Infrequently Asked Questions

By Richard Gingras

A society’s central nervous system is its communications infrastructure. It is how a society keeps itself informed. It is how a society enables whether and how individuals and groups can interact.

The internet created the most open communications infrastructure in the history of civilization. It enabled frictionless expression, which, in turn, has expressed societal friction. It has enabled speech that is noble but also speech that is divisive. It makes us uncomfortable. Addressing that discomfort is the challenge of our times. How do we manage free expression within a charter that says it is open and free? It is the contradiction of our age. 

Technology can both advantage and disadvantage us. It can join us and divide us. There are no easy answers. Each answer will have known and unknown consequences. In seeking answers, it’s wise to ask more questions. 

Grab a calming libation, be it steeped in chamomile or peat, and dig in.

Can democracy survive the internet? 

Democracies thrive where societies can form consensus. The more a society is fragmented, the greater the challenge in reaching consensus. 

Seventy-five years ago, the US media ecosystem was an oligopoly of a few large media outlets: three commercial networks, and a few influential newspapers. They offered a selective, incomplete view of our society. Some say that had its benefits, though voices at the margins, whether extreme or simply unheard, were largely out of view. Marginalized communities engaged in the unlit corners of our culture, in the confines of a newsletter or niche magazine. 

Fifty years ago, cable and satellite networks fragmented the environment, spawning more partisan news outlets, each catering to a select audience in a competitive marketplace. 

Thirty years ago, the internet fragmented the media ecosystem exponentially. It allowed many to feel heard and others to find information and beliefs that reflected their perceptions of their world. 

The result: a more divided society that resists consensus. Politicians focus on their core supporters, less inclined to seek consensus or accept a common set of facts. They define and contrast themselves with those they despise. Compromise is off the table. Plato’s prediction that free expression would doom democracy to the appeal of the simple dictates of an authoritarian seems chillingly valid. Is there another outcome? What might allow us to bridge differences and find consensus?

Is not the idea of managing free expression a contradiction in terms? 

The internet has elevated both noble speech, which appeals to our better angels, and heinous speech, where outrage and self-righteousness can foment a blind hatred of others. This bothers us. We demand it be fixed. But how? Supporting free expression means tolerating speech we may find disagreeable, even heinous. How do we define acceptable versus unacceptable speech?

Can we be comfortable asking governments to define free expression in a politically conflicted world — left versus right, one side in power today, the other tomorrow? 

Can boundaries on expression be crafted when problematic speech also comes from politicians and media? Since the political sphere spins in an atmosphere of media, we should not expect rigorous definitions of fact versus fiction, of what is awful versus lawful. What speech do we disallow? What guidance do we give platforms of communications and amplification? What form of “fake news” policy is not potentially a tool to be misused by others in power? To what extent do such mechanisms raise the possibility of one-sided dominance versus broad discourse?

Is access to the bullhorn of publishing a right or a privilege? 

Do we believe that publishing and private communications are different activities? Yes, the media sphere can amplify a harmful message. Yet how does one define, much less restrict, the power of amplification? To what extent are we comfortable with governments, social networks, and publishing platforms imposing restrictions on expression and amplification? If amplification is a privilege, how is it defined? Who gets amplified? Who decides who gets amplified?

Should we not recognize the internet as a reflection of ourselves? 

We are appalled by the heinous voices of the internet. That can’t be who we are, we say. It’s a distorted view amplified by social media, we complain. Maybe it is distorted. But maybe it is also who we are. While the dominant media of the prior era painted a sculpted view of our society, the internet presents a more accurate mirror, however disturbing that might be. Can we fix what we are not willing to recognize?

If the algorithm is telling us what we want to hear, why don’t we want to hear it? 

Today, we consume from a vast cauldron of media. We do so through the filter of our own bias. We consume what we are. We are what we consume. Algorithms will feed our curiosities to the point of annoyance. Should algorithms expose us to thinking beyond our known silo, or should it be our responsibility to seek new sources and ideas? Can we encourage principled algorithmic work without asking the algorithm to be society’s preacher, evangelizing what we want others to believe? Who decides that? Who decides who decides that?

Can copyright reward expression and enable collective knowledge?

Thomas Jefferson, arguably the greatest creator of his day, believed that out-of-balance copyright and patents were an insult to an advanced civilization. He believed our objective should be to share knowledge and allow others to build on that knowledge. The progression of creative expression, be it art, or music, or the written word, is an ongoing series of mashups, all derived from what has been learned before. 

Copyright was designed to reward innovative expression, yet feed our collective knowledge. However, the extension of US copyright protection in the late 20th century has starved the corpus of freely available knowledge. 

Efforts to evolve copyright in the digital age are both understandable and risky. Does the demand that a search engine or social network pay a license for the use of links and headlines correctly balance a society’s access to information versus reward for a publisher? Do I have a “right to learn” from copyrighted material by using AI to assist me?  

Copyright does not allow ownership of facts, nor of underlying themes or story archetypes. Do we dare change that? The ownership of content is always in tension with broad common knowledge. What is the right balance? What would Jefferson say?

Can a society be motivated toward the greater common good in such confrontational, untrusting times? 

What is the common good? The commons is often cited as the archetype of the common good. But the commons was an exclusionary concept that said this grazing space is reserved for the sheep of our community, not the sheep of yours. Solving divisiveness requires a shared recognition that we have more areas of common interest than areas that divide us.

Can local news media better serve communities by celebrating their strengths and successes as well as being the watchdog for misbehavior? 

