Proposed Title: How ‘Click-Bait’ News Keeps Us Uninformed:

Author: Lewis King, Istanbul 26.02.2014

Contact: lewisjkingop@gmail.com

Bio: Lewis King is an Istanbul based graduate student, writer, and researcher at the MiReKoc Migration Research Center.

If my Facebook news feed these days is any indication, it seems that society is growing more cognizant of world events than they were a decade ago. Sometime around the ‘Arab Spring’ it became common place to turn to social media for news and analysis. A slew of headlines heralded the, “Twitter Revolution” and the rise of, “Facebook Activists.” I certainly don’t recall my Myspace page featuring stories about Palestine, Egypt and Venezuela as is the case with Facebook, Twitter and Reddit these days. And while the jury is still out over whether or not this glut of information generates any sort of mobilization among international readers, we none the less have an unprecedented amount of information at our fingertips.

But rather than creating an informed audience, readers are exposed to a growing and disturbing new brand of journalism that pilfers research on complex stories and then summarizes it into precise, consumable ‘click-bait’ bullet points. Not only do these journalistic parasites obliterate the nuances of the stories they co-opt, their format precludes locating the information within the context of the event. Instead, they sensationalize the topic and then substantiate their case with a list of numbered facts gleaned from other, in-depth reports.

What makes this trend even more worrisome is that new-media sites are creating an audience that understands politics and society as a series of lists, and black and white truths. But the world is not reducible to these lists and binaries, and such expectations could cripple civil society and further dumb-down political and social discourse.

While an informative news story provides background, context, and analysis, click-bait stories provide little in this regard. In fact, by masquerading as ‘news coverage’ these articles misinform readers as to the real nature of the events they claim to cover. Consider the coverage of two stories recently featured on buzzfeed.com that purport to deal with complex stories.

The first article, “Everything You Need to Know about Kiev’s Brutal Protest Standoff” weighs in at a paltry 1000 words. The article, in spite of its brevity, claims to cover, “everything you need to know” about the recent events in Ukraine. The writers at buzzfeed.com are either delusional or deliberately misinforming their readers for traffic and advertising revenue. And when scores of protesters and police are dying in the streets, this callous manipulation of the truth is unconscionable.

Not content with deliberately misleading its audience, buzzfeed.com wastes an opportunity to inform, by concentrating on the aesthetics of the social upheaval in Ukraine rather than the facts. The opening paragraph is almost entirely dedicated to what the protesters were wearing, their improvised weapons, and the medieval and brutal nature of the violence.

At no point in the story does the author mention the intransigence of the EU negotiators, Ukrainian cultural and linguistic diversity, the complex economic ties between Russia and Eastern Ukraine, Cold War institutions and continued contestation for spheres of influence, or the high levels of poverty and underdevelopment in many parts of the country, to name a few topics that warrant more ink than the sartorial disposition of the protesters. Readers that take the articles title at face value will walk away ignorant about the complexities of the situation, despite believing otherwise.

The next featured story, also posted in their ‘world news’ section concerns another complex current event that is rooted in a long and costly history: the isolated and despotic regime of Kim Jong-Un and his predecessors. This story provides even less coverage than the previous example. In fact, it merely features a satellite picture of North and South Korea that shows how underdeveloped (and therefore unlit) the northern half of the Korean peninsula is.

Entirely absent from the article is any explanation for this remarkable disparity. In other words, readers will remain uninformed about the Korean War, China’s role in propping up the dictatorship, American military presence in the region, and the intense hostility between the states, to name just a few important dynamics of the story. Just as bad, this story will inform them in the voting booth to the extent that American foreign policy affects their voting choices.

This cursory presentation and lack of analysis is part of a worrying trend in the coverage of major news stories. The recent $30 million acquisition by Yahoo.com of Summly, an app that condenses news stories into a single sentence shows that investors are betting on the diminishing attention spans of readers. Meanwhile, across the world, news bureaus continue to downsize as the risks associated with the trade increase. And much to my chagrin, the conversations that I have with friends about Venezuela, and my inability to contribute in a meaningful way are just as telling. These discussions show how effectively these new-media sources have penetrated our collective consciousness.

Over drinks a few days ago, I found myself regurgitating the events in Caracas as they appeared in my social media news-feed. I realized I was re-creating a binary where an educated and globally oriented group was struggling for a voice against an autocratic and isolated leader that was violently suppressing them, while ignoring Maduro’s strong support amongst Venezuela’s poorest who had been marginalized for decades prior to Chavez. But I knew all about the motorcycles, armed thugs and whatever else it was that made for a memorable headline or a catchy you-tube video.

But what I wasn’t talking about was Venezuela’s history of colonialism and clientelism, a brutal and unequal appropriation of natural resources by American backed elites and multinationals, and the implementation of racist ‘Jim Crow’ laws by US mining and oil firms in Venezuela as they plundered natural resources and displaced native populations, all of which have influenced the socio-political landscape of modern day Venezuela and shaped the conflict playing out on our Facebook feeds. This was because sensational, “Pics of What’s Happening in Venezuela,” stories provide me with no introduction or context to build on.

These truncated ‘click-bait’ stories allow us to talk about important events without understanding them. If the role of the media is to inform the public, then the rise of click-bait news sites is a step backward. Rather than raising our cognizance of our ignorance, these news sites lull us into a sense of false awareness by implying that a grasp of disconnected facts means we understand the stories we read. And thus, our ‘informed decisions’ are actually just the opposite. Rather than engendering informed debate, our discourse is now based on a slew of decontextualized facts that leave us unable to empathize with, and understand, the real people in the stories whose experiences are being turned into entertainment and revenue.

So when the buzzfeed.com online personality test tells me that I most closely resemble the Disney princess Rapunzel because I am scared of losing my job, I am rightfully skeptical. And when they tell you that you know everything about the riots in Ukraine, I suggest you do the same. And if I somehow still have your attention, get down to the gut churning rhythms and bass lines of Maynard Ferguson right here (RIP).