DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A DIGITAL NEWS FILTERING SYSTEM FOR MASS COMMUNICATION IN CRUTECH

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 Review of Relevant Concepts (Conceptual Review) 

2.1 Mass Communication: Concept and Practice

There are several definitions of mass communication as there are scholars. The concept refers to the transmission or dissemination of messages simultaneously to a large, scattered and heterogeneous audience.

According to the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) Module on Introduction to Mass Communication (2008), Mass communication is a means of disseminating information or message to large, anonymous and scattered heterogeneous masses of receivers who may be far removed from the message sources through the use of sophisticated equipment.

About the subject, Stanley Baran writes;

Mass communication is the process of creating shared meaning between the mass media and their audience…it represents the creation and sending of a homogenous message to a large heterogeneous audience through the media. What is common in every definition of mass communication anywhere in the world is that it is communicated through a mass medium.

Sambe (2005:29) defines Mass Communication as a device by which a group of people working together transmits information to a large heterogeneous and anonymous audience simultaneously. He opines that it is a process by which information originates from the source to the receiver, having been thoroughly filtered and transmitted through a channel.

Akpoveta and Ogbemi (2006:7) citing Janowitz (1968) define Mass Communication as comprising the institutions and techniques by which specialized groups employ technology devices (press, radio, films, etc) to disseminate symbolic symbolic contents to large, heterogeneous and widely dispersed audiences.

The basic components of the above definitions are embedded in the fact that the messages are dispersed to a large, anonymous or faceless, scattered (not assembled), and heterogeneous (biographically and psychographically different) audience. 

Also, it is important to note that mass communication messages are packaged and transmitted through channels known as the Mass Media. It is for this reason that John Bittner defines Mass Communication as messages communicated through a mass medium to a large number of people.

The Mass Media of mass communication are broadly grouped into two categories namely;

1. Print Media
2. Electronic Media

While the Print media consist of those channels which require the printing press technology to produce, e.g. Newspaper, Magazine, Books, etc, the Electronic media refer to those machineries that use radio-magnetic and electronic technology for transmission, e.g. Radio, Television, Electronic Billboards, Film, etc. The Internet is also sometimes listed in this category, but has recently been isolated as a new form known as New Media.

Mass Communication is a very important part of any society. It is made possible by technologies coordinated by the mass media industry. It is borne out of the need to send public messages to large numbers of people in different places. The practice is now over 500years old, beginning with the invention of the Printing Press by a German, Johannes Guttenberg in 1450.

Today, it has metamorphosed with evolving technologies and has become a global phenomenon. The world has become a global village as a result of growing media technology. This further gives credence to the predictions of Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s that electronic media technology is getting to a stage where communication between people from two ends of the world would seem like two people talking face-to-face.  

2.1.2 Mass Communication and Society

In studying Mass communication, the place of society must not be neglected. The reason is that there exists a symbiotic relationship between them. While mass communication affects society, the latter also has a tremendous impact on mass communication. The society is made up of people and so is mass communication a responsibility of people.

According to Hanson (2015), understanding the effects of mass communication on individuals and society requires that we examine the messages being sent, the medium transmitting them, the owners of the media, and the audience members themselves. The effects can be cognitive, attitudinal, behavioural, or psychological.

He explains that these effects can also be examined in terms of a number of theoretical approaches, including functional analysis, agenda setting, uses and gratifications, social learning, symbolic interactionism, spiral of silence, media logic, and cultivation analysis. But for the purpose of this paper, let us look at the basic functional relationship between them, which is what will be treated in the next section.

2.1.2.1 General Functions of Mass Communication

As a social institution, Mass communication performs various functions in the society. This is where the relevance of the mass media is felt- its important functions in society. This is what has attracted several titles to the media, including that given by Edmund Burke, referring to them as the “Fourth Estate of the Realm” as far back as 1894.

A political scientist, Lasswell (1948) gave three traditional functions of the mass media as;

• Surveillance of the environment
• Correlation
• Transmission of Cultural Heritage

By 1960, another scholar, Wright, added a function;

• Entertainment

As time went on, and more communication experts continued to engage in further research, more functions of mass communication were highlighted, including;

• Advertising
• Public Relations
• Mobilization
• Education
• Watchdog of the Government and society, etc

The Nigerian Context

Rather than spend so much time and space explaining all the functions listed above, it is wise to simply dwell on those which are peculiar to the Nigerian socio-political environment. As a nation, Nigeria has been plagued with a myriad of problems over the years, and this has greatly affected the mode of operations of the media. As earlier established, the media always take on the colouration of the society.

