2015 Google Online Marketing Challenge (GOMC)

We should have participated in this contest! 
http://www.utdallas.edu/news/2015/11/12-31767_Jindal-School-Teams-Google-Marketing-Campaigns-Rea_story-wide.html?WT.mc_id=NewsFacebook

Algorithmic

 I thought the reading this week was interesting especially in how it contrasted the author's idea of "professional journalism" where the audience is rarely thought of to "algorithmic journalism" where the opposite is true. I also liked how the author made sure to recognize that the relationship can too easily be oversimplified, which i think is often very tempting to do. It's good to recognize the advantages and new abilities that big data and technology gives us, but i think the author is saying we need to continue to put a critical eye to it and not get swept away in the wave of newness.

News: Hearts on Twitter

https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hearts-on-twitter

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/nov/08/twitter-heart-wrong-beat

Implications for journalism

It surprises me every time I read a journalism article how little attention has been paid to the audience. Anderson (2011) writes that this is primarily because of a disconnect from the audiences, the "inability to intellectually imagine an audience of millions of people." However, that's what advertisers do all the time. No one can simply imagine what audiences may be like but advertisers have always sought audience response to reflect opinions and improve campaigns. I do not understand how news had evolved around superiors writing for themselves assuming "that what interested them would interest the audience" for so many years before finally coming to the realization that the the millions of audiences out there may have different thoughts and opinions. Despite the importance of audiences, I think they serve a different purpose for an industry like advertising that is a commercial business versus a news organization that needs to serve the public's best interest without monetary incentives. I feel that citizens have the right to be informed of public national matters regardless of what kind of articles other audiences want to read about. To me, public journalism movement seems like the best option. Indymedia's push where audiences are encouraged to be citizen journalists does not seem newsworthy to me and people can write their opinions on their private blogs. Demand media has an algorithm set up to pump out new articles and videos based on popular searches and online trends. This simply adds to what is already known and popular out there and does not contribute to actual news or new information.

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.

Don't track me, bro

The topics raised by the paper were very interesting after just reading through the two articles on Facebook's studies. A lot of what the researchers wrote involved how much power the audience now has in agenda-setting, and how journalists need to understand they are no longer passive. This thought is reinforced by the two articles on Facebook where we saw audience posts manipulated to successfully influence other users.

To me, this just shows how important it continues to be that journalists not get swept up in audience-driven editorial judgement because enough of that is happening in the social media world already. The authors cite Barger and Barney saying “the market requires giving the public what it wants; democracy requires giving the public what it needs” (2004) and I think it's crucial for journalists to remember that they are not exclusively market-driven.

Of course, privacy issues are also a big concern in the first two articles, as big data is collected and then used to manipulate the public unknowingly. It certainly reinforces how important it is to have trained professional researchers and journalists who know the ethics of what they do.

Ethics

Facebook conducted a study, which manipulated users’ emotional state. More negative News Feeds led to more negative status messages, as more positive News Feeds led to positive statuses. Not to mention their mal use of the tools, it seriously challenges ethical issues. Even though some might refer this study as original, ethically, it’s an open question. Morality comes before any legality. We make regulations/laws out of ethical reasons. Somewhat contrary to their findings, there have been studies indicating the more users see other people being happy, the more they feel depressed and less happy.

 

The Facebook has always been manipulating users’ News Feeds. It uses an algorithm to determine what to display and hide, and it rarely discloses any detailed information about how the algorithm works. This is why I don’t use Facebook.
Tandoc and Thomas’ article on “The ethics of web analytics” was a good transition after reading articles about how deceptive the Facebook is. However, whether the Facebook can be considered as journalism still remains.