When it comes to algorithmic manipulation we do not have to be passive victims. We each have the power to do what our phones—a device historian of American political rhetoric Jennifer Mercieca calls a misery machine—won’t do on their own: lead us to hopeful news. Good news. We have the ability to choose differently. The algorithms will follow us wherever we lead them. We just have to decide where we want to go.

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WHAT YOU READ CAN AFFECT HOW YOU PERCEIVE THE WORLD

In a post entitled What Happens When You Trade Doomscrolling for Hopescrolling, Mercieca, a professor at Texas A&M University, tells of a wonderful experiment that she conducted with her students.

My students tell me that they don’t sleep. They stay up all night endlessly scrolling their social media feeds. Their attention has been captured, but not by anything in particular, not really, they say. Like a lot of us, my students are chronic doomscrollers.

And, like a lot of us, they’re miserable as a result. Doomscrolling—which psychologists define as ‘the compulsive act of endlessly scrolling through negative or distressing news on social media, often leading to heightened anxiety or stress’—turns our phones into misery machines.  And those misery machines are hard to turn off, by design.

I first heard of Mercieca’s work via Fix the News—a regular part of my newsfeed. Professor Mercieca had her students create social media accounts “devoted entirely to sharing solutions journalism, about problems being solved, diseases being eradicated, renewable energy advances,” that kind of thing. None of their posts went viral or got much engagement, “but what happened to the students themselves was remarkable.”

“‘Many of my students reported that the experience was both illuminating and healing,’ Mercieca notes. ‘Before our Hopescroll project,’ one wrote, ‘I really didn’t realize the amount of negative content I consume daily. I see scary news articles, I see people being mean to one another on social media, and I spend hours scrolling through posts that have no meaningful purpose.’ Some students even noticed that their social media algorithms began to change, as they started to see more positive content on their feeds instead of quite so much doom . . .

One student reported that shifting their attention away from ‘institutions that benefit from people’s fear’ and toward ‘those who aim to heal’ made them feel more resilient. Several students noted that they saw a shift in their moods that surprised them: ‘Honestly, I did not expect that much would change, however, after reading about communities working together for a large cause, individuals trying to make a difference in their own way, and new innovations being made in hopes of creating a better future, it readjusted my perspective that not all is bad and/or lost in the world.’”

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SOLUTIONS JOURNALISM

Doomerism, writes Mercieca, is a media strategy. Left to their own devices (pun intended), tech firms and corporate media conglomerates will—as Cathy O’Neil wrote in Weapons of Math Destruction—take the path where “profits end up serving as a stand-in, or proxy, for truth.”

Solutions journalism—which does exist—makes us better critical thinkers about the media content we consume. It may also provide hope that solutions to our problems are possible.

No one is suggesting that we avoid what is happening in the world today. Mercieca and others are seeking a balance. To that end, solutions journalist Angus Hervey has a thoughtful and inspiring TED Talk about why he publishes Fix the News.

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PRACTICES TO MITIGATE THE MISERY MACHINE

Mercieca ends her post with three great practices to mitigate the misery machine. You probably already know the first: be intentional. Go and read her post for the rest.

Who knows . . . you might become a problem solver, or a solutions influencer, yourself!

More to come . . .

DJB

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NOTE: Instead of writing long personal pieces about the times we live in, I’m returning to the original idea of my “Weekly Reader” series to highlight a small handful of recent posts from my newsfeed where I feel the authors have important points to make. Most will include short links to posts I found interesting and want to share while others will dive deeper and will (hopefully) link together thematically.

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Photo by Maccy on Unsplash