To contribute its own quota towards ensuring an end to the several problems in Nigeria, the media have carried out various functions which also conform to the political system of the nation. They include, among others;

• Correlation
• Surveillance/Watchdog
• Mobilization, Enlightenment and Political Sensitization
• Transmission of Cultural Heritage
• Entertainment
• Agenda Setting
• Advertising

1. Correlation: When news are gathered and reported, it becomes expedient for the media to further explain such news in a way that members of the society will understand and form opinions based on the issues addressed. This is what correlation does. Issues about Security, Corruption, and the General Elections have made the rounds in Nigeria media in recent weeks.

According to Asemah (2011:46), correlation is “the interpretation of the information presented about the environment, prescription on what to do about it, and attempts to influence such interpretation, attitudes and conducts.” Correlation is often done through Editorials, News Analysis, Reports, and Talk Shows, etc.

In Nigeria, good examples of programmes where this is done are Sunrise Daily on Channels Television, Kakaaki  on AIT, Guest appearances on News programmes to discuss particular issues, Newspaper Editorials, and so on. These are what Orhewere (2006) refers to as “news behind the news…going beyond facts to situate the events.”

1. Surveillance/Watchdog: The mass media in Nigeria have become the eyes and ears of the public. Through up-to-date information about happenings in the society, Nigerians are able to know where crises have erupted, where there is a fire outbreak, or where there’s an accident, and act wisely based on such knowledge.

Asemah (2011:42) describes this function as when the media alert us of the changes that take place around us. According to him, in performing its watchdog/surveillance function, the media in Nigeria watch over the government, its three arms, and the entire society, so as to keep their performances up to the expected standard that would encourage the development of the country.

The media owe it to the people as a duty to ensure that the government and its agencies are responsible and accountable, and are reminded to fulfill their promises and responsibilities to the people. We have had cases where corruption cases have been thoroughly followed by the media in Nigeria, e.g. the Lawan-Otedola Bribery scandal, the Patricia Etteh misappropriation crime, and so on.

While the basic surveillance function deals with the survey of the environment and reporting to the people in order to reduce uncertainties and increase the probability that the audience will react to conflicts and changes in a rational way, the watchdog function ensures that the government and other public agencies are checkmated to act according to the ambits of the law.

1. Mobilization, Enlightenment, and Political Sensitization: This is the act of stimulating and influencing the attitudes and actions of the public to work towards public good. Okunna (1999) cited in Asemah (2011:46) states that the mass media encourage and ginger up people to achieve the aims and goals of the society. Such goals are promoted by the media, who then stimulate members of the public to act to achieve such goals.

 The low literacy level in Nigeria makes it even more necessary to educate and sensitize them on matters of politics, agriculture, technology, health, and so on, so that they can make informed decisions that will lead to the overall development of the country. Also, in times of policy-making and implementation, the media can mobilize the people to protest against negative policies put in place by the government.

At the dusk of 2006 when former President Olusegun Obasanjo was pushing the Third Term Agenda, Nigerians, spurred by the media put up a formidable resistance that even the political maradona, Baba Iyabo, had to give up his third term ambition. This is what mobilization (through the media) can do. The media remind the people of their rights and help them demand them from time to time.

1. Transmission of Cultural Heritage: Through the transmission of culture, the media in Nigeria helps to preserve and promote the beauty of our local culture. In this era when the burdening effect of globalization, in the form of cultural imperialism, is at its peak, Nigerian media stations do their bit to ensure that our local culture is protected from outright extinction.

However, many have continued to complain that our local media are yet to effectively represent Nigerian culture in their content and programming, a move that has seen the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) impose a 70% local content representation in the programming of local stations. Today, we have programmes like the African Pot, Goge Africa, and so on featuring daily on our local television stations.

According to Akpoveta and Ogbemi (2006:21), this has the education function as well because intellectual contributions of one generation are transferred or passed on to another generation.

1. Entertainment: This is, undoubtedly, one of the major functions of mass communication in Nigeria. It entails the promotion of leisure, relaxation, enjoyment, and fun. It is directed at primarily providing amusement or escape from boredom of routine human daily activities, depression, and psychological conditions.

This function is in recognition of the fact that there is a need to release tension caused by the pressures of everyday life. In Nigeria, television programmes like Papa Ajasco, a farce for the family, My Mum and I, and even Musicals, are good examples of how the media perform these roles. Promoting entertainment has both health and psychological benefits for the audience.

1. Agenda Setting Function: The Agenda Setting role of the media is what ensures that burning issues of national interest remain a matter of discourse among the people until informed decisions can be made. This role is also a theory of the media propounded by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw in 1972.

The assumptions of this theory are that the Press and the media do not reflect reality, but filter and shape it, and that media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues. This is an offshoot of Cohen’s observation in 1963 that “the press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think but it is stunningly successful in telling people what to think about.”

