Journalists and Technologists Should Collaborate to Build More Trustworthy Media:

3 Proposals for Technologists

The Internet: Both "Problem" and "Opportunity"

Americans' trust in the mainstream media is at historic lows,1 which is troubling because a trusted free press is essential to democracy. There are many reasons for the breakdown in trust, but while the proliferation of internet sources and social networks spreading "Fake News" has been a hot topic in the last several months, the problem of Fake News predates the recent rise of social media; and although the internet intensifies the problem, internet technology also provides an opportunity for solutions.

There is a variety of definitions of Fake News, from fabrication out of full cloth, to unverified sources, to anonymously-sourced news,2 to out-of-context misrepresentations of real sources. The problem is complex,3 and can not be solved by a single approach, but one technological solution to the problem of out-of-context quotations can be found in the Internet's past, by looking back to Internet Pioneer Ted Nelson and his original vision for what eventually became the Web that we know today.4 In Nelson's vision, we find an original design that harnesses technology for social ends.

It is important that today's technologists work with journalists using a similar social awareness to develop new systems that apply technology towards the social goal of building more trustworthy media. This article looks back at two prominent examples of Fake News stories that predate the Obama administration — one involving Al Gore in 1999, and a second involving Sarah Palin in 2008. It also proposes that journalists adopt new technology that could allow authors to demonstrate the context of their quotations, and poses three challenges for technologists to improve their companies' products and services.

The Web’s Original Design

In 1960, Ted Nelson had an epiphany while a grad student at Harvard, in which he foresaw all types of media being delivered to individuals via computer screens.5 I have drafted a longer essay6 describing the history and design of his original vision to free ideas from the fetters of paper and integrate them with audio and video.7 But for the purpose of this article, the important insight Nelson had was that media must present the original copy of every source alongside its quotation, allowing the reader to assess the context from which the quotation was made.8 A major barrier to informing the public is people’s short attention span, and those in charge of media outlets understand well the importance of being concise. They do not want to risk losing their readers and viewers in the “weeds,” (large amounts of associated and additional information available at the click of a mouse). But many times readers want to explore the weeds to verify the publication’s claims. In Nelson's system, all links would display their source immediately beside the quotation, without requiring readers to click on a link and leave the current document for a new tab or window.9

Nelson’s design for side-by-side (parallel) text does nothing to solve the problem of Fake News fabricated out of full cloth, or the issue of reporting unverified sources, but it does allow readers greater insight into a story’s context, and it could act as a check against stories that mutate out of an initial set of facts when a story is circulated by second and third-hand accounts.

Two Historical Examples of Fake News

As an example of how stories can mutate, consider two Fake News memes:

Providing Context to Videos

This same idea of showing extended context could be attempted in video format, displaying the 30 seconds before and after an excerpt.

This video example is just a crude way of suggesting how YouTube could be used to link excerpts to their broader context. I can imagine YouTube allowing video creators to upload the full context of all source clips, adding contextual "before" and "after" buttons to each clip, and seamlessly stitching together all video components.

None of this solves the problem of the authenticity of clips, but allowing creators to demonstrate the context of their work could inspire greater confidence from the public and offer participating media outlets a competitive advantage.

Where Has the Innovation Gone?

Silicon Valley seems to have lost some of its former mission of media innovation, focusing instead on new moon shots such as self-driving flying cars, extending human lifespans indefinitely, and rockets to Mars, leaving critical media innovation unexplored. As an illustration of some of the media areas in need of innovation, I'll pose three questions to computer technologists in Silicon Valley:

Why is it not possible for YouTube to seamlessly connect the viewer to the continuation of a given video clip , using clips previously uploaded by others? Why is it not possible for the Google search engine to allow viewers to find the best comments available that are linked to a specific video time segment in a way similar to that of Medium.com's experiment with comments? Why is it not possible for web browsers to have the linked content displayed beside the linking source, without forcing viewers to leave the source page?

The issue of media trust is a complex one, but one part of the solution involves developing new journalistic conventions and technology. It has become convention that academic papers contain footnotes, and Wikipedia has replicated this convention in their online encyclopedia. Imagine if it were also a convention that all text, audio, and video quotations would contain links to their full sources, enabling audiences to effortlessly inspect each quotation's full source. Imagine if web browsers were redesigned so that hypertext links no longer sent readers away from the document they were browsing, but displayed a citation and its source side-by-side. With enough willpower, such a system is possible. It is time for journalists and technologists to collaborate to develop new systems that restore trust in media. Our democracy depends on it!

Questions to Consider

What do you think of the Neotext expanding citation system featured in the article? What do you think of the Al Gore and Sarah Palin Fake News examples? What do you think of the idea of modifying the browser to support contextual quotations without requiring the user to leave the source page? What do you think about the idea of a system to provide greater context to video clips?

Footnotes