed by the users themselves to exclude any possibility of coming in contact with political views that they have no real or potential interests in seeing. It allows for more permanent segregation of one's reading list from any objective balance in views.
Furthermore, the sheer volume of information that cyberspace contains in terms of news has created a culture of short attention span in which fickle audience can easily move to competing sources of information if one source does not immediately grab attention. Media outlets must cater to the short attention span or risk quickly losing readership to an endless list of competitors, ever-expanding in number as the Internet made the production and dissemination of information much cheaper than starting up traditional newspapers. The low barrier to entry means new media outlets are getting ever-creative in pilfering readers from traditional ones.
One result of the intense competition for readers with short attention spans is the over-sensationalization of any news. The more attention-grabbing the headlines, the more likely the limited attention of more readers will be devoted to their exaggerated claims in the content. The extreme views, of both right and left, are rewarded with greater readership, at the expense of more moderate but more insipid political views that are more tolerant of alternative viewpoints. The readership immersed in such sensationalized information would no doubt become more prone to demonize their political opponents in the long-term.
As sensationalization in online media become more entrenched, truly balanced news outlets become an ever smaller minority. With over-sensationalizing media attracting larger numbers of readers, moderate publications with a history of balanced reporting are bound to either shut down or follow suit in the sensationalization (even if they continue to proclaim balanced reporting as a selling point). Media outlets with penchants for publishing views of opposing ideologies gradually die out, and those that sponsor exclusively one kind of political views become more mainstream and well-received.
It is a trend that will prove to be a disaster for readers seeking unbiased, undistorted analyses of current events. Considering that every opinion is colored by ideology of some sort, the only way to get the objective whole picture is to be equally exposed to views from all sides. The advent of Internet-centered media outlets is making this task of choosing to be balanced more difficult. With extreme views of the political fringe filling the front pages to attract readers, it become more tedious for the reader to find the central ground by reading exaggerated extreme opinions of polar opposite nature.
Surely, readers who go out of their way to find a balanced political view for themselves are in a tiny minority anyways. Most are highly content with sticking to their media outlet of choice, happily taking up the notion that their outlets of choice are more objective and balanced than those that support what they consider unappealing political views. As they distant themselves from alternative political views, they only incentivize online media outlets to further concentrate on highly biased information that skew all views in one political color in the name of balanced coverage.
Such visual, side-by-side presentation of opposing political views is unfortunately a dying phenomenon in the days of technology, just as the printed newspaper is quickly being phased out. To maximize readability, online versions of newspapers tend to put only one article at a time to the audience, who would first select want they want to read from a simple, clear menu. Theoretically, major newspapers can replicate what they do in printed newspapers on the list of articles for selection. Titles of opposing viewpoints can be put down side by side, so that the audience can at least get a gist of how different camps think differently.
But online versions are not pieces of paper. What are printed cannot be moved, but online content certainly can be filtered. The fact that people increasingly choose to news not through news website where at least there is a semblance of balance, but their own customized newsfeeds. Whether it is through old-fashioned XML or more nuanced Facebook feeds, these newsfeeds are designed by the users themselves to exclude any possibility of coming in contact with political views that they have no real or potential interests in seeing. It allows for more permanent segregation of one's reading list from any objective balance in views.
Furthermore, the sheer volume of information that cyberspace contains in terms of news has created a culture of short attention span in which fickle audience can easily move to competing sources of information if one source does not immediately grab attention. Media outlets must cater to the short attention span or risk quickly losing readership to an endless list of competitors, ever-expanding in number as the Internet made the production and dissemination of information much cheaper than starting up traditional newspapers. The low barrier to entry means new media outlets are getting ever-creative in pilfering readers from traditional ones.
One result of the intense competition for readers with short attention spans is the over-sensationalization of any news. The more attention-grabbing the headlines, the more likely the limited attention of more readers will be devoted to their exaggerated claims in the content. The extreme views, of both right and left, are rewarded with greater readership, at the expense of more moderate but more insipid political views that are more tolerant of alternative viewpoints. The readership immersed in such sensationalized information would no doubt become more prone to demonize their political opponents in the long-term.
As sensationalization in online media become more entrenched, truly balanced news outlets become an ever smaller minority. With over-sensationalizing media attracting larger numbers of readers, moderate publications with a history of balanced reporting are bound to either shut down or follow suit in the sensationalization (even if they continue to proclaim balanced reporting as a selling point). Media outlets with penchants for publishing views of opposing ideologies gradually die out, and those that sponsor exclusively one kind of political views become more mainstream and well-received.
It is a trend that will prove to be a disaster for readers seeking unbiased, undistorted analyses of current events. Considering that every opinion is colored by ideology of some sort, the only way to get the objective whole picture is to be equally exposed to views from all sides. The advent of Internet-centered media outlets is making this task of choosing to be balanced more difficult. With extreme views of the political fringe filling the front pages to attract readers, it become more tedious for the reader to find the central ground by reading exaggerated extreme opinions of polar opposite nature.
Surely, readers who go out of their way to find a balanced political view for themselves are in a tiny minority anyways. Most are highly content with sticking to their media outlet of choice, happily taking up the notion that their outlets of choice are more objective and balanced than those that support what they consider unappealing political views. As they distant themselves from alternative political views, they only incentivize online media outlets to further concentrate on highly biased information that skew all views in one political color in the name of balanced coverage.
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