By placing side-by-side the general elections with the issues of security and INEC’s readiness or unreadiness, the Nigerian media gave people the opportunity to make informed decisions about how to go about the elections, because they had been made to understand that insecurity and INEC were the two main factors that could determine the success or failure of the elections.

1. Advertising: This is another very important function of the media as it does not only help them to generate funds needed for the smooth and continuous running of the organization, it also helps to create awareness about goods and services offered for sale by businesses, and about government policies, programmes and actions.

Advertisements stimulates favourable attitude towards goods and services, influence sales through persuasion, leading to social and economic growth, by ensuring that both buyers and sellers have a point of convergence, meet each other’s needs, and that the media makes its income to continue to operate.

2.1.3 Digital platforms 

In this report, we are concerned with the impacts of ‘digital platforms’ and ‘platform services’: digital search engines, social media platforms and content aggregators, as well as hybrids thereof. We are specifically concerned with the impact of digital platforms on news media and its consumers. ‘Media’ stems from the Latin, ‘medium’, or middle (Chun, Fisher & Keenan 2006, p. 2). Traditionally, the news media’s role has been as mediator: to stand in the middle of newsmakers and the public, informing citizens by communicating items of news. Digital platforms have changed the way news is consumed, distributed and produced. The news is still mediated, but in many cases the nature of the mediation between consumers and the news has changed. One attempt to capture this new relationship is by describing digital platforms as ‘intermediaries’, including in the economic sense: as intermediaries in multi-sided markets, connecting two sets of users, such as advertisers and web users. Here, the commercial attractiveness of the offering to advertisers depends on the large number of potential customers (Dolata 2017, p. 6). Further, it is worth noting that the term ‘platform’ is also used by economists to refer to a product or service that brings together two or more groups. On this basis, Google and Facebook are platforms, but so too are traditional media organisations which bring together readers and advertisers. 3 Both digital platforms and news media can be categorised as intermediaries, and they interact in ways that intersect and overlap (Evans & Wurster 2000, pp. 70-72).

