Harnessing the Wisdom of Crowds to Spot Spin
posted by Danielle Citron
According to Business Week, this month marks the birth of Spinspotter, a website that lets users identify and discuss phrases in news stories that smack of bias. The website owner, a former Microsoft executive, will generate income by selling advertisements connected to the bias-infected new stories identified by users. For instance, Toyota might want to hang Prius ads around the phrase “gas guzzler.” Or Microsoft and Apple might want to buy ad space next to a news article that deems Windows Vista a “bug-filled failure.”
This is an intriguing, and mischevious, combination–users expose media bias (or its gullibility to spin doctors) while spin doctors append ads to win back or capture those cynical eyeballs. Given the site’s construction around key phrases, bias accomplished through silence may be missed. So often, media outlets emphasize the positive in politicians and industry such that the lack of criticism reveals a bias worthy of the SpinSpot treatment. But if crowds are indeed wise, they may find a way to highlight those bias-filled silences.
September 15, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Posted in: Culture, Cyberlaw, Law and Humanities, Technology
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Responses (1)
A.J. Sutter - September 15, 2008 at 11:28 pm
It’s sad that software is now preferable to simple critical thinking. That used to be more than sufficient, though it seems that nowadays those who deploy it are liable to be mocked for using some kind of “elite” faculty.
And of the bias inherent in the phrase “media bias” itself? Who originated this phrase? What the cultural presuppositions embodied in it — would the same concept be apposite in, say, France, Italy or even Japan? (Rhetorical question.) And what is its connection to disinformation (minus scare quotes)? How often in current American political discourse is the charge of “media bias” an apt candidate for the maxim, “he who smelt it, dealt it?”
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