The Systems of
Information Dissemination

Masters of Strategic Foresight and Innovation (MDes), OCAD University

Goal: To understand main information dissemination systems of traditional media, social media, experts,  and government. 

Overview

Our current state of polarizing is why we have fragmented truth – where opinions and experiences have equal to more weight than statistics.

Lockdowns, protests, “fake news” - one cannot help but witness the destabilization of democracy and wonder how it came to be. In this project, we analyze information dissemination systems in traditional media, social media, government, and public health experts. We demonstrate how narratives are amplified by the agendas of these systems in order to maintain power, money, and control through clicks, views, and votes. 

About the System: The Iterative Inquiry Tool 

Next, we gained clarity on the remaining spheres by defining the boundaries, functions, actors, and processes to frame the system using the iterative inquiry tool.

Information dissemination is stories retold by recollection and serial reproduction. Storytellers strategically adapt and summarize a persuasive narrative that aligns with their agenda, and with the purpose of entertainment. Key facts are often omitted in favour of the reteller's expertise/opinion inorder to align with their brand. 

Consumers are able to select media outlets that confirm their ideologies. There is also a rapid takeover of traditional publishers' roles by social media companies. These companies have evolved beyond their role as distribution channels and now control what audiences see and even what format and type of journalism flourishes

Users' perspectives are shaped through tactics like attention capital from search engines, social networks, etc.. Ultimately, Populist and predatory actors utilize formative fissures on race, culture and economics to polarize their supporters and gain power and loyalty. In order to capitalise, this business model aims to give users affirmation instead of information.

The business model amplifies partisanship favouring loyalty to a brand or political lens. Actors take advantage of the attention economy to demonize their opponents, which acts as a funnel to expose citizens to more and more content from their "in-group" (McCoy & Somer, 2019).

The four systems

Between 2020 and 2021 data indicates that trust has declined most significantly among journalists (-6 point drop), business leaders (-7 point drop) and elected officials (-13 point drop). The impact of COVID went beyond the death toll as the legitimacy of key institutions are now being questioned. 

Let's take a look at the 4 sysmtes in the macro spheres: 

Traditional Media 

Both print and broadcast are driven by views, ratings, and subscriptions. To get eyes on their product, writers and commentators are incentivized to embellish headlines and exaggerate stories that will win attention. Two-thirds of U.S. adults say they’ve seen their own news sources report facts meant to favor one side (Shearer, 2020). Yet, readers generally tune into content whose biases match their own, reinforcing positionality and partisanship. No one knows what to believe as a result of these agendas and public trust in media is diminished greatly. 

Social Media

Social media is motivated by getting users on platforms. Social media companies use surveillance capitalism - the act of capturing behavioral data to predict user behaviour and serve recommendations: content. Through persuasive design methods like autoplay and infinite scrolling, as seen in TikTok, companies prioritize attention over well-being. The user is kept on the app and their attention is used for profit, also known as the “attention economy”. When attention is the mark for profit, social media companies act as tools to facilitate rapid spread of misinformation, the increase of polarization, and the break down of democracy.

Experts

Experts, in COVID and other health topics, are motivated to be seen as credible sources. They create and shape data to provide insights and help shape discourse. Experts are relied upon to guide policy decisions by the government and business decisions by corporations. 

Government

The government is divided between Incumbent and Opposition parties, each with their own methods to gain and maintain power. Incumbent parties want to utilize their influence in media, social media and with experts to proliferate information that is supportive of their governance and the parties’ funders. Opposition parties are incentivized to highlight mistakes, misgovernance and incompetence whether perceived or actual.

The System Story Loop 

The information generation story loop outlines the actors and motivations at a macro, meso and micro level.

The center dotted circle in the background of the story loop illustrates information as a narrative to control public opinion at a meso level, supporting the agenda of macro systems in sustaining power, money, and control.

The map illustrates how misinformation spreads to keep the actors in power. When power is involved, experts have identified two main themes of systems: Those in power seek to maintain it; and those in power have no incentive to change (Anderson & Rainie, 2020).

Decisions made by powerful actors at a macro level trickle outwards toward the citizens at a micro-level. These decisions are amplified, and the effects perpetuate the cycle of social inequity and marginalization.

Let's take a closer look at each actor. 

Experts

Experts maintain credibility as ‘the expert’ by maintaining control over their scientific information and knowledge translation. Open access to scientific methodologies is delayed as experts await peer
review. The act of gatekeeping information omits, deletes, and prohibits the expression of specific ideas, creating a filtering bias (Jürgens & Stark, 2017).

Bias agendas are also created through financial donations from billionaires who fund scientific studies which have different protocols than research grants. Grants require rigorous peer review vs private donation. As billionaires are predominately white, the fund disease areas that affect whites (Edwards, 2013).

