Building a More Honest Internet

What would social media look like if it served the public interest?

Columbia Journalism Review, 2019

5 min read

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The internet doesn't have to be awash with flaws — the precedent of radio offers alternatives.

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Ethan Zuckerman confronts the problem head on: The internet needs a new model. Now it is a decidedly mixed blessing – a commercial free-for-all in the United States, a channel for the dissemination of falsehoods and election manipulation and, in some countries, a tool of authoritarianism. Societies dealt with a similarly consequential technological innovation more than a century ago with the advent of radio. Even with the contemporary flawed internet, Zuckerman writes in the Columbia Journalism Review, there is one venue where truth usually wins out: Wikipedia. He reports that such precedents can help today's users make the internet safer, truer and better.

Summary

The history of the development of radio suggests possible reforms that could be applicable to the internet.

The advent of radio changed the world about a century ago, making fortunes for some and transforming news reporting and government forever. The United States, the United Kingdom and the USSR each took different approaches to developing radio.

In the United States, the free market saw more than 500 stations start up in fewer than ten years. Some were commercial enterprises, selling radios or promoting their sponsors’ businesses. By the mid-1920s, independent stations joined together into networks backed by national advertising. Before that time, two-fifths of broadcasters had been “noncommercial,” serving religious institutions, academia, clubs and local interests. These independent efforts suffered as large conglomerates emerged and consolidated their market positions.

While the USSR spurned for-profit models, ...

About the Authors

Former director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, Ethan Zuckerman co-founded MediaCloud.org. He wrote Digital Cosmopolitans: Why We Think the Internet Connects Us, Why It Doesn't, and How to Rewire It; and Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them. His book Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection won the Zocalo Book Prize.

Carolyn Chun and Ethan Zuckerman

Building a More Honest Internet

What would social media look like if it served the public interest?

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The history of the development of radio suggests possible reforms that could be applicable to the internet.

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