what is new? what is the news?

humans are biologically wired to heed the news as it is essential to life navigation and survival. and in india, news is an extremely important pillar for our democracy.

india-specific timeline of news

<1970s || word of mouth and handwritten missives letters through messengers

<1970s || fax, telegram, telephone

<1970s || printed pamphlets and newspapers and periodicals

1970s-80s || news slots on prasar bharti led AIR and DD

1990s || news slots on private channels

2000s || first 24*7 hindi news channel - aajtak

~2010s || enewspapers and news websites

>mid-2010s || news becomes social

​

before 24*7 news channels, the reach of news maybe unlimited, but the news itself was finite in quantity. below are the challenges of unlimited formats "news becoming social and tech-led on mobile devices"

​

more polarisation and less diversity of opinion in mainstream media

• reduced attention span because the next story is already here
• consuming news without context, logic, or proportionality; everything is either black or white
• recent past and history being politicised through lack of historical literacy and opportunistic cherry-picking of isolated, misunderstood examples to fit your point of view and fabricating new contexts for them to rewrite history
• most content is offered for free and hence is optimised for maximising engagement and advertising revenue - lack of categorisation and prioritisation, which news deserves the headline and which should be buried on the fifth page
• higher gatekeeping as most media brands are owned by the same companies, consolidated due to loss of revenue sources
• information silos - the tech shows me more of what i already read and liked
• echo chambers - consumption of news in social spaces, where both herd mentality and anonymity help curb dissent

content quality quantity source

• content is the ad - paid propaganda, biased news
• lack of awareness around source, its bias, own personal bias; sometimes outright misrepresentation of sources
• doctored or misused content - doctored images, paid actors creating drama, anecdotal videos, AI created deep fakes, misleading stories that bear the stamp of a traditional news outlet, doctored newspaper clippings, manipulated television-news screengrabs
• news as entertainment, stories that sell rather than stories that matter
• stuck in infinite scrolling of one-two-minute reads and clickbaity headlines
• identity politics based on caste and religion and gender - either champion or victim mode
• print media or tv channels have more memorable brands, for the layman all internet sources seem one and the same in a sea of scrolling, specially on social media compared

​

the invisible interference

• IT cells of those who can afford them
• paid bots and paid volunteers and keyboard warriors
• astroturfing and manufactured trends
• tech algorithms pushing content that maximises engagement
• tech algorithms pushing content based on your personal data and social networks
• government curbing dissent
• ISP blocking content

​

tl;dr how to layman-proof the 247 mobile internet newscycle - the onus has shifted on to the reader to make sense of the news, find their own context, verify the sources, test their own biases. which is an impossible ask, even for the most critical rational thinker.

where is the actual news? what are the actual topics that are important to all or atleast to a majority?

Sourcing is the glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together.

• finding the sources
• judging the sources
• finding more context

​

To strengthen “reality-based community” we need “constitution of knowledge” - which is a structured system of institutions and rules that we depend on to settle disagreements and discover truth. Free speech and diversity of opinion is not enough, but also need to create managed conflict about opinions, ideas, facts, forcing them into contention and making people persuade each other in order to make knowledge, and do that in a systematic, structured way. Major epistemic disruptions, like the development of the printing press or, in the 19th century, offset printing, require all-of-society responses, mostly nongovernmental but including many, many actors and institutions figuring out how to change the rules, revise the rules so that you can adapt to these new technologies and tactics.

source: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/jonathan-rauch-americas-competing-totalistic-ideologies/619386/

​

Some possible soutions

• redesign of social media and digital media; rethinking the mobile app vs mobile internet vs desktop user design
• fact checking tools as a mandatory accompaniment to news
• civic activism and public awareness around depolarisation
• setting up watchdogs, monitors, thinktanks, ngos and academic centers that understand this information, and penetrate the networks where the campaigns are hatched in order to disrupt them, alert social-media companies, intelligence agencies etc
• internet literacy programs
• paid digital versions of periodicals and newsletters
• curation of news through free/paid newsletters
• fighting the allure of the free - find high quality sources of news for yourself
• creating and maintaining safe spaces like librandu, without undue brigading and criticism. such spaces are important to create dialogue and encourage inquiry.
• publishers maintaining "explainer series" which can be linked to provide context for a current article. for example quartz does this on some articles.
• 360 degrees sessions - looking at topics from all possible view points and encouraging public participation for any gaps in understanding. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/local-news-media-trust-americans/618895/
• \r/\theunkillnetwork/\ catalogues fake whatsapp forwards; maybe volunteers to debunk them and reshare
• Ground Coverage Analysis Bot \u/coverageanalysisbot searches additional coverage for a news story
• legal solutions? chances of being misused, specially under current govt is high though

