algorithmic audiences

This week’s reading on Anderson talks about the relatively novel concept called, algorithmic audiences. By analyzing three different journalism-audience relationships—the public journalism, Indymedia, and demand media—the author tries to correlate to different images of democracy and sociological implications. Algorithmic journalism is reducible to quantification and the visualization of an aggregative audience. Because the domain of this research is quite new, it’s more of speculation rather than empiricism. The way algorithmic journalism works is based on INTERNAL BIAS, which goes back to the last week’s reading: democratic journalism provides what the public needs, not what the public wants. If algorithmic journalism sees audiences as non-participatory, simply guided by their internal bias without critical thinking, content with what the media has to offer, and unconcerned with eliminating bad information, how is it different from the way capitalism operates? Yes, journalism is a unique business model, but the very nature of journalism is to create the civil society. It should be careful not to simply follow the systems of capitalism and advertising.