2.1.4 News and journalism 

Few, if any, public activities attract as much definition and redefinition as journalism and news. Notions of journalism’s roles – its purposes, standing, impacts and future(s) – remain contested among its practitioners, its scholars and, increasingly, its publics. To understand the impact of platform service providers on the level of choice and quality of ‘news and journalistic content’ – the focus of the current inquiry – for consumers, we must agree on what constitutes news and journalism. Tellingly, the law struggles to define news and journalism. This is evident in the many ways various legal protections and privileges afforded to journalists are enacted. They reveal considerable uncertainty over what should be protected and how to define terms, including what is news. It may be the act of newsgathering that is protected or the act of publication; protected content may be limited to news or it may extend to comment and opinion; the protection may be limited to professional journalists and news organisations, or it may extend to bloggers; in some cases, commitment to media standards is required, in others it is not. For instance, there are differing ways various shield laws define who is a journalist. Under the Commonwealth Act, ‘journalist’ means ‘a person who is engaged and active in the publication of news and who may be given information by an informant in the expectation that the information may be published in a news medium’. But in NSW ‘journalist’ means ‘a person engaged in the profession or occupation of journalism in connection with the publication of information in a news medium’. And in Victoria ‘journalist’ means ‘a person engaged in the profession or occupation of journalism in connection with the publication of information, comment, opinion or analysis in a news medium’.4 Similar definitional distinctions exist in many other areas of the law. While there are multiple similarities, there are also significant differences, and there is certainly no unified elaboration of key concepts. If the law is unclear about the precise scope of news and journalism, the same is true outside the law. One of the earliest semantic references was in 1551, when ‘newes’ was described as ‘novelties’ (cited in Lamble 2011, p. 34). This captures the selfevident essence of the term: news is ‘that which is new’. Beyond this, definitions diverge widely, leading Stephen Lamble (2011) to suggest that news, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. 4 The relevant definition provisions for the shield laws are: s 126J, Evidence Act 1995 (Cth); s 126J, Evidence Act 1995 (NSW); and s 126J, Evidence Act 2008 (Vic). 17 Nonetheless, there have been many famous attempts at definition. These include the description of news and journalism as ‘the first rough draft of history’, a phrase dating from the 1940s and commonly attributed to The Washington Post publisher Philip Graham (Schafer 2010). The import of this phrase carries through to the notion of particular newspapers as ‘journals of record’ (Hill 2016, p. 11). It is significant that that phrase, with all its gravitas, has fallen out of use, including for The Sydney Morning Herald (Prisk 2011). By contrast, another definition of news – perhaps more aligned with a digital age – is, ‘Anything that will make people talk’, from New York Sun editor Charles Dana (cited in Lamble 2011, p. 34). One commonly drawn distinction is between ‘hard news’ and ‘soft news’. The former is driven by the imperatives of objectivity, accuracy and timeliness, and concerns the reporting of newsworthy matters. For some, only ‘hard news’ can legitimately claim to earn its place in such company. This is typified by the quote, ‘News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising’, which is attributed to early 20th century British press baron Lord Northcliffe, among others (Meikle 2009, p. 17). It also finds voice in the newsroom motto, ‘If it bleeds, it leads’, a hardy trope attributed to journalist Eric Pooley (1989, p. 36). The hard news ethic underpins the practice of investigative journalism. However, news can also be defined more broadly, also to encompass ‘soft’ news, such as feature articles, entertainment journalism and human interest stories. Apart from ‘hard news’ and ‘soft news’, a further significant distinction exists between news and opinion. Traditionally, journalists have considered it good practice to keep the two distinct. That distinction remains, reflected in the way that news and opinion are subject to different standards within regulatory regimes. Both in print and online, however, and particularly on social media, there is increasingly a blurring of boundaries between the two: ‘In social spaces, the traditional journalistic value of objectivity no longer makes sense: virtually every story is augmented with someone’s opinion’ (Marwick 2018, p. 504). The internet, and digital platforms, have enabled a proliferation of opinion, and a blurring of opinion and news. We do not seek here to disentangle the two, as both news and opinion are within the scope of this report. Similarly, there has traditionally been a clear distinction drawn between editorial and advertising. Increasingly, this distinction is also being blurred. We return to this point below. Given various contrasting conceptions, the definition of ‘news and journalistic content’ is open to debate. The current inquiry followed the 2017 Senate Select Committee on the Future of Public Interest Journalism. Defining the ‘public interest’ is difficult. For instance, does soft news fall within the public interest? What about opinion? For the purposes of this report, we do not limit journalism to ‘public interest journalism’. We define ‘news’ and ‘journalism’ neither extremely narrowly (as, say, investigative journalism only) nor extremely widely (so as to include personal status updates from friends). For the purposes of this report, we define ‘news’ as: ∙ A diverse range of informative content about matters of import. It can often be defined by characteristics including timeliness, exclusivity, conflict, proximity, 18 prominence, relevance and scale (Schultz 2017, p. 168; Harcup & O’Neill 2017, p. 1482). Within this definition, we include political reports, sports results and celebrity updates; we do not, however, include social media posts by friends and family about personal matters. This definition is deliberately elastic. As we discuss below (‘Is news found or made?’), news is a shifting category that is, now more than ever, continually being recreated by news producers, distributors and consumers. And we define ‘journalism’ as: ∙ The practice of producing news by gathering information and using storytelling techniques. This includes, but is not limited to, fulfilling the watchdog role and the practice of ‘public interest journalism’ (see below). In this definition, we also include current affairs, comment and analysis that appear in news media. We accept that not all such content is produced by journalists, but note that this Inquiry explicitly seeks to encompass ‘journalistic content’. Hence we define ‘news and journalistic content’ as: ∙ A diverse range of informative content about matters of import that can be defined by characteristics such as timeliness. This definition extends beyond the watchdog role and ‘public interest journalism’ and also encompasses current affairs, comment and analysis. Deliberately elastic, it extends beyond content produced by journalists. However, this definition does not extend to social media posts about personal matters. One implication that follows from the identification of this category of news and journalistic content is that the product is not always aligned with the producer. For instance, at times the practices and values of individual editors and journalists will differ from those of the organisations that may employ them. While on occasion we refer to ‘news media’ in the collective sense of news-producing and/or news-distributing organisations – either traditional or born digital – we generally use the more specific terms ‘news producer’ to describe, say, Fairfax Media and ‘news distributor’ to describe the platforms and others that supply news to consumers. We deal with this subject of distribution in some detail below. Further, we end this section with an outline of how some issues are applicable specifically to journalists as practitioners. In the sections that follow, we expand on these definitions and distinctions, and further address both the function and value of news and journalistic content.

