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Soapbox Philosophy: Info influx must mix wants, needs
Op-Ed · August 28, 2014
In this information age, we face a real question of balancing what we want versus what we need and how to get both in healthy doses.
Maybe like you, I have my e-mail filters cranked up pretty high, only letting messages reach my inbox from folks in my digital address book. I still check the junk folder, but with one finger constantly hovering over the “delete” button.
I stumbled across an article by Mathew Ingram on Gigaom.com that compared how Twitter and Facebook handled the events unfolding in Ferguson, Mo., after the shooting of the unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown.
Both Twitter and Facebook use algorithms to keep the feeds interesting and relevant, but Ingram asks you to consider: How much have you seen about Ferguson on Facebook, compared to, say, the ALS Ice Bucket challenge? On my Facebook wall, not much. Twitter, yes — Ferguson news is all over the place.
Ingram said Facebook’s algorithms are tightly held secrets, but the Ferguson story shows that there seems to be more weight given to what Facebook users have posted or “Liked” in the past, which means that breaking news is downplayed if you have never shown an interest in it before.
That would be all well and good if the “breaking news” was whether Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez were getting back together. But what is happening in Ferguson is of major importance to the question of civil rights and social justice.
An invariable algorithm cannot tell the difference.
I’m not saying Facebook is doing a bad job. Ingram’s column is directed toward journalists in an effort to help us better determine how to use the social media sites to reach readers. Facebook was created mainly for people to connect with friends, not for news, though it has recently begun efforts to try to meet news interests as well.
Thankfully, we have many other mediums than these two. For you, reading this newspaper is one of them. And, of course, instead of algorithms, we have people who try to follow the interests and trends of the community to provide a mix of news that is interesting, urgent, important or all three, in varying degrees.
That’s the key, though, isn’t it? Sure, we like to read and hear and see things that are of particular interest to each of us. But sometimes there are things that are important, things we have not been following or could not expect, that we need to hear about.
This is why English literature teachers require you to read books like “Fahrenheit 451,” “Lord of the Flies,” or “1984” — each addresses questions with which a society must not only consider, but be constantly aware. For the same reason, newspapers run stories about things like school state test scores and city property tax increases and how much the police department spends on new vehicles.
There are some things we need to know because each of us needs to be engaged members of society. We have the power to cast votes, share opinions, let people in and out of our lives, to lift up and to condemn.
We need to find ways to avoid information overload, yes, but we should not filter out what is truly important.
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