The Algorithmic Distribution of News: Policy Responses

My new edited collection with James Meese, The Algorithmic Distribution of News: Policy Responses, examines regulatory responses - and the responses of journalism organizations -  to the distribution of news by algorithms. It examines how news recommenders and aggregators like Google News and the Facebook news feed have challenged the traditional news gatekeepers and the revenue flows of news organizations.  Countries around the world have come up with a broad range of policy responses. The spectacular array of authors in this book book provide both reflections on these initial responses, as well as some food for thought about future directions. 

Wallflowers at the Revolution

The NYT's Frank Rich:

A month ago most Americans could not have picked Hosni Mubarak out of a police lineup. [...] And so now — as the world’s most unstable neighborhood explodes before our eyes — does anyone seriously believe that most Americans are up to speed? [...]

The live feed from Egypt is riveting. We can’t get enough of revolution video — even if, some nights, Middle West blizzards take precedence over Middle East battles on the networks’ evening news. But more often than not we have little or no context for what we’re watching. That’s the legacy of years of self-censored, superficial, provincial and at times Islamophobic coverage of the Arab world in a large swath of American news media. [...]

Perhaps the most revealing window into America’s media-fed isolation from this crisis — small an example as it may seem — is the default assumption that the Egyptian uprising, like every other paroxysm in the region since the Green Revolution in Iran 18 months ago, must be powered by the twin American-born phenomena of Twitter and Facebook. [...]

It may be the case that Facebook had a role to play and even, as Jennifer Preston argues, became an outlet and organizing platform for protesters and Egypt. However, there are many, many other factors, alongside Facebook, that those of us who are so distant from the events and context just don't have a grasp on. Rich is right: the mainstream media are responsible, to some extent, for Western ignorance. New media might play a role in correcting that ignorance to some degree. In a world where misguided Western intervention has done so much harm, that, it seems to me, is the more important story.

Revolution and Social Media

The Egyptian government today took the unprecedented move to shut down Internet and mobile communications in the face of a massive protest against the Mubarak regime. This follows the protests in Tunisia that, earlier in January, caused Ben Ali to leave office. Alongside these political developments a public debate has been taking place on the role of social media like facebook and twitter in protest movements.

Clay Shirky, in the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs, argued that social media makes it possible for publics to coordinate massive and rapid protests, contributing to the political power of publics and democracy. Writing before the events in Tunisia, he cited the 2001 impeachment trial of Philippine President Joseph Estrada, in which coordinated protest prevented the setting-aside of important evidence against the president. He argued that the United States, rather than focusing on freedom of information on the Internet and the censorship of major American online news outlets, should focus its foreign Internet policy on access to social media, encouraging its general use.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his recent piece in the New Yorker, took the opposite view. "The revolution will not be tweeted," he proclaimed, saying that social media fosters only weak ties and commitments - not the kind of political commitment that brings protesters to face down difficult and even dangerous situations and to take the heroic stands necessary for true change to take place.

Others are more ambivalent about the power of social media. During the recent protests in Tunisia, Ethan Zukerman posted a piece that asked why the Tunisian protests had received so little mainstream media attention. Zukerman proclaimed himself agnostic about the role of social media, and expressed frustration with the failure of traditional media to take up the issue. [another agnostic]

The Atlantic has posted a more recent analysis of the role of social media in Tunisia. It features Jillian York of the Berkman Center for the Internet and Society, who believes that facebook creates relatively strong ties, and that such ties were important in leading Ben Ali to leave office on January 14. Not only does Facebook allow the circumvention of censorship in other media; Facebook, the Atlantic proposes, created strong ties by allowing individuals to show, share, and amplify the injury, pain, and protest that was taking place - especially through video. The Atlantic reports one individual as saying that facebook went from being "a waste of time or procrastination tool "to a primary source of news about the events.

Today's shutdown of Egyptian communications demonstrates, if not the power of social media, then its perceived power. However, the true test may come in the days ahead, as what is tested is not the power of social media, but the power of people without it.