2.1.5 Public benefits of journalism 

Journalism, by origin, is the production of ‘factual accounts, and explanations of current or recent events’; it can be traced back many centuries, to a time before it became an industry and profession. Originally, journalism existed in the form of ‘pamphlets and broadsides (large sheets printed on only one side)’, ‘content of private letters, public announcements and also word of mouth reports’ (McQail 2013, pp. 2-3; Marshall 2011, p. 4). Those who produced this content would not have identified as journalists. Rather, 19 they would have aimed to: ‘make money, argue politics, provide a community service, and promote their faith’ (Marshall 2011, p. 4). Change arrived with the liberalism of John Stuart Mill. Previously, European monarchs had ‘restrictions on the number of printing presses that could function’, which were also ‘subject to pre-publication censors’. The emerging ‘capitalist class’ resisted these strictures, which had enabled those in power to protect their seats at the table, and champions began to emerge for the freedom of press. In the 19th century, John Stuart Mill crystalised matters by proposing an argument that focused on the notion of the press as a ‘watchdog of the state’. This was a liberal understanding, involving ‘the provision of information; and the facilitation of the public sphere’. It marked a significant departure from the spiritual and moral arguments that had previously been used to support the idea of the freedom of press (Errington & Miragliotta 2007, pp. 1-8). The ‘watchdog of the state’ role exercised by journalists has affected social structures and cultural mores. It has toppled governments and exposed injustice. It has, as is commonly acknowledged, advanced democracy. The modern archetype of the watchdog role is Watergate, and the investigative journalism of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post. On June 12 1972, police were called to investigate a break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, Washington D.C. Using traditional journalistic methods, the young journalists unearthed a story that forced the resignation of US President Richard Nixon. Watergate had several effects. On the one hand, the episode demoralised the American public, promoting distrust and placing the public in a state ‘ready to believe the worst of their leaders’. However, Watergate also shifted the relationship between the government and the press, magnifying scrutiny of those in power, and revealing the significance of such scrutiny (Fisher 2012). In Australia, a recent example of this function of journalism is the exposure of evidence of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church by journalist Joanne McCarthy at The Newcastle Herald, which sparked the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. For McCarthy, the story involved years of work and hundreds of stories: between 2006 and 2013, McCarthy wrote more than 350 articles on the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy in Newcastle and the Hunter Valley (Walkley 2016). In recognition, then Prime Minister Julia Gillard wrote: ‘Thanks in very large measure to your persistence and courage, the NSW special commission of inquiry and the Federal Royal Commission will bring truth and healing to victims of horrendous abuse and betrayal.’ Another role played by investigative journalists comprises the way they can pursue and publish the claims of whistleblowers. The Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry was sparked after a former employee of the Commonwealth Bank, Jeff Morrison, spoke out about the misconduct of his former colleagues. Morrison had taken his claims to politicians, but only after journalist Adele Ferguson from Fairfax Media investigated the claims and published stories was a Royal Commission appointed to investigate Australia’s ‘big four’ banks (Ellis 2018). Investigative journalists can also come to the aid of the wrongfully 20 accused: in 2007, The Australian’s Hedley Thomas won the Gold Walkley Award for revealing how Australian police had bungled in their arrest and detention of Indian doctor Mohamed Haneef for terrorism-related offences. In their work, investigative journalists face many obstacles. Former ABC reporter Chris Masters has detailed receiving death threats, and also the ‘death by a thousand courts’ (Molitorisz 2008) by which his stories were stymied, via defamation suits and other actions. Similarly, Joanne McCarthy faced legal action from the Catholic Church, which has $30 billion of assets just in Australia (Bourke 2018). In some ways, digitisation (if not specifically digital platforms) has presented investigative journalists with unprecedented opportunities. Most importantly, it has enabled data-sharing and collaboration on a global scale. Leading to the 2016 release of the ‘Panama Papers’, more than 350 reporters speaking 25 languages collaborated in a secure virtual newsroom for more than a year. To expose corruption, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists built a platform that included an encrypted communication system and a specially designed search engine (ICIJ 2017). Investigative journalism and the watchdog role are key components of what has come to be known as the ‘fourth estate’ function of journalism. In 1790, British parliamentarian Edmund Burke said: ‘There are three estates in Parliament but in the reporter’s gallery yonder sits a fourth estate more powerful than they all.’ In this quote, Burke posits the journalist as independent and influential. He evokes journalists’ role as a watchdog on power, belonging to a fourth estate apart from clergy, aristocracy and commoners (or, as often conceived, separate from the parliament, the judiciary and the executive). Such thinking underpins contemporary journalistic practice. The watchdog role, variously described, appears in most contemporary definitions of what constitutes journalism. Typically, however, the watchdog role is included as merely one form of good journalism. The philanthropically supported Civic Impact of Journalism project at Melbourne University, which in 2017 made a submission to the Senate Inquiry into Public Interest Journalism, cited six key features of good journalistic practice (CIJP 2017): ∙ to keep the public up to date with what is going on in the world; ∙ to provide the public with reliable information on which they may base choices as participants in political, economic and social life; ∙ to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and opinions; ∙ to be a watchdog on those in power; ∙ to help societies understand themselves; ∙ to provide the material upon which members of a society can base a common conversation. After reviewing the academic literature, McNair (2005, p. 28) identifies three core functions of news media: ∙ A supplier of the information required for individuals and groups to monitor their social environments; what Denis McQuail (1987) has characterised as a medium of surveillance. 21 ∙ A resource for, support to and often participant in public life and political debate – in liberal-democratic societies particularly, the discursive foundation of what sociologist Jurgen Habermas (1989) famously called the public sphere. ∙ A medium of education, enlightenment and entertainment – what might be grouped together as its recreational or cultural functions. Within these three core functions, there is a range of categories of journalism that attempt to satisfy the information needs of different audiences: ‘prestige’ (or quality) journalism, tabloid journalism, local journalism, specialist journalism, ‘new’ (personal and committed) journalism, development journalism, investigative journalism, journalism of record, advocacy journalism, alternative journalism and gossip journalism (McQuail 2000, p. 340). We might now usefully add to this list representational journalism. This refers to interactive features of news media that enable citizens to express their opinions in their own words and is allied to the concepts of civic and public journalism, both of which turn journalism away from simply exposing problems towards assisting citizens and communities to solve them. Jay Rosen, one the key proponents of ‘public journalism’, argues that this style of journalism seeks to ‘address people as citizens, potential participants in public affairs, rather than victims or spectators’. A further approach is to consider the values of journalism. Objectivity is among the most important. The norm of objectivity can be traced back to the 18th and 19th centuries, and springs from the efforts of journalists to assert their independence from highly partisan press barons and employers and instead conceive their role in society as servants of the public. The goals of balance and fairness were adopted to articulate their ‘professional allegiance to the separation of facts and values’ (Schudson 2001, p. 159). Adherence to the notion of objectivity as a key marker of what makes journalists different to non-journalists remains an important part of the profession’s view of itself. But it isn’t all. In Deuze’s summary of key concepts, values and elements that define journalism’s ideology, objectivity is only one of five elements (2005, p. 447): ∙ Public service: journalists provide a public service (as watchdogs or ‘newshounds’, active collectors and disseminators of information); ∙ Objectivity: journalists are impartial, neutral, objective, fair and (thus) credible; ∙ Autonomy: journalists must be autonomous, free and independent in their work; ∙ Immediacy: journalists have a sense of immediacy, actuality and speed (inherent in the concept of ‘news’); ∙ Ethics: journalists have a sense of ethics, validity and legitimacy.

