how to think about the news in the platform dominated context

1. Digital Humanities - Bocconi 2016 - Luca De Biase
Platform
“We need
diversity of thought in the world
to face the new challanges”.
Tim Berners-Lee

2. Are we better informed
in the info-sphere?

3. Are we better informed in the info-sphere?
❖ There are more opportunities for getting informed
❖ There are maybe too many opportunities for getting
information
❖ We can be better informed only if we are aware of the
way platforms work

4. What is a platform and how does it affect our relationships
❖ Information overload is a failure of filters. How do platforms help us
deal with it and what are the algorithms that they use? What are the
consequences of those algorithms? Do you know about the Facebook
experiment?
❖ Eli Pariser, The filter bubble, 2011
❖ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/books/review/book-
review-the-filter-bubble-by-eli-pariser.html?_r=0
❖ http://www.forbes.com/sites/dailymuse/2014/08/04/the-
facebook-experiment-what-it-means-for-you/

5. Facebook’s experiment

6. We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can
be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same
emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional
contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend
expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full
“Experimental evidence of massive-scale
emotional contagion through social networks”

7. ❖ A study by Gregory Trevors and other shows why it is
so difficult to convince people with facts. It shows that if
facts oppose people’s beliefs, which are part of their
identity, then facts are rejected. If facts bear out people’s
sense of identity then they are taken into account
❖ Why is it so hard to persuade people with facts?
❖ http://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/02/why-is-it-so-hard-
to-persuade-people.html.

8. ❖ Robert Epstein and others show how the success of Google -
and Facebook - is building a new manipulating information
system. Responses by the search engine are able to change the
perception of reality and thus user beliefs when they are
unaware of any distorting effects that the engine can hold. It
must be said that users are almost always uncritical towards the
results offered by Google, and consider it essentially objective.
❖ Robert Epstein’s article is worth reading: The new mind control;
The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence that can flip
elections and manipulate everything we say, think and do
❖ https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-
alters-our-thoughts

9. Reason is minority

10. Digital and traditional media
❖ What’s so different in the digital media environment? Time, attention,
authority are the new competitive dimensions. While our learning,
memorizing and connecting strategies change quite a lot. But we now have
to deal with information overload and some other problems. This is not the
end of media evolution.
❖ Luca De Biase, Cambiare pagina, Rizzoli, 2011
❖ https://edge.org/conversation/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable
❖ http://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/jan/05/clay-shirky-future-
newspapers-digital-media

11. Economy of digital media
❖ Scarcity was: space, memory, processing
❖ Scarcity is: time, attention, relevance
❖ Scarcity shifts: from supply to demand

12. Public dimension
❖ The medium blurs in the info-sphere
❖ Algorithms and interfaces manage information
influencing the narrative
❖ Bubbles and tribes emerge
❖ Common dimension gets smaller, public space gets
privatized

13. To be part of the project of the
platform is part of being innovative

14. Present platforms are not the end of history
❖ Facebook, Google, Apple have a history. And a strategy.
But they also have competitors. How does a platform
get traction and success? How a newcomer can get a
success, too? What is the network-effects and how can
we deal with it?
❖ B.J. Fogg, Persuasive technology, 2003

15. B.J. Fogg’s model
Technologies
can be persuasive

16. B.J. Fogg’s model

18. Ecology of media: a plurality of mutations
❖ Infinite mutations are needed for a rich media
ecosystem to flourish. A sort of new consciousness is
needed to escape the danger of being trapped in a
platform without making the most of it.
❖ Lev Manovich, The language of New Media, Mit, 2001
❖ Luca De Biase, Homo pluralis, Codice 2015
❖ Aaron Balick, The psychodynamics of social
networking, Karnac 2014