Collective euphoria turned to harsh reality for social media in 2017. Propaganda campaigns came to light. Bot armies continued to bully, intimidate, and harass. Warehouses of trolls pushed political agendas. Public-comment processes were polluted.
Manipulating attention has never been easier.
The key weakness of social media — an inability to ensure the authenticity of communication and interaction — will continue to be exploited in 2018. And it’s going to get a lot worse.
Artificial neural networks are advancing rapidly in their ability to synthesize content — including images, videos, and texts — that are increasingly indistinguishable from authentic content. Just look at the results of state-of-the-art face synthesis here. Phony Yelp reviews that read as legitimate opinion can be algorithmically generated at scale too. These technologies enable believable social posts and profiles to be automatically synthesized whole cloth, essentially “imagined” by neural networks, and they will overrun legitimate speech online. How will we have the debates, dialogues, and dialectic we need to run a democracy?
In the arms race to secure the authenticity of online media, platforms will need to step up their internal protocols for both purging inauthentic accounts as well as identifying influence campaigns. They should be as transparent as possible about this without undermining their efforts. They should also recognize that this is too important an issue to take up solely on their own.
Journalists and other actors in civil society can play a role in helping to hold accountable the authenticity of the communications processes through which the public is informed. But they need far more access to data from platforms if they are to be effective. The platforms should enable this access, recognizing that observation by trusted parties will help identify how the system is being manipulated. Scale means that journalists also need powerful computational tools that can trace information flows. And the development of technically robust and adaptable media forensics tools will be essential so journalists can assess the authenticity of potentially synthesized media.
Appropriate data and tooling in the hands of computational journalists would enable the creation of a new beat covering social influence campaigns. An “online weather report” would show which ways the bot and troll winds were blowing and which topics or issues were being manipulated that day. By grappling with vast amounts of data using computational tools journalists could produce these reports (or even forecasts) that illuminate the flows of information online, fortifying the public against disingenuous and subversive media.
Nicholas Diakopoulos is an assistant professor of communication at Northwestern University.
Tamar Charney We get serious about algorithms
Marie Gilot No assholes allowed
Molly de Aguiar Good journalism won’t be enough
Amie Ferris-Rotman More female reporters abroad (please)
Hannah Cassius The year of the echo-chamber escapists
Kinsey Wilson Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up
Rachel Schallom Better design helps differentiate opinion and news
Adam Thomas Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor
Richard Tofel The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention
Dheerja Kaur Fun with subscription products
Alice Antheaume Are you fluent in AI?
Nikki Usher The year of The Washington Post
Alan Soon The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media
Brian Lam Sketchy ethics around product reviews
Sam Sanders Shine the light on ourselves
Frédéric Filloux External forces
Kawandeep Virdee Zines had it right all along
Joanne McNeil Gatekeeping the gatekeepers
Borja Echevarría TV goes digital, digital goes TV
Kathleen McElroy Building a news video experience native to mobile
Trushar Barot The Jio-fication of India
Cristina Wilson The year of the Instagram Story
Carlos Martínez de la Serna The new journalism commons
Will Sommer The year local media gets conservative
Michelle Ferrier The year of the great reckoning
Claire Wardle Disinformation gets worse
Jassim Ahmad Thriving on change
Monika Bauerlein The firehose of falsehood
Jared Newman Venture funding and digital news don’t mix
Eric Ulken The year local publishers get smart(er) about change
Mary Walter-Brown Show a little vulnerability
Monique Judge Letting black women tell their own stories
Jacqui Cheng Retailers move into content
Rodney Benson Better, less read, and less trusted
Sally Lehrman Trust comes first
Rick Berke Value is the watchword
Niketa Patel Live journalism comes of age
Corey Ford The empire strikes back
Mandy Velez texting is lit rn, fam
Nushin Rashidian Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives
Mario García Storytelling finally adapts to mobile
Eric Nuzum Beyond the narrative arc
Vanessa K. DeLuca Women’s voices take center stage
Amy Webb Listen to weak signals
Kyle Ellis Let’s build our way out of this
Justin Kosslyn The year journalists become digital security experts
Felix Salmon Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin
Jim Brady With the people, not just of the people
Daniel Trielli The rich get richer, the poor scramble
Pete Brown Push alerts, personalized
Taylor Lorenz Social and media will split
Sam Ford The year of investing in processes
Julia Beizer A longer view on the pivot
Bill Keller A growing turn to philanthropy
Jennifer Choi Standing up for us and for each other
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer Skepticism and narcissism
