Sunday, October 16, 2016

Try not to blame information fragmentation on new media/social media

Media fragmentation or the fragmentation of information/news is one of the recurring themes of media critics, especially those who lament about what they perceive to be nefarious effects of social media.

It is such a beloved trope that politicians and journalists will add alarming tidbits and calls for censorship of Facebook and Twitter to speeches and articles about almost any subject that plays out on social media - which means most of public discourse.

Neither this post or earlier ones that called for a less hyped up view of the subject can pretend to answer any of the big questions, but the blogster wants to continue to caution against what increasingly looks like a romanticized view of all things information before the advent of the internet.

What the blogster wants to show is that there is "intra-media fragmentation", i.e. information presented in a fragmented manner, without "connecting the dots" within one and the same traditional paper dating back to pre-internet times and still going strong today. 

One of the best, accessible to non-scientists, studies on the subject of media fragmentation is this one. It provides a great introduction to the most frequent questions and details evidence from lab experiments. We'll just quote one take-home point here and recommend their section on related research: “The results presented here suggest that information choice, at least among those with personally important opinions, does not appear to make those individuals or democracy better off,” Leefer concludes.

Another write-up (in German) confirms the role of inertia - or existing routines - in favor of what are often called "traditional media".

One clear evidence that fragmentation and polarization pre-date the internet and social media is contained in that article. It mentions Fox News and MSNBC as frequently cited "echo chambers".

The focus of earlier studies is summarized by the article as "prior to the Internet, scholars were concerned about the lack of media diversity and the fact that citizens were a “captive audience” potentially subject to mass manipulation.

Every now and then, clashing opinions within one media outlet surface. A great recent episode was the chasm between the Washington Post Editorial board opposing pardon for whistleblower Edward Snowden in contrast to the Post's newsroom.

It is tempting to call this "fragmentation", but this is not how the blogster understands the term. The dots were present - which is what OpEds are frequently about, though less often than one might wish.

The blogster's view of fragmentation within a publication/broadcast outfit is much simpler.

Here is a single example of the blogster's view of fragmentation as news as a succession of factoids.
Small enough that they hardly register - so don't feel bad if your reaction is "what?" or "yawn".

In a recent post, the blogster used reports on the 2017 benefit hikes of Germany's means-tested basic scheme Hartz IV to illustrate bias (or emphasis) in brief articles. The benefits for an adult will rise by 5 Euros from 404 to 409 Euros a month.

Within the past week, German news reported an increase of the "renewable energy fee", which is added to consumers' electricity bills.

No one did the math for benefits recipients.

The share of benefits set aside for electricity already falls short for many (depending on regional variations). Our calculation based on average power bills came to an average increase of the bill by a little over 1.5 Euros a month, which eats up a third of the benefits increase.

In short, fragmentation of news/information is old and pretty much unavoidable.

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