2.2 Standard Structure and Processes of the System in View

2.2.1 Grammatical Description of the ideal framework

The ideal framework for the design and implementation of a digital news filtering system for mass communication in Crutech can be described in terms of its input, process, and output components:

• Input:

1. News Sources: The system should allow the input and selection of relevant news sources, including reputable news websites, RSS feeds, social media platforms, and other online publications. These sources serve as the input data for the system.
2. User Preferences: Users, such as students and faculty members, should be able to input their preferences, including topics of interest, keywords, and specific criteria for filtering news articles. These preferences help customize the output of the system.

• Process:

1. Aggregation: The system should aggregate news articles from the selected sources, using techniques such as web scraping, API integration, or RSS feeds. It collects and compiles a wide range of news articles as the primary input for further processing.
2. Filtering Algorithms: The system should apply intelligent filtering algorithms to the collected news articles. These algorithms analyze the content, keywords, metadata, and user preferences to categorize, prioritize, and filter the articles based on their relevance to the target audience.
3. Personalization: The system should personalize the news content based on individual user preferences. It should consider factors such as the user’s selected topics, past interactions, reading history, and feedback to tailor the curated news content for each user.
4. Quality Assessment: The system should evaluate the quality and credibility of the news articles by considering factors such as the reputation of the source, fact-checking mechanisms, and adherence to journalistic standards. This assessment ensures that reliable and trustworthy news content is delivered to the users.

• Output:

1. Curated News Content: The system should provide an output of curated news articles that have been filtered, categorized, and personalized based on user preferences. This curated content should reflect the latest and most relevant news articles from the selected sources.
2. User Interface: The system should present the curated news content through a user-friendly interface. The interface should allow users to browse, search, and access the articles easily. It should also provide features for customization, feedback, and interaction with the news content.
3. Notifications and Updates: The system should generate notifications or updates to inform users about new and important news articles based on their preferences. These notifications can be delivered through email, mobile push notifications, or within the user interface itself.
4. Analytics and Insights: The system may provide analytics and insights on user engagement, popular topics, or trending news articles. These insights can help stakeholders in the mass communication department understand user behavior, preferences, and the effectiveness of the filtering system.

2.2.2 Requirements and Features of the Proposed System

User Registration and Profiles:

1. Users should be able to create individual profiles within the system.
2. User profiles should store preferences, interests, and personalized settings.

News Source Integration:

1. The system should support integration with various news sources, including reputable news websites, RSS feeds, social media platforms, and online publications.
2. It should provide flexibility to add, remove, and manage news sources easily.

Aggregation and Parsing:

1. The system should aggregate news articles from the selected sources.
2. It should parse the articles to extract relevant information such as title, content, author, publication date, and metadata.

Intelligent Filtering and Categorization:

1. The system should employ intelligent filtering algorithms to categorize news articles based on relevance, topics, keywords, and user preferences.
2. It should prioritize articles based on importance and user engagement metrics.

Personalization and User Preferences:

1. The system should allow users to customize their news preferences, including preferred topics, keywords, sources, and filters.
2. It should provide personalized news recommendations based on individual user profiles and preferences.

User-Friendly Interface:

1. The system should have a user-friendly interface that allows users to easily browse, search, and access curated news content.
2. It should provide intuitive navigation, responsive design, and customizable layouts.

Notifications and Alerts:

1. The system should offer notifications and alerts to inform users about new and important articles based on their preferences.
2. Notifications can be delivered through email, mobile push notifications, or within the user interface.

Quality Assessment and Source Verification:

1. The system should include mechanisms to assess the quality and credibility of news sources and articles.
2. It should employ fact-checking methods and consider the reputation and trustworthiness of sources.

Social Sharing and Engagement:

1. The system should allow users to share news articles on social media platforms or via email.
2. It should provide features for user comments, ratings, and feedback on articles.

Analytics and Insights:

1. The system should generate analytics and insights on user engagement, popular topics, trending articles, and user preferences.
2. It should provide reports and visualizations to help stakeholders analyze user behavior and system performance.

Scalability and Performance:

1. The system should be scalable to handle a growing number of users, news sources, and articles.
2. It should be optimized for performance to ensure fast response times and efficient processing.

Data Security and Privacy:

1. The system should implement robust security measures to protect user data, including encryption, access controls, and secure data storage.
2. It should comply with data privacy regulations and guidelines.

Admin Dashboard:

1. The system should provide an administrative dashboard to manage news sources, user profiles, system settings, and analytics.
2. The admin dashboard should have features for content moderation and system configuration.

Integration and APIs:

1. The system should offer integration capabilities with external systems, such as content management systems, social media platforms, and analytics tools.
2. It should provide APIs for data exchange and interoperability.

Documentation and Help:

1. The system should have comprehensive documentation to guide users and administrators on system usage, configuration, and troubleshooting.
2. It should offer helpdesk support and assistance to address user inquiries and issues.

