Slow Media and 'monotasking' an emerging movement
The voluminous cacophony of online news is having a counter effect on how well informed we are. Driven by the tech giants, news publishers are captive to data-led newsrooms in the quest for revenue. The Slow Media movement challenges us to reject ambient news and embrace depth.
Key points:
- The dependence of news organisations on Facebook and Google has a powerful influence on how news is being consumed, according to an excellent article in The New Yorker , giving rise to the “tyranny of the trending story” with audience metrics, click bait and the pursuit of digital revenue determined by diminishing rates of engagement
- It has led to a concurrent diminution in the ability of citizens to be fully informed from news - and the perils of superficial knowledge and an overload of ‘ambient news’ determining opinions
- Taking its cue from the Slow Food movement, Slow Media challenges us to choose (news) ingredients mindfully, promotes ‘monotasking’ and a focus on depth and quality.
Apple CEO Tim Cook last year decided to use the iPhone feature, Screen Time, to monitor his phone activity. It resulted in him slashing the amount of notifications he received and admitting we spend too much time on our devices.
NewYorker.com editor Michael Luo conceded that all his digital news habits resulted in him “reading more than ever before [and] it often feels like I’m understanding less.”
He returned to reading the print edition of The New York Times and what he found was fascinating: “I’m engaging with the news in a more focussed way. Certainly, I’m able to read more broadly. I’ve read articles that weren’t in my social-media feeds, or that I missed while scrolling through my apps: reporting on efforts to make Copenhagen a carbon-neutral city, on talks between the United States and the Taliban, on a new study that found that the size of bullets affects mortality rates in shootings. It seems to me that I’ve become better informed.”
It’s not just the time we spend on devices; it’s our ability to consciously consume news to become better-informed citizens. An average news site has five to seven seconds to tell it story, giving rise to ‘ambient’ news and the perils of superficial knowledge – think Brexit, or even the Trump Administration.
Information overload was called out way back in 2008 when “BlackBerrys still dominated the smartphone market, push notifications hadn’t yet to come to the iPhone, retweets weren’t built into Twitter, and BuzzFeed News did not exist.”
The torrent of online news sources is driven by media organisations fighting for increasingly fragmented and fleeting consumer attention, where social media platforms are often the gateway to readership. When a click means revenue generation, it’s no wonder click bait isn't going anywhere.
But change is afoot. The Slow Media Manifesto launched almost a decade ago in Germany and has gained traction, as did Slow Food, throughout Europe. But in the UK and US slow news has also found an audience. In the UK Delayed Gratification touts itself as the “world’s first Slow Journalism magazine”, while in the US former BBC and Dow Jones executives and the US Ambassador to the UK launched Tortoise Media publishing just five stories a day.
While the sheer volume of online news is showing no signs of abating, it’s an important debate that reading deeper, not once over broadly, makes a more informed society and keeps quality journalism alive and well.