Mary Meehan Real lives are at stake in rural areas
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Publishing less to give readers more
Tanzina Vega It’s time for media companies to #PassTheMic
Andrew Losowsky The year of resilience
Ståle Grut Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks
Joyce Barnathan It will be harder to bury the news
Matt Boggie The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea
Lucas Graves From algorithms to institutions
Pablo Boczkowski The rise of skeptical reading
Jarrod Dicker Honesty in advertising
Umbreen Bhatti The trust problem isn’t new
Corey Johnson The pro-fact resistance
S. Mitra Kalita The arc of news and audience
Federica Cherubini The rise of bridge roles in news organizations
Joanne Lipman Journalists inventing revenue streams
Luke O'Neil The end is already here
Mi-Ai Parrish Blockchain and trust
Cindy Royal Your journalism curriculum is obsolete
P. Kim Bui The reckoning is only beginning
Lam Thuy Vo Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest
Susie Banikarim R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)
Charo Henríquez Training is an investment, not an expense
Amy King Let’s amplify visual voice
Jessica Parker Gilbert Design connects storytelling and strategy
Miguel Castro The arrival of the impact producer
Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán The editorial meeting of the future
Tracie Powell The muting of underserved voices
Vivian Schiller Pivot to tomorrow
Helen Havlak Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds
Craig Newmark Working together toward sustainable solutions
Alastair Coote The year of self-improvement
Rubina Madan Fillion Unlocking the potential of AI
Zizi Papacharissi Women come back
Michelle Garcia Navigating journalistic transparency
Jennifer Coogan The future is female
Sydette Harry Listen to your corner and watch for the hook
Matt Thompson Here come the attention managers
Caitria O'Neill The new court of public opinion
Mike Caulfield Refactoring media literacy for the networked age
Caitlin Thompson Podcasting models mature and diversify
Rodney Gibbs Tech workers turn to journalism
Dan Shanoff You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)
Sara M. Watson Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters
David Skok Finding an information-life balance
Dannagal G. Young Stop covering politics as a game
Imaeyen Ibanga Longform video leads the way
Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg (Hint: It’s about your brand)
An Xiao Mina Memes and visuals come to the fore
José Zamora Revenue-first journalism
Nicholas Quah Stop talking trash about young people
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms
Renée Kaplan The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)
Raju Narisetti Mirror, mirror on the wall
Gordon Crovitz Serving readers over advertisers
Julia B. Chan Looking for loyalty in all the right places
Alfred Hermida Going beyond mobile-first
Laura E. Davis Writing answers before you know the question
Juleyka Lantigua Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time
Matt DeRienzo A recession, then a collapse
Kim Fox Audience teams diversify their approach
Tanya Cordrey Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention
Evie Nagy Pivot to mobile video frustration
Yvonne Leow The rise of video messaging
Edward Roussel Eyes, ears, and brains
Heather Bryant Building the ecosystems for collaboration
Mariana Moura Santos Think local, act global
Doris Truong Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes
Rachel Davis Mersey AI, with real smarts
Elizabeth Jensen Show your work
Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism
Aron Pilhofer We can’t leave the business to the business side any more
Cory Haik Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact
Pia Frey Address users as individuals
Sarah Marshall Loyalty as the key performance indicator
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Seeking trust in fragmented spaces
Lanre Akinola Making noise is not a strategy
Jesse Holcomb Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you
Andrew Ramsammy The year ownership mattered
Nicholas Diakopoulos Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity
Mariano Blejman News games rule
Carrie Brown-Smith Transparency finally takes off
Kristen Muller The year of the voter
Jamie Mottram From pageviews to t-shirts
Errin Haines At the ballot, it’s time to count black women
Francesco Marconi The year of machine-to-machine journalism
C.W. Anderson The social media apocalypse
Mira Lowe The year of the local watchdog
Ray Soto VR reaches the next level
Jim Moroney Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for
Damon Krukowski Reviving the alt-weekly soul
Andrew Haeg The year journalists become relationship builders
Raney Aronson-Rath Transparency is the antidote to fake news
Juliette De Maeyer A responsible press criticism
Michael Kuntz The only pivot that might work
Steve Grove The midterms are an opportunity
Emma Carew Grovum Newsroom culture becomes a priority
Basile Simon We need better career paths for news nerds
Manoush Zomorodi Self-help as a publishing strategy
Christopher Meighan Passive partnership is in the rearview
Hossein Derakhshan Television has won
Emily Goligoski Looking beyond news for inspiration
Tim Carmody Watch out for Spotify
Alexios Mantzarlis Moving fake news research out of the lab
Feli Sánchez The year for guerrilla user research
Matt Carlson Attacks on the press will get worse
Ruth Palmer Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities