The problem that my application plans to remedy is that readers lack access to reliable and diverse news outlets. That is to say, readers will fall prone to reading “fake news” or stick to reading from a select few newspaper publications.
The problem is the influx of fake news that is spreading due to the increased usage of social media. In 2018, Statistica estimated that there are around 2.62 billion social media users worldwide, and that number is expected to grow up to 3.02 by 2021. Increased Social Media usage ushers in more fake news, as users are exposed to these articles from friends or other connections they have made on their accounts. Because of this, fake news can circulate incredibly fast and lead to people being misinformed.
Many young adults are increasingly getting more access to smartphones, and they are often persuaded by their friends or other connections on social media through the circulation of articles. Most do not fact check or do further exploration of the topics discussed in the articles because it is not convenient for the user to do so. This issue has emerged due to the fact that the physical newspaper industry is being replaced by the digitized version. Pew Research reports that “digital subscriptions” have surged, whereas the physical printed versions are on a decline. Now that users are more likely to view newspaper publications on the internet, they are more exposed to erroneous news.
The reason why I chose this issue is because of the rising issue of getting reliable news and information. I am involved in various political societies, and I have interned at The Huffington Post in high school. During my time here, I interacted with various employees with varying political and societal backgrounds. From this experience, I learned the importance of providing valid and reliable information to readers to allow them to come to their own conclusions about the topics in the articles.
I also believe that there is a shift to mobile learning, where college students and younger adults are integrating their mobile devices into learning. A study conducted in the book “Culture, Learning, and Technology: Research and Practice” based off of Chinese international students reported that around 97 percent used their phones for school-related endeavors (Benson, Joesph, Moore 183). This demonstrates the importance of our mobile devices when it comes to education. I would like for my application to capitalize on this new trend and get users of a similar identity (college students) to continue to learn through this newspaper aggregator.
Additionally, I do pay a lot of attention to politics and try to stay politically involved. In recent years, news has played a very large role in the government, especially during the election process. As a result, news has been viewed with animosity as well with various politicians attempting to discredit reliable news outlets in order to obscure information that works against them. In an analysis of President Donald Trump’s twitter, NPR reported that in the month of August 2018, President Trump’s twitter had 46 tweets with the words “phony” or “fake”. Due to his popularity, many social media users may share the same sentiment with the President, which leads to many people becoming misinformed.
The inspiration for this project stems from my own experience using a news aggregator on my android phone. I found multiple issues with this application such as the aggregator suggesting questionable news outlets, and topics that I wasn’t interested in. Additionally, the user interface was lackluster and did not offer many options. As a result, I didn’t end up using the application very much. I wanted to create an aggregator that would tailor the articles based around the user’s interests so that the user would feel like they were reading a newspaper that was personalized. To ensure that the reader would not be misinformed on a topic, the application would also offer various fact-checking services. This includes providing news from respectable news outlet as well as suggesting articles about the same topic from fact-checking websites such as Snopes. These added layers of protection would help to combat the surge of inaccurate news and provides the user with the opportunity to conduct their own research and arrive at their own conclusion on the topics discussed in the articles they read.
Testing this application with other students is incredibly beneficial towards future iterations of this application. The anticipated demographic that would be using this application would be mainly younger adults. Also, other students might have other ideas for how the application could provide reliable news and fact-checking. Some students may frequent social media more than I do and would be able to provide more insight into the impact of social media usage and misinformation. Additionally, different students might have different views on the legitimacy of certain news outlets (ie: one student might think the New York Times is not a reliable source of news, whereas someone else might think the opposite). In the original prototype, the application had a strict policy against any news outlets that I deemed was unreliable. However, I realized that my opinion will not necessarily match the consumers. The next iteration had a greater range of proposed newspaper outlets. Now, the application displays whatever article the reader wanted to view, and it suggests a similar article from a fact-checking website. This hopefully will eliminate my own bias in the design of this application. However, I do acknowledge that I would need to do more testing to do determine if this application is indeed unbiased.
If I were to continue to keep working on this prototype for the rest of the semester, I would need to work on a physical application instead of a wireframe. The wireframe can imitate the functionality of an application but is limited by the wireframe’s own functionality. I would also need to institute some way of including the different application programming interfaces for the different newspapers and emails. Additionally, I would need to develop both an android and an ios version, which would take a long period of time due to the differences in the application development for both phones.
Works Cited
Barthel, Michael. “Circulation, Revenue Fall for US Newspapers Overall despite Gains for
Some.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 1 June 2017, www.pewresearch.org
/fact-tank/2017/06/01/circulation-and-revenue-fall-for-newspaper-industry/.
Culture, Learning, and Technology: Research and Practice, edited by Angela D. Benson, et al.,
Routledge, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central,
https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?
docID=4809824.
Keith, Tamara. “President Trump’s Description of What’s ‘Fake’ Is Expanding.” NPR, NPR, 2
Sept. 2018, www.npr.org/2018/09/02/643761979/president-trumps-description-of-whats-
Fake-is-expanding.
“Number of Social Media Users Worldwide 2010-2021.” Statista, Statista,
www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/.