The Economy of Attention and Journalism 3.0

The fact that humans are social being comes with a wide range of behavioral implications, one of them is the natural passing on of information. One may argue that this is the fundamental nature of language itself, and people have an intrinsic drive to do this. Some talk about what they think, others about what they feel and others about what the saw, regardless of the motivation this is still a passing on of information, be it relevant or not.

With time, some people figured out the relevance of up to date, pertinent information and understood this need to be done in a structured way in order to maximize the impact. This was the birth of journalism, which aims to be an information and event analysis with a distribution mechanism. The implications are very interesting because more pertinent information means more opportunities and I think this was the initial purpose of journalism; to create an environment where people can understand current events and possibilities in order to make better plans that are in tune with reality, and this was done to an extent or another.

As with all human endeavors, while the drive remains the same, the context changes and this shapes how things are done. And as we know, technology is one of the most influential and dynamic game changers that influence how things are done. So let’s try to briefly analyze journalism through the context of technology and try to speculate what blockchain technology and the steem ecosystem can mean to a future niche of journalism. But first let’s see what would be some ingredients in order to make journalism as pertinent as possible, it needs to be accurate, fast, easily distributed, and independent.

Journalism in the context of technology

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Even before we had the written word, I believe there was some form of “journalism” that operated as word of mouth. Although this was a much-needed start, the structure that was possible at the time did not facilitate this endeavor because word of mouth does not keep thing accurate, nor is it easily distributed. So although the sources were mostly independent, it did not have a proper form to play an impactful role in society.

The advent of the written word came with an upgrade for accuracy because once something was written down it did not suffer transformations as with word of mouth. But regarding the fast creation and distribution there were no improvements because everything had to be hand written. And on the downside, because only a few were able to write and most of them were in a institutional context that had an agenda, independence suffered a downgrade.

The first major innovation that disrupted journalism and created a fruitful context in which it can manifest was the advent of the printing press. The fact that now information could be printed fast and on mass was a very good upgrade with a lot of implications. It took some time for this technology to be widely adopted and perfected, but this lead the way to the newspaper, which is a massive step forward for journalism. We now had a form in which accuracy was good because all the issues had the same info, the pace of production was fast and because there were a lot of copies it was a major improvement on distribution as well. The only thing that suffered a downgrade yet again was independence because with the printing press we started having large journalistic institutions which have the tendency towards uniformity and control, thus censorship started being a real problem.

Advances in printing and distribution with the new automobiles brought forth a new paradigm in journalism which we now know as mass media. Combine this with the advent of television and the presence of a TV in most houses in the western world, journalism had it better than ever. But all this came with further centralization within institutions which in turned censored more and more. And because mass media had such an impact on society, it’s clear that interests in formatting the information in a comfortable way for the status quo were larger than ever. Combine this with the ingraining of capitalism in popular culture and mass media was severely derailed from its purpose of presenting a fair picture and was used mainly for the cultural programming of behavior.

The last technology that had a major impact on journalism is the internet, so much so that you could consider it a shift towards journalism 2.0. Which is a step in the right direction from all points of view. Accuracy was good, although the possibility of editing is a double edge sword. The creation of news is faster than ever because of current computer capabilities and the distribution is instant with almost zero costs, it does not matter if one person reads that news or if all the world does, the cost of publication is almost the same. And because people now have the possibility of running a digital only news room with a better distribution mechanism than the largest press agencies had 20 years ago, independence is for the first time something on the rise.

Informational abundance and the economy of attention

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The internet came with a twist in the context of information due to it’s global and almost instant nature of replication content, it shifted the paradigm towards an abundance of information which is, on one hand, fantastic, but on the other, it’s something beyond any type of control. This democratization of content means that almost anyone can function as a journalist, for better or worse. And to be honest this informational overload created other types of problems for journalism.

Because people are now bombarded with an immense number of news in a wide range of topics, it’s impossible to keep track of everything. This creates two types of major consumer categories, the ones that make an effort to stay informed and filter the news outlets to what they found relevant. And the second category is the one that takes the news that is served in a biased way, starting to read only what coincides with their worldview.

The abundance of information and the much-needed filters in order to arrive at the pieces that are “relevant” to people gave way the economy of attention. This created a new type of problem because journalism started to produce what people want to hear because this is what drives the best returns. So now most of the online journalism is flashy clickbait that creates and emotional responses but does not have the necessary depth to present pertinent information.

So journalists are now in the context where their work is easier than ever, but the content that brings the most profit lacks substance and this is something detrimental to society because we now need pertinent information more than ever. Luckily there are new technological advances which bring new opportunities to this field of activity, like blockchain that could pave to way to journalism 3.0.

Journalism 3.0 powered by the Steem Ecosystem

The steem blockchain is designed to facilitate the creation, management, and remuneration of content and this structure has very interesting implications in the field of journalism.

Firstly let’s simplify the steem process and after that see how it fits journalism. The creation of an account is free of charge and can be done with a pseudonym as well as the real identity. After the account is created the user can post and with that the content is written in the blockchain, there is a 7-day window in which the content is editable with all the changes being visible in the blockchain and after that it becomes permanent. In the same 7-day period, other users can upvote the content if they find it valuable and once the period is over the payout is made. Now let’s take the steps one by one and see how they relate.

The option for users to be anonymous has both positive and negative implications. It means that anyone can say whatever they want because there are no personal implications, but this is a positive thing in the case of investigative journalism because it mitigates the chances of retribution from the investigated party. On the other hand, if the type of journalism requires identity in order to make it credible, this can be done through putting the real name and inserting photos of oneself or by using the steem verify service.

Posting on the blockchain is something totally different than posting anywhere else on the internet because content in the blockchain is permanent, fully open and censorship-resistant, this being a game changer. The permanence of opinions should make a journalist more responsible because every word will be available for review in perpetuity. The open nature of the information is a plus as well because it allows for global distribution and all interested people have access to it without any restrictions. And on the other side, in journalism censorship-resistance can be a god sent to the people that have the courage of tackling sensitive subjects.

Now the upvoting part is the real disruptive mechanism that brings steem based journalism in a totally different paradigm in the economy of attention. The idea that each user has the possibility of distributing rewards to what she believes is quality content without any central authority having the possibility of interfering is fantastic. This means that content can be judged on its own merit and the financial reward of that work is a direct consequence of how people interact with that content. The steem ecosystem is in tune with the fact that each upvote is a way to finance someone’s work, plus the existence of curation rewards which incentivize the search for quality content makes this the best functioning structure for an economy of attention to unfold. The distribution of rewards without any middleman is also something that makes a huge difference because this is also censorship resistant, no central authority is able to deny a reward after the 7 days have passed.

Conclusion

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The steem blockchain seems to provide the best context in which pertinent journalism can flourish. The free and open nature makes it accessible to all people with an internet connection, plus the permanence and censorship resistance of content makes it the ideal medium of storage for journalistic work. And the totally decentralized method of content remuneration creates the possibility of financing real independent work that is judged by the quality of the content.

All these ingredients make for a very interesting test bed for an economy of attention that could lead to a new paradigm, Journalism 3.0, maybe. We really need to take advantage of this opportunity and create projects that make use of these mechanisms. And @steemromania is working and such a project, more details soon.