Rethinking News and Media System Design Towards Positive Societal Implications

TL;DR

This paper addresses the problem that rapid, abundant online information degrades individuals’ ability to judge truth and participate in constructive democratic discourse. It proposes a research vision that combines insights from social sciences with HCI to design information systems that promote constructive discourse, openness to other opinions, and resilience against misinformation. The suggested technological approaches include contextual augmentation of posts, conversational agents, public displays, and gamified interfaces, along with consideration of misinformation-flagging backfire effects and a move toward decentralized, community-based news ecosystems. The work emphasizes ecologically valid evaluations and interdisciplinary collaboration to realize practically impactful, societally beneficial information technology.

Abstract

Since this century, the speed, availability, and plethora of online informational content have made it increasingly difficult for humans to keep an overview of real-world situations, build a personal opinion, and sometimes even decide on the truth. Thereby, personal opinion-making and public discourse became harder - two essential building blocks that keep a democratic society alive. HCI thus needs to rethink news, information, and social media systems to mitigate such negative effects. Instead of polarising through emotional and extremely framed messages, informational content online should make people think about other opinions and discuss constructively. Instead, through polarization and filter bubble effects, people lose openness and tolerance for the existence of opposing opinions. In this workshop, we will discuss how we can redesign our information technology for a better societal impact. We will present key takeaways from the social sciences and discuss how we can implement them using recent HCI findings and digital technologies.