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AlexRouhandehSecondEssay 3 - 23 Jan 2025 - Main.AlexRouhandeh
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The Algorithm of Polarization Fears a Free Web | | | While many people use social media to interact with people from their daily lives, many also use it to interact with strangers. An article published by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University writes that “Disinhibition, or the tendency of users to act outside the norms of society by being, for example, more aggressive online or less likely to use self-restraint, is common on social media.” It states that disinhibition can spring from “online anonymity or distance from others” and that the negative behaviors tied to disinhibition can feed radicalization.
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< | The study writes that algorithms exacerbate the creation of echo-chambers, driving people deeper into like-minded communities. With certain social media platforms boasting hundreds of millions of users, ordinary people can stumble upon and become entwined with extremist ideas with a greater level of ease than before the rise of social media. If the internet were a collection of websites and blogs run using free software, it’s plausible that many people would not encounter polarizing forces or have any interest in doing so. This web would be intentional, providing users greater agency to decide what information they encounter and what forces can engage with their platforms | >
> | If the web were reoriented as a set of blogs and websites, it could be enriched with dialogue that challenges such thinking. A 2023 study published in Teaching and Teacher Education found that dialogue supports critical thinking. This Wiki demonstrates how the web can be oriented in a fashion where publishers and readers communicate by offering comments and issuing edits to enhance shared understanding. Through that process, errors can be fact-checked and perspectives challenged. Instead of algorithms driving engagement, interpersonal interaction does, providing for a less anonymous internet more akin to the natural world. This acts as a form of editing, whereby the significance of web content lies in collaboration rather than just passive engagement. | | | Localizing the Web | |
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< | An internet where individual entities control their software and host their own platforms means there'd be less reliance on catering scalable content to algorithms, which could create new openings for websites to provide utilitarian information and draw in new users through outreach off the web. A greater focus on the convergence of physical and cyber life through in-person outreach means local information providers, like newspapers, could better compete in the vast cybersphere In 2007, prior to the advent of the iPhone and rise of Facebook, nearly 51 million weekly newspapers were circulated in the U.S., but that has fallen to roughly 21 million in 2022, according to estimates by the Pew Research Center. | >
> | An internet where individual entities control their software and host their own platforms means there'd be less reliance on catering scalable content to algorithms, which could create new openings for websites to provide utilitarian information and draw in new users through outreach off the web. A greater focus on the convergence of physical and cyber life through in-person outreach means local information providers, like newspapers, could better compete in the vast cybersphere. In 2007, nearly 51 million weekly newspapers were circulated in the U.S., but that has fallen to roughly 21 million in 2022, according to estimates by the Pew Research Center. | | |
When newspapers close, populations become more polarized. A 2018 study published in the Journal of Communication found that after a paper closed, “Voters were 1.9 percent more likely to vote for the same party for president and senator.” The authors note that while the margin is small, such figures can decide elections. Additionally, the News Literacy Project notes in its analysis of this study that disappearing local news means increased attention on national news, which often features partisan conflict. By decentralizing the web and empowering website hosts, the internet marketplace may look closer to that of 2007, when weekly papers boasted greater circulation and the political environment was less polarized, according to Pew. | | | Editing, and the cognitive structure called "fact checking" to which it gives rise, are the essence of the profession called journalism, into which you are rising. It is occurring here, in this class, because it is also (in one teacher's view) the essence of lawyering. Perhaps, then, it is where to begin.
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> | **Thank you for the feedback. I have replaced the copy with a revised version —AJR | | |
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