Gatekeeping resources decrease access to literacy at a micro-level level, such as health literacy.

The lack of clarity causes disengagement from advice if communication is not easily understood. Lack of clarity drives polarization as we saw with confusion over efficacy of masks, whether COVID-19 was airborne or surface, debate over hydroxychloroquine, over how many boosters.

Government

Information is a tool used to shape political agendas and gain or maintain power. Leaders use polarizing statements to gain attention, go viral, increase financial support and motivate their base to vote. Media incentivizes politicians to polarize their citizens, which increases their turnout come election time (Campante & Hojman, 2013).

At the mass level, more significant partisan divisions in social identity generate hostility toward opposition partisans that encourages extreme tactics and undermines compromise and civility.

Corporate Media 

Corporate media conglomerates maintain their monopoly in the industry by remaining loyal to the narrative of their audiences and funders, and attacking opposing broadcasting systems. This keeps them in power and control of a narrative that influences public opinion.

Polarized audiences are upkept with clickbait-friendly titles, sensationalized headlines, and embellished reporting.

Finally, clicks and views funnel audiences to engage in bias that confirms their own.

Social Media 

Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok model their business based on attention and engagement (i.e. follows, clicks, views, re-shares and comments). These companies build their own power in one of two ways: through advertisers which monetize on attention and through their own valuations.

Social media has evolved beyond their role as distribution channels, and now control what audiences see and even what format and type of journalism flourishes. Moreover, it is in a platforms best interest to have consistent engagement and so sensationalism, polarization, and the building of echo chambers are all in their best interests.

The Path Forward

In envisioning a future state, a three horizons diagram can help identify the ideal future and steps to get there.  

This path shows the current challenges that are unsustainable in the long term. Some examples include citizens’ distrust in politicians, marginalized voices falling through the cracks of powerful, like-minded decision makers, big tech’s role in misinformation and polarization, government policies slow rate of keeping up with tech, and business models that revolve around profit over wellbeing of their customers. 

The disruptors of innovation include: captured disruption and harnessed disruption. Captured disruption: Censoring in social media and broadcast media may control the narrative in the short term, but only extend the lifespan and capture the current state. Disruptors that can harness the ideal future state quicker include  enabling individual and local journalism to drive pluralistic narratives, proactive policymaking. 

You need to add a little more to this - how did these terms come about? 

By adding diversity into key decision makers, we can reach out ideal future state. We should also reward media companies beyond clicks and views and into KPI’s that measure user wellbeing, having big tech come up with ideas that help regulators make intelligent regulations, and labeling true or false information based on peer-reviewed sources. Having indepdent economies in journalism, active citizenry, and transparency of funding could also help citizens regain trust in governmental institutions.

Recommendation 

Our recommendations require the system to transform utilizing both top-down societal interventions as well as bottom-up individual interventions - both are needed to for the ideal future state to come to fruition. Ultimately the weight of future state design falls to both all the actors in our systemigram, from government actors to big tech, corporations and news media, there is no single panacea to solving the challenge of information generation & dissemination.

The four intervention buckets can be defined as:

1. Separating money from information & decision making

All of the actors are influenced in some shape by their proximity to fundraising and capitalism. To do this:

• Clear transparency laws in elections and for government officials for fundraising and donations
• Regulating the way social media harvets user data and targets them via ad revenue, potentially as ad-free public squares

2. Empower diverse and local voices to emphasize a pluriverse

To unify and further mend current divisions the system needs to move towards a pluriverse paradigm, which incorporates human-centred ethinic, racial and ideologically diverse viewpoints. This can be done through:

• Diversity boardroom, broadcasters, reporters
• Amplify local journalism stories told by people

3. Inject transparency into technology and social media companies

Utilize blockchain to track the information generation and attention economy causal loops. Clearly articulating where a story comes from, how it is developed, and who is amplifying the headlines allows users to easily identify bad actors & bias. Allow user to reset their algorithms and leave their echo chambers.

4. Reduce polarization through citizen assemblies and subordinate goals

Encourage grassroots dialogue groups, citizens assemblies and perspective taking to reduce conflict by driving superordinate goals. Fostering empathy among racial, ethnic, religious, ideological divides through:

• media and social media could sponsor to shift paradigm from ‘side taking’ built into social media
  
• campaigns to foster mindset of universal citizen
  
  

Reflection 

This course changed my mindset in many ways. I lived in a microscopic view of the world, but the course taught me about the meso, exo, and macro angles to look at a problem. My vocabulary also greatly broadened to help describe complex problems, black swans, key actors, and leverage points. This will be helpful when explaining systems to stakeholders. The Iterative Inquiry and 3 Horizons were most useful for me. They taught me about the power of actors on each level and how to use current and future developments to highlight leverage points.