By now all have heard about the blockchain technology. However, many still only think of blockchain as some magic technology behind the cryptocurrencies, such as the viral Bitcoin. At the same time the majority still don’t know about other uses of blockchain and how it can add value to our daily lives. The industry that the blockchain technology is really starting to change is the media industry.
A large percentage of the people around the globe stop trusting the news sources. For example, in the US only less than a third of the population still trust the media (Ahmed, 2022). It is mostly due to the ever-rising volume of fake news being generated. Deepfakes, which are essentially photo and video manipulations where the real person’s face and mimics are replaced by those of another person with the use of machine learning and AI, possess yet another very concerning threat for the trustworthiness of the media. This is where blockchain can help the society in general and journalism specifically. Blockchain can seem to be a complicated technology and it actually isn’t a simple one, but essentially, one can think of blockchain as something that allows our data to be saved securely. It allows the journalists to create sort of a registry for the text, images, and other features of the media releases, making the metadata information available to the readers (Knightfoundation, 2018). Therefore, blockchain technology also enables the readers to verify the identity of the journalist, as well as the originality of the media source, as any tampering with the bits of data in the blockchain is almost impossible and would be recorded by the underlying technology and visible to the reader as well (Ivancsics, 2019). As a result, the publishers that would use blockchain technology to provide the readers with the information about the origin of their posts can offer more transparency and can become more trustworthy. Nevertheless, if the journalists and media sources are one-sided, biased or filled with propaganda and fake news, there is very little the blockchain technology can do, as it simply allows to the readers to check originality and the initial source of the news source, but whether to trust the actual content is then up to the content consumers. Moreover, it is the job of the community to establish the registry of content, how new information about the media sources and journalists will be added to it and what incentives will be incorporated to incentivize continuous trust maintenance.
Have you found this post valuable and do you know other uses of blockchain technology in journalism? Please let us know in the comments below!
References:
Ahmed, A. (2022, July 8). A new study shows people are losing trust in the news media. Digital Information World. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2022/07/a-new-study-shows-people-are-losing.html
Ivancsics, B. (2019, January 25). Blockchain in Journalism. Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved October 14, 2022, from https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/blockchain-in-journalism.php
Knightfoundation. (2018, September 11). Indicators of news media trust. Knight Foundation. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from https://knightfoundation.org/reports/indicators-of-news-media-trust/
Hi Ivan! I agree with your illustration that blockchain could help us readers verify sources, which allows us to be critical of the information available in the media. I also agree that it is up to us whether to trust or them or not since a biased news source will be a bad news source at the end of the day. What I think blockchain contributes here is traceability, which allows any users who are willing to dive deeper into the subject to see where the content is from (e.g. sources, writers etc.). However, since the internet will always have some fake news, considering how free information could flow on the platform, I would love to see how fake news or inaccurate reports may still prevail in the future, as their writers would need to become more creative as us readers have more tools to use in verifying etc.