2.3 Review of Related Literature

Trust in news media has been hit particularly hard by the rise of ‘fake news’, a term which has expanded significantly in usage and scope since 2016 (Waisbord 2018, p. 2). Scholars have long used the term to describe satirical sites, doctored photography, fabricated news, propaganda and more (Tandoc et al. 2017). This changed during the US election of 2016. Initially, it was used to describe the no-frills sites that parroted the 32 conventions of online news, but contained sensationalised stories to attract advertising dollars (Silverman 2016). The term was then invoked in reference to hyper-partisan but not necessarily misleading news sites such as Breitbart; and it further expanded when presidential candidate Donald Trump used it to describe unsympathetic news coverage. In the first year of his presidency, Mr Trump used ‘fake news’ in 180 tweets (Hambrick & Marqardt 2018). In 2018, the term remains ‘both vague and value-laden’ (Marwick, 2018: 476). As a result, scholars have suggested instead the terms ‘problematic information’ (Jack 2017) and even ‘malinformation’ (Derakshan and Warkle 2017). Still, the term ‘fake news’ is in wide currency, often in connection with digital platforms: Regardless of what ‘fake news’ actually means, it is typically tied up with anxieties about the democratic ramifications of the shift from consuming news from broadcast television and newspapers to consuming news on social platforms … Thus, platforms including Facebook and Twitter have been heavily criticized for their role in spreading, facilitating, and even encouraging ‘fake news’ (Marwick, 2018: 478). Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm has been accused of supercharging the spread of fake news (Pourghomi et al, 2017). So too Google’s YouTube, which ranks second (behind Facebook) in Australia for social media used to access news (Park et al. 2018; Lewis, 2018). Certainly, fake news is perfectly suited to the fragmented news landscape, where ‘clickbait’ has been implicated in the rapid spread of misinformation online (Chen, Conroy, Rubin, 2015). What’s more, fake news content can crowd out real news. During the US presidential election of 2016, fake news stories received more engagement from Facebook users than the news stories of credible news organizations (Silverman in Brummette et. al., 2018 p. 501; Gillespie 2018, pp. 202-3). During the final three months of the 2016 US presidential election, the 20 most widely circulated false election stories from discredited sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated more than 8.7 million shares, reactions and comments. These stories were shared with much greater frequency than were the top circulating stories from major news sites (Clark & Marchi, 2017, p. 6). Similar trends were evident on Twitter (Schlitzer 2018, p. 38). In one extensive and recent study, researchers investigated all the verified true and false news stories distributed on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. This involved 126,000 stories tweeted by 3 million people more than 4.5 million times. They found: falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information (Vosoughi, Roy & Aral 2018). The researchers found that fake news was ‘more novel’, and, unlike true news, inspired emotions of fear, disgust and surprise. The intentions behind fake news vary, and are often unclear. In her research, Alice Marwick found that a lot of fake news is ‘polysemous’. That is, it deliberately appeals to 33 diverse people, such as both Democrats and Republicans. The combination of fake news and an atomised news landscape (see below) has left consumers confused and disoriented, unable to distinguish between types of news, the credibility of individual news items and the relative importance of news items (Brummette et. al., 2018; Clark & Marchi 2017, p. 6-7; Sehl et. al., 2018, p. 29). Digital platforms, which stand to profit financially if fake news attracts audiences and advertisers, were initially slow to accept responsibility or take action. Two days after the US election, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: ‘I think the idea that fake news on Facebook—of which it’s a very small amount of the content—influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea.’ However, by April 2017 he had announced partnerships with fact-checkers and introduced tools to allow people to dispute the veracity of news items appearing on the sites (Hackett 2017). Subsequently, there have been several anti-fake news collaborations, including the ‘coordinated project of journalism newsrooms, universities, nonprofits and tech companies to challenge rumors and fabrications in the 2017 French election, which appears to have gained widespread support and increased media literacy by journalists and members of the public’ (Tenove et al. 2018, p. 38). Explicitly, fake news was the motivation behind changes in January 2018 to Facebook’s News Feed algorithm, which prioritised the posts of friends and family over news content (see Chapter Two). And in July 2018, YouTube announced it is investing US$25 million to better support trusted news providers. The service will promote videos from vetted sources ‘to make it easier to find quality news’, and will create new features to help distribute local news. According to YouTube: ‘We believe quality journalism requires sustainable revenue streams and that we have a responsibility to support innovation in products and funding for news’ (cited in Hern 2018b). In August 2018, Facebook, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, LinkedIn and Pinterest all banned or cracked down on InfoWars and host Alex Jones, who claims the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was a hoax (Fisher 2018). Twitter followed. Globally, several major initiatives are working to combat fake news and restore trust. Among them: News Guard is hiring journalists to rate news content by trustworthiness (newsguardtechnologies.com); The Trust Project is devising ‘trust indicators’ to increase transparency for users (thetrustproject.org); Trusting News is working with local US newsrooms to develop specific trust-building solutions (trustingnews.org); the News Integrity Initiative is supporting various projects ‘to foster informed and engaged communities, combat media manipulation, and support inclusive, constructive, and respectful civic discourse’ (journalism.cuny.edu); the Journalism Trust Initiative is a media self-regulatory initiative to combat disinformation online (rsf.org); Deepnews.ai is working to use AI and machine learning to surface higher quality content (deepnews.ai); the ‘verified accounts’ initiative from Twitter (help.twitter.com) uses a blue badge to alert users ‘that an account of public interest is authentic’. 34 Many of these initiatives are backed by digital platforms. 7 The Trust Project is cofunded by Google, and the project’s partners include Facebook, Twitter and Bing. The News Integrity Initiative is co-funded by Facebook. The Trust & News Initiative is cofunded by the Facebook Journalism Project. And Deepnews.ai is partnered with the Trust Project. In September 2018, Facebook announced it would roll out its context button to help Australian users check the veracity of stories appearing in their News Feed. Previously launched in the US and UK, the feature enables users to see a publisher’s previous posts and further information, including its Wikipedia page (Wallbank 2018). Early research suggests some of these strategies are having a positive impact. In September 2018, researchers from NYU and Stanford found that Facebook’s efforts to combat fake news seem to be working, with the result that: … the overall magnitude of the misinformation problem may have declined, at least temporarily, and that efforts by Facebook following the 2016 election to limit the diffusion of misinformation may have had a meaningful response (Owen 2018). Concern has been expressed that fake news will become increasingly sophisticated with the advent of automated fake news, algo-journalism and ‘empathic media’ (Bakir and MacStay, 2018). In this context, Alice Marwick argues that the causes and effects of fake news are complex, but digital platforms bear some responsibility: We must understand ‘fake news’ as part of a larger media ecosystem. That does not mean that we should ignore platforms; we must scrutinise the ways in which algorithms and ad systems promote or incentivise problematic content, and the frequency with which extremist content is surfaced (Marwick, 2018: 510).