Image: BBC
Last month at an event in Birmingham more details were unveiled — and they didn’t make promising reading for hyperlocal publishers, as one of my students, Jane Haynes, reported: Continue reading
AllSides uses a bias rating system
As part of a series of articles on the innovators tackling the filter bubble phenomenon, Andrew Brightwell interviews John Gable, founder and CEO of AllSides, a website that has devised its own way to present alternative perspectives on American news.
When a man who helped build the first successful web browser says there’s something wrong with the Internet, it probably pays to listen.
“The internet is broken.”
John Gable’s diagnosis has authority: he has more than 30 years in the tech business, including stints at Microsoft, AOL and as a product manager for Netscape Navigator.
Now he is founder and CEO of AllSides Inc, a news website with a distinct mission. Visit AllSides.com and it offers the news you’d expect on any US politics site, except that its lead stories include a choice of articles: one from the left, centre and right.
“The headlines are so radically different that even reading [them together] tells you more about that topic than reading one story all the way through.”
Photo: Reuters News Agency
In a guest post for OJB, Livia Vieira rounds up some of the highlights of News:Rewired 2017, from best practices to deal with fake news and engagement with live videos, to newsroom automation, mobile data journalism and collaborative storytelling and groundbreaking initiatives in newsrooms.
According to Alfred Joyner, head of video of IBT Media, 66% of the views on Facebook Live videos happen after they end, so it is important to re-package the content, giving it new meaning.
Alfred also emphasised that IBT trains its anchors and uses high quality equipment to ensure the quality of transmissions — although all speakers hit on the point that Facebook Live is not TV, and so does not need to have that ‘casted’ format. Continue reading
In a new series of interviews, Andrew Brightwell talks to the innovators fighting the polarising force of social media filter bubbles. First up, Read Across The Aisle – an app that monitors the political bias of your reading habits.
“This was a problem created by apps, so it’s natural that it might be solvable by apps.”
Nick Lum is describing his latest venture, Read Across The Aisle, a smartphone app that he hopes will offer its users a way out of their politically partisan echo chambers.
Currently, on KickStarter, Read Across The Aisle promises to do for your politics what Fitbit has done for your health.
By colour-coding the political slant of the news sites you read, it will indicate the potential bias you’re getting from your news. Continue reading
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