The recent switch to online everything during the COVID-19 pandemic may have caught some people off guard, but the fact is that a significant number of innovators have been long preparing for the move.
After online searches, social media, and virtual meetings, more convenient products are expected to make their way into our lives. And with new innovations come new ways technology corporations can make themselves even more indispensable to us.
Regardless to which domain you belong, you most probably had to shift to an online form of doing your work the last few months. The necessity to continue our daily routines during confinement invited into our homes the global tech giants who were quick to step in, perhaps rightfully so. They own the technology and the means. It was only a matter of time before their new digital tools replaced some of our habits.
What function, then, did the COVID-19 pandemic play to amplify the role tech companies have already been assuming? It simply accelerated the move toward automation. For some, the idea of artificial intelligence or augmented/virtual reality might generate thoughts of robots taking over the world, but to tech experts, our future lies in digitization.
Innovations, however useful, are not applicable to all contexts. In Lebanon, digitization poses problems that are primarily related to the technology and infrastructure sector. Further exacerbating the outdated infrastructure are internet and power cuts that are a direct product of the failing economy. During the pandemic, this problem was mostly felt in the education domain. Timed power outages, coupled with slow internet and limited mobile data, significantly worsened the online learning environment for both teachers and students.
Besides learning, digitization is hostile toward the Lebanese public in various other ways. The collapse of the economy in 2020 has put restrictions on web payments and international purchases, making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to conduct any type of e-commerce. In the midst of the mounting pile of issues the country is facing, technology is put on the back burner. When the immediate goal is survival, regulating tech products or finding solutions for our e-problems turns these necessities into luxuries.
From a media perspective, the strong presence of these companies is additionally evident in the automated news agenda they provide to direct our attention to specific news stories. Technologies that offer us the luxury of doing business and enjoying friendships from afar are not machine driven. They are people driven. The algorithms that generate news for us are the product of a series of codes that a human was involved in designing. An algorithm-run news agenda that might seem innocent on the surface increases, in fact, the risk of us sinking into a filter bubble. The danger in such news prompts exceeds the danger of us intentionally selecting the news ourselves, because the former learns our habits and subtly feeds them back to us without giving us the opportunity to realize our inherent biases and hopefully change our news selection practices. Such echo chambers breed polarization, which is debilitating for civic deliberation, as Sunstein wrote in 2001.
But using codes to generate news is not restricted to tech companies and web aggregators alone. Many news organizations have already been using bots to create news articles. So far, research reveals little about how the public responds to automated news. A recent experiment by Tandoc Jr. and colleagues published in Digital Journalism showed, in general, the public does not differentiate between algorithm and human written stories in their credibility. Participants, however, did perceive an objective article written by a bot to be more credible than a human byline. How we’ll accept them in the future remains to be seen.
With the little control we have left, how do we face the inevitable and build a better life around it? Engaging with these media companies with our critical thinking hats on will significantly impact the quality our lives and those around us. This is where media literacy plays a central role. Exercising basic filtering techniques and assessing the information we receive for facts is crucial for surviving in a digital world that will become increasingly more pervasive. Acting responsibly while consuming and producing media will also ensure we, as citizens, are taking part in spreading peace in our communities.
These practices, however, are not innate. Psychology has always told us that humans are cognitive misers who seek to conserve mental resources instead of allocating them to engage centrally with a message, as suggested by the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM). While this function is necessary in some conditions, applying it to our media selection habits prevents us from exerting the required effort to authenticate mediated messages. Taking a shortcut, then, is destructive in the online environment where verification of information has become increasingly more daunting. Awareness of the source of a message, the agenda behind it, its sender, and its connotations means we can considerably strengthen the shields that guard the health of our minds.
The Lebanese public faces grave challenges during these difficult times. In the absence of solutions from the higher-ups, the only way we can respond to the influx of digitization is through personal initiatives centered on knowledge of the dangers of echo chambers that could stand in the way of the very answers we seek to find. For the optimists among us, disruptions present an opportunity for local innovators to address local problems. Outreach that targets building stronger communities based on technological and digital literacy can empower individuals to look beyond the present and start devising plans to address the complete digitization that is waiting for us in the future.
The pandemic will end, but global tech companies will continue to mediate our daily lives. How we engage with them will determine whether we are capable of making the most of these digital tools without giving in to consuming and spreading unverified news. In those few areas we can still control, a sceptic mind might be our only escape route.