What if the trending news story in your social media feeding
was all story and not news? Recently Facebook announced that it would trend
toward automated algorithms rather than humans to generate its trending news
feed. Facebook deleted its entire editorial staff responsible for
writing the descriptions for its Trending Topics. What could possibly go wrong?
How about a totally fictitious story about Fox News’ MegynKelly supposed support for Hillary Clinton causing Kelley to be fired. Any
reasonable human would have looked at the source of the story, (End the Fed)
and realized that the story was not from a real news source.
One of the challenges facing us today is staying informed
about the complex world in which we live. Throughout the 20th
century most people relied on the journalists and the established news media to
act as gatekeepers to filter the news they consumed. On the one hand people
could have a reasonable expectation that what they saw on the network news or
read in a mainstream paper was reasonably true. On the other hand minority
viewpoints had a tendency to be stifled. Now anything is possible. Personally I
do use a news aggregator (Google News), but I find the results less than
satisfying. To make up for it I read two daily newspapers and several
magazines.
Where do you get your news? Do you curate your own news feed,
or rely on machines? Here is a short list of News Aggregators.
