Trends 2017: The media will fight to make sure that you read what you don’t like

According to the new Reuters Institute study on trends in journalism, media and technology for 2017, this is going to be one of the media battles to come this year.

In the recent US elections we learned that the media and its readers live in totally watertight media bubbles that prevent us from analyzing the current situation from a neutral point of view. That explains, among other things, why many could not forecast Donald Trump’s victory until the very day of the election. We simply had no way of knowing the true state of mind of the Conservatives.

The reign of the algorithms has made our reading experience on the Internet so “pleasant” that it only offers us news that are close to our ideological spectrum (to which we can easily do “Like”), and it hides everything we can disagree with. After all, advertisers only want to associate themselves with content that empathizes with their readers, and the social media business (which is the kiosk of our time) is based precisely on facilitating connection between brands and engaged users. That is why on Facebook, for example, everyone seems to agree with us. It simply does not show us contents of the other half.

We must welcome initiatives such as those of The Guardian and its section Burst your bubble, which echoes the news that are being read by conservatives (which are not the traditional target of the liberal masthead).

Download the full Reuters study from this link.