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These ethical dilemmas extend to the monetization of citizen journalism as well. As platforms like YouTube and Instagram enable users to profit from their content, the line between genuine reporting and content creation for financial gain becomes blurred.
While the current infrastructure for deepfake detection is being pressure tested in India right now, the reporting strategies being carved out by journalists during the election offer a preview into the challenges that lie ahead for other newsrooms around the world.
If we assign disinformation such a high level of influence, we ultimately deny people’s agency in making free voting choices. And studies show that we are aware that manipulative methods are used on us. Still, we all judge that we can maintain an ability to make our own choice when voting.
Many Americans live in a version of the world remarkably close to the one Michael Schudson pondered in 1995—because either they lack access to news or they choose to ignore journalism in favor of other, more sensational content. By exploring how journalism is increasingly absent from many of our lives, we can identify false paths and promising routes to its reinvention.
The following year, 2017, was notable for the addition of a neo-Orwellian phrase to the post-truth glossary. It began on Jan 21, with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer claiming of Trump’s inaugural ceremony, “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration – period – both in person and around the globe.” The claim was promptly fact-checked and cast into doubt. Nonetheless, indefatigable Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway defended Spicer on television the next day, claiming he was simply providing “alternative facts.”