No. 9 - Entering the bubble

I went into my blog post intending to write about hyperlocal journalism. However, I instead searched in Google micro journalism and came across a completely different type of journalism that I at first found intriguing.

I first read an article from Medium by Phillip Smith who talked about the connection between microbrands and journalism. He outlines microbrands as brands that sell stuff almost only online, sell a small range of items, target a narrow audience, and are independently owned.

This topic is still pretty close to what I started investigating for this post. However, then I started looking at it from more of a social media stand point because of Smith’s reference to Instagram ads as the inspiration to his contemplation into micro reporting.

I found an article from 2008 from the New York Times that said it was about the birth of micro reporting, but to me it really seemed to be able the birth of citizen journalism.

I then came across a Nieman Lab article about micro targeted journalism, which is something completely different, but very intriguing. At first, I thought the premise would be the same as the first article that I read, but then I was the important difference. This article was about targeting content at specific people, which would in turn help with engagement and revenue.

However, I’m not sure if this is the best solution for funding journalism. It seemed very troubling when they were immediately comparing it to what the Russian hackers were using our social media platforms to do.

This brought to the forefront of my mind the concern with the filter bubble. I remember watching Eli Pariser's Ted Talk about this topic in my J2100 class.

Journalism should be trying to educate everyone about their community, and I feel that one of the largest downfalls of social media platforms are that they keep people stuck in one mindset. One of the important functions of journalism is that it presents information that people may not have ever come across. Playing into the forces that make people narrower minded and unaccepting of the world that exists around them does not seem like the best solution for saving journalism. It seems to play into the forces that already deeply divide us.

The filter bubble can be particularly dangerous considering the current political climate. We are still having to talk about the role that foreign nations will play in elections and we have seen the implications in local politics specifically the MU protests from 2015.

While this topic is very different from what I had set out to write about, I found it very compelling to explore.