Journalism has a new role in the era of ‘many truths’ online.
Until the arrival of the internet, the great paradigm of journalism was concerned with the truth. Still, since the moment we started to coexist with “several truths” in our digital ecosystem, inevitable questions regarding the discourse and structure of the profession. The new reality of communication is pushing journalists to become more information advisors than news sellers, a change that will lead to the adoption of new routines, rules and values in the daily routine of newsmaking.
The search for truth as a professional activity was part of the commitment to generate “good citizens”, a social category essential to the functioning of political systems based on economic liberalism and political democracy. But when new digital communication and information technologies created a news avalanche on the internet, came to light the so-called “many truths”, that is, various perceptions and opinions about the same data, fact or event.
Journalists were, then, thrown into a new information environment where they are no longer spokespeople for what is right or wrong in terms of published information, but rather news curators. A curator (1) is a professional who helps people identify which of the “several truths” best meets individual or collective needs. It was the public itself that began to demand this type of advice, as shown by the multiplication of influencers on the internet. Approximately 10.2 million Americans are considered digital influencers because they use Instagram to express opinions and feelings.
The oversupply of news on the internet makes available an average of two million online news stories published daily by large media companies, according to data from the company Userarch. The enormous work overload and the responsibility of making choices involving increasingly complex and diverse topics are evident. This new professional context is further complicated by new phenomena such as fake news and misinformation, causing inevitable skirmishes with conventional routines, rules and values still in force in most newsrooms.
According to North American researcher Nikki Usher, we are beginning to experience a “post-press democracy”, a regime where newspapers will continue to exist and be relevant to the public, but with a social function different from the current one. Less of a profitable business and more of a community facility, similar to legal advice or consumer curation.
From the well-informed citizen to the communicative citizen
Whatever the new role of the press in the digital era, it will have to find solutions to the crisis in the business model responsible for the closure of newspapers, magazines and radio stations. In countries such as Brazil, 17 publications closed their doors between 2018 and 2021 due to financial difficulties, according to the Brazilian research organization Atlas da Noticia. In 2021 alone, 12 newspapers, magazines and radio stations left the market, almost one per month. In the United States, 2,500 newspapers have gone out of the market since 2005, a phenomenon whose intensity is greater among local publications which, in 2023, disappeared at the rate of 2.5 newspapers per week. Data collected by researchers at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University, in Illinois, United States also indicate that around 1/3 of the 24,000 local North American newspapers will also disappear by the end of this year.
The work overload of professionals who are still employed and the continuous closure of newspapers show that the conventional press is finding it increasingly difficult to meet its objective of creating well-informed citizens. The consequences of these difficulties can be measured in the decline in credibility in the press around the world (2) and the increase in so-called news avoiders (3), people who are no longer interested in news.
As news dissemination systems have already begun to change as a result of technological innovations, this transformation directly affects the model of citizen participation and the role played by journalists. Online citizenship in a democratic regime is no longer evaluated by the degree of consumption of information and news, but rather by the intensity with which he promotes the circulation of this information and news in the social digital environment in which it operates. The well-informed citizen is no longer the paradigm of society and is being replaced by the communicative citizen, the one who promotes general well-being through the circulation of information.
The journalist, on the other hand, is no longer a type of packager of figures, facts and events to transform them into news capable of attracting the public’s attention and, therefore, sellable to advertisers. In the digital era, its role has become even more essential to the communities as an irreplaceable participant in the qualification of information flows, as professionals play a key role in checking the veracity, relevance and pertinence of the ‘various truths’ in the digital informational chaos.
(1) Curation is practised in several other activities, especially in the artistic field when one or more experts recommend works for public display. There are curators of museums, exhibitions and content in texts, videos and audio. There are also trustees for people such as minors or people with some type of mental or cultural disability.
(2) According to the Digital News Report 2022, produced by the Reuters Institute of Journalism, 48% of Brazilians trust our press, a rate slightly higher than the world average, which is 42%. In the United States, a measly 26% believe the published news
(3) The 2024 version of the Digital News Report states: “…we saw a selective increase in the rejection of news. Around 4 in 10 (39% of people consulted) say today that they sometimes or often avoid reading the news — 3% more than last year’s average (2023) — with more significant increases in Brazil, Spain, Germany and Finland.
