4.2 - Change in journalistic agenda setting

With the advent of algorithmic gatekeeping, there has been a paradigmatic shift in how journalists, the gatekeepers of old, do their job. It is an obvious assumption that journalists, on par with the general public, have lost the ability to autonomously parse and filter the deluge of information. The corollary of this assumption is that journalists now fish for information from the same pool as the general public, putting into question their relevance and role in the modern mediascape. If journalists provide the curatorial aspect on information that has already been algorithmically curated, it means that both groups are effectively locked out beyond the algorithmic gate. Naturally, journalists can still count on their training, expertise and experience, as well as custom-built information selection sources, to provide particular insight into the available information. Also, journalists still have the main responsibility of sourcing, identifying and creating original content that feeds into the mediascape. However, as much as investigative journalists still exist, and their role is undoubtedly crucial, in the last five years we have seen the rise of a new type of journalism: demand journalism.

Demand Media has created a virtual factory that pumps out 4,000 video clips and articles a day. It starts with an algorithm. The algorithm is fed inputs from three sources: Search terms (popular terms from more than 100 sources comprising 2 billion searches a day), the ad market (a snapshot of which keywords are sought after and how much they are fetching), and the competition (what’s online already and where a term ranks in search results) . . . Pieces are not dreamed up by trained editors nor commissioned based on submitted questions. Instead they are assigned by an algorithm, which mines nearly a terabyte of search data, Internet traffic patterns, and keyword rates to determine what users want to know and how much advertisers will pay to appear next to the answers. The process is automatic, random, and endless . . . It is a database of human needs. (Roth, 2009, para. 5)

Demand journalism focuses on writing pieces on algorithmically relevant topics. It is the business model of many new media outlets, most notably Buzzfeed, Vox, and Vice — but most traditional media outlets have turned to algorithmic prediction to guide their storytelling with more or less influence on the overall agenda (Anderson, 2011; Roth, 2009). The main issue with the model of demand journalism is that it feeds from, and back in, the self-perpetuating relevance loop of algorithmic filtering. In fact, this might mean that the probability of inserting original content outside of the algorithm loop becomes ever smaller. We talked previously how algorithms are geared towards self-perpetuation. If journalists, arguably the most important group in producing original content and the one group that can expand the mediascape with different, diverse content that doesn’t depend on virality or return of investment, start feeding primarily into and out of the self-perpetuation loop, it might mean a considerable reduction in original news over time. For the public, this means that the choices of content we are exposed to will not only come primarily from the algorithm loop, but over time the algorithm loop might become all we have left. It is further important to mention that it is not necessarily a given that journalists themselves have a more evolved perception of the false neutrality of algorithms, therefore accepting automated relevance for definitive importance.