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Assignment 1 - Social Media Needfinding ​

Hunch ​

Unfavorable circumstances (government crackdowns, polarization, etc.) regarding mainstream media in certain countries have made social media apps like Twitter being used more and more for news reporting. However, the website's functionalities not being designed with news reporting as a priority has created some problems.

Who I might want to interview ​

  1. People who use social media in a country where different (often unfavorable) circumstances have led a significant portion of news reporters to publish mainly on social media platforms.

  2. People from different age groups, because they usually have very different ways of interacting with social media and consuming news.

  3. People both in the tech industry and not. People in the tech industry might be more likely to have privacy or efficiency concerns, and others might be more interested in UI and usability.

Prepared Questions ​

  1. Which social media platforms do you use?

  2. Do you use any of those platforms to look at the news? Do you prefer the platform to standard news websites?

  3. Why do you prefer using that social media platform to standard news websites? This might be a good part to let them iterate further.

  4. Have you had any instances where the news you saw on the social media platform seemed to be true but turned out to be false? 4.a Did you see any measures against this? Did they seem effective? 4.b If given the opportunity, would you like to help fight against this misinformation? Maybe by the social media platform letting you post counter-proofs to misleading reports.

  5. Do you use the social media platform you use for other reasons as well? Do these different uses ever conflict with each other?

  6. Are there any features that are in traditional news websites but are missing in the social media platform?

Interview 1 ​

Raw Interview Notes ​

Interviewee: 53 years old, engineer from Ankara. Answers to questions:

  1. FB, Twitter, Youtube
  2. Twitter, FB (rarely). Yes I do
  3. News websites have clunky interface different from each other, and obnoxious advertisements. Twitter recommendation system to avoid searching. Everything accessed through one responsive app. Most news agencies non-objective, Twitter has lot more independent reporters, variety. Likes twitter suggesting system
  4. All the time. Last Turkish elections, edited pictures of political leaders shared around, made one candidate drop out. 4.a Not really. --told him about Twitter fact checkers-- Doesn't seem to be effective 4.b Maybe, would have to ensure anonymity.
  5. To connect with family. Would be better to distinguish between news-reporting sources and accounts publishing subjective opinions
  6. They need to link outside for any proper sources, images, etc. which is inconvenient when using the app. Also, believes this encourages shorter reports, less info

Interview Report ​

The interviewee was a 53-year-old engineer from Ankara, Turkey. He said that he used Twitter extensively for news reports, official statements, politics, etc... He said he preferred it over regular news websites for its convenience. Using a well-maintained app is much easier than using various self-maintained news websites with clunky UIs and obnoxious advertisements. He said that some big news agencies had nice websites, but he believed they had become too polarized and lost their objectivity, with most being unreasonably pro-government and the rest being unreasonably pro-opposition, and Twitter provided some diversity of opinions as it was super easy for independent reporters/smaller agencies to set up accounts and start publishing. He also really liked the Twitter suggestions system: "Follow an account that reports on Iran, Twitter will suggest you other news regarding Iran, often ones that have conflicting opinions as well."

The interviewee was very pessimistic about the state of misinformation on Twitter. He said he had seen increasing misinformation, especially nearing elections in Turkey which caused a candidate to drop out. This fake news spread around, consisting of scandalous pircures of the candidate, were so widespread that even he was fooled for a while. He had no idea that Twitter had some fact-checking solutions. When asked if he would appreciate a system where he personally could provide counter-proofs to misleading facts, he was mostly uninterested. He said he would maybe consider it if it was super easy to do, noticeably impactful, and provided "complete anonymity". Anonymity in general seemed to be a very important thing for him, for reasons related to his job, a fact he restated multiple times during the interview: he didn't post or even like anything most of the time, and preferred to enjoy Twitter as an observer, almost as if he was just reading the morning newspaper. Additionally, he said on Twitter news reports usually have to link to external sources for additional sources, images, etc., and that is inconvenient for him when using the app. Moreover, he believed this also makes most users only interact with shorter reports with less info, context, and sources, contributing to misinformation. Finally, he stated it might be a good idea to distinguish between people who were using Twitter to report news and those using it to publish personal, subjective opinions, just to make it easier to know what to expect when deciding to follow an account.