Focusing on a community’s broad information needs — community events, local sports, the progression of life from birth to obituary — can help unify a community, and build trust for addressing the more difficult topics. Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone makes the case that effective consensus-driven government is hand-in-hand with social engagement within a community. Might the 60-year decline in social engagement which Putnam illuminates be addressed by renewed approaches to local media? 

Isn’t confirmation bias both a survival instinct and a barrier to our own development? 

Yes, confirmation bias is a problem. But it’s not the affliction we too often apply to others. It’s true of all of us. We don’t risk our survival by betting on what we don’t know versus what we believe we know. 

How do we address the challenge of the other without being perceived as someone else’s other? 

Fear of the other is at the core of our crisis of divisiveness. Do not all of us, in our own way, need to address our divisions? Might we avoid reducing the other to simplistic accusatory memes? Can we not demonize those we disagree with? Demonization deepens divides, it does not bridge them.

Can the news media close the gap between irrational and rational fear? 

We live in a landscape of distorted risk. We often vote with unfounded fears of terrorism, crime, or whatever ills the body politic is inclined to make us fear. We fear terrorism despite the fact we are 11,000 times more likely to die of heart disease. We fear crime when we are 28 times more likely to die in a car accident. Errors in context can be more dangerous than errors in fact. The lack of context is partially an unconscious oversight in the blur of “breaking” news. “If it bleeds it leads,” as news people often say. However, there is also a degree of fear mongering. Incautious coverage, absent of fact-based context, is a form of misinformation. Can we motivate more thoughtful context, at least by a coalition of the willing?

Can we have a truly independent press if the primary sources of financial support are the government, philanthropies, or currently established platforms? 

Some believe the impact of digital advertising, and the competitiveness of the internet, have made it impossible for journalism to be supported by the free market. Demands are made that governments or technology platforms provide financial support. Philanthropies are expected to do more. However, if the free press is dependent on a few large sources of funding will it be free or effective? Which entities qualify and how much do they receive? Can the press challenge our institutions if they fear offending those who write big checks? Do such models enable press freedom or do they reinforce dominant interests? 

Have we lost our belief in the value of redemption? 

Our society is rife with divisiveness, deep fissures of ethnic, religious, and economic conflict. We live in a matrix of resentment, past to present and into the future. There are past inequalities we believe should be redressed. The challenge is addressing past resentments without bringing fresh resentments forward. Can we consider the value of redemption? Can we craft solutions that steer clear of punishing today’s generation for the sins of generations past?

Might we try new models of consensus building? 

Lawrence Lessig notes that democracies were not always electoral. Indeed, there is a body of thought by Montesquieu, Rousseau, and others that electoral representation can lead toward autocracy and away from democracy, or what Alexis de Tocqueville called “the tyranny of the majority.” That seems plausible in a modern political environment of forever-campaigning and unlimited financial contributions. An alternate approach, used in Athens and in the French republics, was sortition. These were randomly selected citizen assemblies that deliberated on the challenging questions of the times. While not perfect, they were more representative of a society’s diversity and not distorted by contemporary electoral politics. There are compelling efforts in Europe, like the Bürgerrat Demokratie in Germany, and the citizen assemblies of Ireland, to collaborate on complex issues such as same-sex marriage and climate change. Might such models of deliberative consensus be useful today, if only as a supplement to representative democracies?

What is the price of our privacy? What are we willing to trade in personal agency for collective benefit? 

We have a nine-camera feline surveillance system in our home. We do it for their safety. Are we evil? Where do we draw the line between the safety of our communities, be they people or felines, and our individual right to privacy? If we could prevent even one case of child sex trafficking by monitoring all private communications, would we do so? If we could prevent many traffic deaths by rigidly enforcing speed limits, would we do so? Will the system continue to tolerate my going 73 MPH in a 65 MPH speed zone? How do we handle the soft margins of permissible misbehavior or what Jamie Susskind calls the “hinterland of naughtiness”?

Are the challenges of our digital world the fault of technology or of ourselves? 

We value technology when it brings people together, but we cringe when it brings people together about matters that disturb us. Technology is often blamed for the ills of man — be it the printing press, the internet, or nuclear fission. We forget that technology has value, but it has no values. That’s on us. Barack Obama once noted that with the limitless destructive capability of modern weapons, we can only be saved from its devastations by the decisions we as humans make. It’s not whether the technology exists, it’s how we use it. 

Again, how do we manage free expression in our digital age? 

What are the boundaries? Who decides those boundaries? What about parody and satire? How do we manage expression and not disable acts of nonconformity or contrary thought? Do we dare go down that road? Or is that what we want?

The answers to these questions will be different in each society. The answers are complex and nuanced. They demand consideration of secondary consequences. They require thoughtful leaders in every sector, media, technology, academia, and politics, to be role models of a more principled view of the common good, and who can drive consensus toward that common good. Changing the nature of societal engagement will require the leadership of many. It cannot and will not be solved with the stroke of a pen.

Discuss.

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Richard Gingras has walked the bleeding edge from satellite networks to news products to search engines, from PBS to Apple to Excite to Salon to Google. He knows innovation is hard, and concedes he’s made more mistakes than you. He recently retired from Google after 15 years, serving as the company’s global vice president for news, overseeing the Google News Initiative, and engaging on news-related public policy. Gingras serves on the boards of several journalism policy related organizations. He chairs the board of Village Media and helped found the global Center for News, Technology, and Innovation.