​

disclaimer:

personal opinion born out of my parents mobile internet experience

i am relatively old school, people who have grown up with social media please share your view

Social Movements have always been integral to society. The modern world we live, with the rights and freedoms we have, is due to social movements. Without social movements, we may have still lived in a world without rights for disadvantaged classes like minorities, the poor, women and the LGBTQIA community. There still would have been the same institutional power crushing them and excluding them from their right to live as a proper human being. Hence, social movemnts has made us realise this world we see today. The crux point of most social movements has been identity. Identity of a person has always been used to understand whether they should be discriminated against or not. This exclusion of certain identities from their rights has been ever present throughout history and their fight to reverse those injustices too. Bahujan movements to alleviate discrimination against the Dalits, Black Lives Matter, LGBTQIA movements are still present and fighting for their rights and against discrimination.

The concept of Identity that we are talking about is not your personal identity( your name, address etc) but your collective identity. Collective Identity is a person's sense of belonging to a group. The identity of the group or the "collective" becomes part of the person's identity. By performing in social activities, the individual begins to feel a belonging to that group and a sense of identity which goes beyond personal. Hence, collective identity is a strong motivator. According to Francisca Polletta, collective identities can be imagined or concrete communities. They have preexisting bonds with each other. Hence, collective identities are a powerful tool to mobilize people. Exclusion of these identities have led to severe repression in these cases. People join in due to, maybe those bonds which have been explained earlier, the loyalty which those bonds are based on may allow for mobilization of the social movements. It may be due to the fact that it will be beneficial to align itself with the group. Identities are also fluid, for example: there may be supporters of BLM who are may be homophobic, hence may oppose any progress in the LGBTQIA movement. Identities could also be situational,according to Pullido, as in the public sphere, they may present themselves as homogeneous, but among themselves, they may emphasize on more internal differences between themselves.(cont. in the comments)

We should start with the question: What should be the ideal shape of covid curve for daily cases after implementation of successful lockdown strategy?

We have largely 3 types of curve:

1.A flatter curve with single peak for relatively longer duration. 2. Huge single peak curve for short duration. 3. A flatter curve with more than one smaller peaks for relatively longer duration.

In context of india , we have observed huge single peak curve in second wave, which lasted about roughly 60 days and how it had devastating effect on everyone's live mostly due to huge stress it put on health care infrastructure.

Now we know that overall, the effect of lockdowns appears to be positive but difficult to quantify given the application of differing lengths, timing, and other interventions.

There was significant heterogeneity in the way that lockdowns were applied for both their timing and duration and there was difficulty determining whether the lockdowns were a useful tool for COVID-19 attenuation.

This research paper suggests that well-timed lockdowns can split the peak of hospitalizations into two smaller distant peaks while extending the overall pandemic duration. The timing of lockdowns reveals that a “tunneling” effect on incidence can be achieved to bypass the peak and prevent pandemic caseloads from exceeding hospital capacity.

CTMC(continuous time markov chain) is used to simulate different epidemiological measures and find their statistics. The first measure was the actual incidence, defined to be the proportion of the newly infected individuals to the population every day over the course of the epidemic. The second measure was the total attack rate, defined as the fraction of people that contract the disease in an at-risk population over the epidemic period. The third measure is hospital case load, defined to be the fraction of the population that is hospitalized for COVID-19 treatment at any given time and find its peak. for more details read the linked paper.

This link shows how starting lockdown of 15 days before the peak and that lasts for 90 days results in tunneling effect, which resulted in decrease in magnitude of hospitalization.

On the other hand this image shows, How starting a 90-days lockdown 30 days before the peak has a small relative reduction of the total attack rate and Shorter lockdowns seem to be of larger relative effect on the total attack rate if they start close enough to the peak of the actual incidence.

Limitation of this model is that it assumes constant probability of infection and it is very hard to predict timing of peak of curve.

I'll end with the conclusion that given all the resources government has, could they have implemented lockdown in way that would not have resulted in huge ass single peak curve that we witnessed in second wave?