For the rewiring experiment, I wanted to be more informed on where I got my news. I’m far from the most instructed on where I get my news. Growing up, it was mostly CNN International and the local news every night on Dubai TV. Since coming to NYUAD, I’ve changed my habits significantly, and now I notice I get most of my news from late-night talk shows, which isn’t the most ideal. Most of my discourse on political issues also occurs on Facebook, which, due to its infamous algorithm, tends to create an echo chamber of ideas. Although I had known about The Wall Street Journal’s Blue Feed Red Feed, I did not realize the extent to which this was problematic. In the United States, 44% of American get their news solely from Facebook. I decided to take a few measures to help get me out of this Echo Chamber. I first downloaded a Chrome Add-on PolitEcho, which scans my Facebook friend’s feeds and notes all the political pages they’ve liked to generate for each person a score on their liberal/conservative bias.
It was eye-opening to examine the Red Feed Blue Feed on a personal dataset, and I was shocked by how much it leaned to one side. I could also click on any of the dots to see which Friends swayed in which direction. To help become more aware of this bias in my day-to-day activities, I also installed another Add-on: Official Media Bias Fact Check Icon. This addon gives a score on the political leanings of news websites I visit in the corner of my web browser. With the Addon installed, I spent the weekend collecting my news solely from The New York Times (Classified as Left-Center), The National (Classified as Right-Center), and The World Economic Forum (Classified as Center/Least-Biased).
After exclusively using only these avenues for news, I came to a few conclusions on the ineffective methodology of news bias evaluation. The Chrome Addon only featured a one-dimensional spectrum that ranged from Left-bias to Right-bias. This Left and Right evaluation was also heavily determined on coverage of US news and politics. For example, the strong biases present in Al Arabiya, which was created as a Saudi counter to Al Jazeera, are not captured in the data, because it involves biases that are outside the dimensions of US Politics.
Overall, I realized that attempts to use technology to rewire my habits with the goal of absolutely no bias were futile. Even if I decided to primarily use C-Span as a news source (Classified as Center/Least-biased), my news would be biased towards coverage of the US. Nevertheless, the additions I have made to my web browser environment make it incrementally easier always to be aware of where I’m getting my news from, and at least think about their incentives in what is reported.