Integrating reader insights into the news cycle
During a moznewslab lecture this past week, Aza Raskin provided a compelling perspective on being a change maker. You have a vision, but you need to convey that vision. And it needs to be concrete. By analogy to building a transcontinental railroad, the first aspect of Raskin’s perspective is to “lay down the first 100 miles of track” (communicating a concrete starting point). Complementary to this, you need to build a resort town on the other end (the promised land). Other people can then help fill in the rest of the railroad simply by understanding the first steps and what the final destination is.
It occurred to me that in my moznewslab proposal, I laid down some tracks, but did a poor job of building that resort town. So I thought I’d take a stab here.
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The web has connected us all. Yet we continue to struggle to understand and address collective problems together, from local issues to national ones like the debt ceiling to global issues like climate change.
The contrast between the connective potential of the web and the disappointing reality of internet discourse is nowhere more apparent than in the comment boards on news stories. Here is an opportunity for constructive engagement with people with diverse opinions about developing issues, and yet internet comment boards have become the cesspools of the internet, rife with trolling, drive-by commenting and knee jerk reactions.
Instead of considering the comment section to be a tacked-on, necessary-though-embarrassing component of a news site, we may be able to build interfaces that create a positive feedback loop between the comment section and subsequent followup stories.
To do this, we need to (1) *improve the quality of the discussion* by encouraging people to listen to each other, build on each others’ thoughts, and identify important takeaways; and (2) create new ways to summarize these insights into concise nuggets of crowd wisdom, such as important claims that readers would like fact-checked, or clusters of opinions organized into coherent position statements. If the quality is improved and the insights summarized, it may become practical and valuable for news organizations to dedicate some portion of their staff to following up the initial stories based on the audience reaction, creating a more interactive experience between news rooms and readers over time.
This is all part of a larger agenda. Lets extend the web to better channel the insights of many so that we can communicate more effectively and intelligently at a societal level. Lets build interfaces that encourage deeper listening to others and oneself, and deeper consideration of tradeoffs inherent in decisions. Lets build the social infrastructure for a more reflective, considerate world. A humane and empathetic hive mind.
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This is way too academic, so ideas on how to say this more powerfully and succinctly are very welcome!
Hi Travis, I think you have the core of something good here (although I may be biased because I see some common elements that I described in my own commenting proposal).
As for a better way to present the ideas, I think you already know how: Just keep including video and images as you did in your original proposal on the Drumbeat site.
Hi Travis. I really like your idea of “crowd wisdom.” I like the summarizing aspect, especially for stories that generate thousands of comments. It’s not humanly possible, or maybe it is if you have a lot of time on your hands, to read it all. The first step concerned me a little about “improve the quality of the discussion by encouraging people to listen to each other, build on each others’ thoughts, and identify important takeaways.” Comments, in my opinion, are automated because there is simply little work power in newsrooms to monitor comments and encourage insightful discussions. People will comment what they will. Could this be somehow automated — the identifying important takeaways? I’m just thinking realistically because of the smaller news staffs.
Hi Amy!
I agree with you about the overload of reading it all, much less responding. That’s where I think the innovation lies. I do not believe it is possible, or even desirable, to have automatic identification of takeaways. HOWEVER, I think that we design tools that push the audience (readers and commenters) to identify what they believe are the most important takeaways.
That is one of the goals of Reflect (http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/travis/reflect/), which nudges people to restate important points that other people are making. Those short summaries can be a first step in summarizing full discussions so that those reader insights can practically be engaged by the overburdened newsroom workers. Essentially, this shifts the responsibility making something of the comments to the readers themselves.
(note: I should have Reflect enabled on this blog, but I need to update the Reflect Wordpress plugin, which I haven’t had time to do recently)
Hey Travis — enjoyed your post. I think you’re right on about the stark difference in theories of discourse on the open web and the realities of the situation. Reflect sounds like an interesting project proposal, and I’d love to hear more of your insights on fostering more a more engaged, reflective “reader persona,” if you will. I’m eager to see how this progresses!
I love your thinking here about creating an online environment that is far more interactive at a deeper more reflective level – an intellectual Utopia. I wished I had such faith in society. I do in communities of thinkers and those at the vanguard of societies changes. However, I do not have the faith you share about the mass of people wanting to engage in reflection, understanding and dialogue. This type of discourse is best left to those that can, that have the ability to wrestle with complex issues and not be offended to their core at differing opinions. I love the data that we now have from the vast majority of our comment pools on every issue. The data only supports the idea that our population, in general, feel they need to be heard (irregardless of their nasty messages). So, they have a voice online, and it is mostly anonymous, or so they think. We now measure the immaturity of our population by those knee jerk responses. And we use this data to continue to steer the herd. It is a beautiful system.
Thanks for the article Travis. I do like your call to action about communicating more effectively and intelligently at a societal level.
Do you believe we are moving away from this philosophy with our lessening attention spans and me-driven mind sets? Becuase this rings especially true online (the average time spent on a site is very short and still diminishing), how can we combat this?
Comment on news stories are sometimes full of intolerant views, and as you say some are ‘knee jerk reactions.’ I have been labeled immature, by one reader just because my view differed with his.
Granted that some people have short memory spans, lack the ability to analyze issues more deeply and have static beliefs, comment boards will continue to have diverse opinions.
Your proposal ‘for news organizations to dedicate some portion of their staff to following up the initial stories based on the audience reaction’ sounds interesting.
I wonder what the big news organizations that receive thousands of comments per news story would say about it. Especially in the fast paced society where big news stories are released almost every hour.