My research has revealed that allowing all the responsibility for tackling the spread of misleading information online to rest with tech companies and large media conglomerates is a potentially hazardous path for web plurality and freedom of access to information.
There are valid concerns around potential conflicts of interest for large media companies in effectively policing their emerging competitors, and there is precedent from tech giants like Google in suppressing ideologies which oppose them.
In addition, the newest Google guidelines used by search engine evaluators to cause changes to search algorithms are at best unclear as to how evaluators should assess Page Quality, leaving a risk that websites will suffer the adverse results of being demoted in error or through human bias; there’s even evidence of political bias in the document. Several news websites, which are politically partisan but which declare their stance, have seen a severe drop in traffic since Google’s changes.
Rather than censoring the web and imposing ever greater responsibility on search engines and social media websites to decide what is true and what isn’t for us, a two-strand approach to tackling the issue of Fake News (which should be broadly defined to include poor journalistic practice in presenting unchecked and inaccurate information to the public), the answer lies in a two-strand approach:
-strengthening public trust in the media by promoting a strong culture of ethical newsroom practices and ensuring that high standards in work practice are applied and that publications operate with enough transparency that their consumers can choose between media products with ease
-education for both media consumers and media producers
It’s clear from my research that these approaches strengthen the position of the media in society, allowing for a continuing role for journalism in forming public opinion, strengthening political accountability and giving a voice to the voiceless.