Video: Partisanship and the search for engaging news
Summary: In this blog I am proposing a system which will nudge readers towards the other side — based on their current emotional and mental state.
Introduction: Natalie Stroud’s video inspired me to come up with a system which can encourage bipartisanship and burst the echo chamber effect. From the video and the previous papers that I have read, I have gathered that we need to work on and worry about people with extreme political standpoints(extreme left leaning and extreme right leaning); people with a more balanced standpoint already read news from disparate sources — their balance is what makes them supporters of the center politics. Extreme political takes can usually be traced down to belief systems, and to nudge people out of their belief system is risky — sometimes leading to resentment towards others’ belief system. Howbeit, based on an individuals mental and emotional state they are more or less likely to try to understand other side of the story. I am proposing a system which will track users’ behavior online, understand how they usually behave given a circumstance and if their behavior is deviant from usual then nudge them towards the other side.
Assumption: For the sake of simplicity and brevity, I am going to make the following assumptions:
- The system only tracks behavior in the comment section (inspiration drawn by the video)
- User is a male liberal and aggressive towards anyone opposing his opinion (on an online platform)
Explanation of the system through an example: Now lets say our hypothetical user gets his daily dose of news from articles shared on facebook (extremely realistic situation), and because of all the filters, the news he gets is usually published by CNN and MSNBC. He reads the news, scrolls through the comments section and responds aggressively to users whose comments are in opposition to either the article or the topic it is about(lets say gay rights). Aggression is the users usual response to top 5 opposing comments — this is our users’ online persona and has been recognized and developed by our system. Now one day our user reads an article about gay rights and either doesn’t respond so aggressively towards opposing comments or doesn’t respond at all — an aberration that would be detected by our system and would be flagged as “open”, meaning this user is open today to opposing ideas. Taking advantage of this open mindedness, our system will subtly nudge the user towards a gay rights article written by Fox News.
Novelty: The system leverages changes in moods and emotions to nudge readers towards the other side, instead of a constant nudge. A constant nudge can lead to ignorance of the nudge’s presence, frustrate the user into switching off the feature and if that is not possible, then pushing the user to a different platform. This timely nudge is important for it to be successful in promoting the user to be empathetic towards the other side and to engage in a more civil and logical conversation.