Interview 2 ​

Raw Interview Notes ​

Interviewee: 23 years old, software developer working in security from Ankara. Answers to questions:

  1. Instagram, Twitter
  2. Twitter. Yes
  3. Interactivity. People comments show public reaction to news. --websites have comments too-- I guess people are less willing to comment on sites they are not familiar, also Twitter commenting better Reporters interact with users humanizing them. You can share news reports with people. Freedom. reporters can make living free from agencies. Examples: Other reporter fired
  4. Yes. Also sees conspiracy theories that are obviously false. but people still believe 4.a Has seen "misleading Tweet" flags put by Twitter, but almost exclusively on tweets in English --why do you think is that-- Maybe English tweets are more profitable, so Tweeter doesn't care --do you think the solution is a more decentralized system-- 4.b He would, but how does Tweeter know the counter-proofs aren't misleading as well. Thinks comments do an okay job at pointing out lies. --but users can disable comments, maybe to suppress criticism-- Thats also true
  5. To keep in touch with people, and semi-professional purposes. Its weird that your uncles sees what politics articles you liked, or vice versa
  6. Twitter offers almost no ways to style text, put images inline paragraphs, cite sources properly, etc... With website could do all of this with enough work. Also websites offer more ways of monetization to users, some articles blocked, subscriptions, etc.

Interview Report ​

The interviewee was a 23-year-old software developer working in security from Ankara. He uses Instagram and Twitter, the latter of which he uses for news reports. He prefers the interactivity of social media to the one-sided nature of regular news websites. He thinks the commenting systems on Twitter are a nice way to see "what the public opinion actually is and not just what the journalist is thinking", and the commenting systems that some websites have cannot compete: Mostly because people are less willing to engage with random websites for one-time comments and the commenting features in Twitter are much more refined. He also says this system gives opportunities for news reporters to interact with their users directly, thus "humanizing" them. Moreover, he says it is very easy for independent reporters to continue reporting on Twitter, even when they might have been completely excluded from mainstream media. He gived an example of a reporter who has been fired from any job he could find after exposing a big security flaw in the Turkish government's ID information system and now publishes strictly on Twitter, and other examples as well, to the point where I had to kindly nudge the interview back into focus. It is clear that Twitter's main appeal for him is the chance to interact with reporters who have been excluded from mainstream media for unjust reasons.

He says that on Twitter, he has seen a lot of promotion for completely baseless conspiracy theorems and that Twitter's anti-privacy methods only seem to be seen on English posts, not Turkish. He assumed this was because for profit-related they don't worry about non-Eniglish posts, although he himself seemed unsure of his conclusion. He said a more decentralized system where users can post counter-proofs to untruthful statements would run to the same issue: "Who guarantees the counter-proofs are legit?" He said comments already can be used by users to point out misinformation, although he conceded that comments can always be turned off if the poster has malicious intent from the beginning. Moreover, he complained that Twitter's social and news-based usages sometimes conflict with each other. "You don't necessarily want to see what political article your uncle liked, and vice-versa." Also, he stated that Twitter could be somewhat limiting for creators as well: You can't style text, add inline images, cite sources, etc... Moreover, websites offer news reporters a lot more ways of monetization: Some articles are free, some not, you can subscribe to get more content, etc... He said he would very much appreciate the chance to directly support the news reporters he followed, with the only middleman being Twitter.

Design Opportunities ​

Some of Twitter's features have allowed it to be very popular for news reporting, but there is a lot of room for improvement if a new app were to be developed:

  1. Make a distinction between news reports and regular posts. A good idea would be to somewhat restrict some privacy and control in news posts (both to ensure free speech and different opinions), but allow news reports to be longer and stylized, including images, citations, links to other posts in the app, etc. (maybe use Markdown, or allow them to choose different many choices). Hopefully, this would also encourage creators to post news reports with more information, context, and sources.
  2. Make a distinction between regular users and news reporters, the interviewees suggested this would make the intents of users clearer. Maybe news reporters could have a UI that makes content creation easier, and only news reporters can create news report posts. Also could require extra validation for news reporters to provide extra credibility and combat disinformation, and if they wanted creators could explicitly state their affiliation with news agencies.
  3. Provide more privacy for regular users. News, especially politics, can be uncomfortable at times, so it might be nice to add more privacy options. Maybe you want some of your friends/followers to see your likes (for example your close friends), but not others (your uncle, quoting the interviews)
  4. Provide more efficient, decentralized ways of combating disinformation, other than flags provided by Twitter's fact-checking group. One way could be to provide a way to provide counter-proof to news reports, but that did not seem that popular with the interviewees. Maybe just adding a dislike/misleading post button might be a simple and convenient solution.
  5. Offer news creators different ways of monetizing their content. This would help attract creators to the website, making it more desirable for users as well. Some concepts to add might be subscriptions, exclusive content, sponsorships, etc...