On Media Polarization
According to the Pew Research Center, people of different ideological backgrounds tend to consume news from a wide variety of different sources. In this century, the media have grown to become hugely influential, as whoever feeds us the most up-to-date piece of news may also hold the power to mold how we react emotionally and politically to it. This presents the problem of ideological polarization, which may account for some of the recent political volatilities in the past few years.
Some critics believe that a less polarized society is more efficient at achieving collective goals, as many projects require bipartisan effort to accomplish. Thus, bridging this gap in the society might be one of the necessary first steps towards a better future.
What to Do with News Source Bias?
Hoping for news sources to cover in a completely unbiased fashion may be impossible, as these sources are mostly controlled by bigger entities with their own political agendas. Thus, one of the better way to approach this problem is to attempt to change consumers’ behavior regarding news sources.
At the same time, it is clear that in order to modify someone’s behavior, the process must not be abrupt. On the contrary, it must be as convenient as possible, since anything considered obstrusive to the general day-to-day life might deter consumers from engaging more with the product.
Proposal: News Suggestion App
Thus, I propose a news suggestion app with the following set of (very very) general features:
- Construct a user-provided collection of favorite news sources.
- Understanding users’ stances on various political issues.
- Whenever users peruse articles on a particular issue, suggest matching articles from other news sources on the political spectrum.
- Learn from users’ most recently read articles, to construct a set of reading list regarding a wider overarching topic.
- Provide a social media environment where users could check out what their friends are reading.