Kamran Pakseresht raises an intriguing trend emerging in the world of digital media. It appears that story narratives are increasingly influenced by augmentations made in comment sections. As readers seek to interpret reactions to stories as eagerly as they consume the core subject, it hints at a broader landscape that could enhance story development. This trend suggests a symbiotic relationship between stories and reader reactions, commonly discovered through crowdsourced internet platforms.
As artificial intelligence (AI) grows in importance, models trained on data from popular platforms like Stack Overflow, Quora, Wikipedia, Reddit, and traditional forums become pivotal. However, AI’s rise may disturb the unique value-aspects interconnected through crowd-sourcing models. As AI tends to summarize search engine results, users may find their need to explore further decreasing.
Newsrooms seem historically under-prepared for hatching communities around their stories independently. They have more often than not, leveraged external entities to initiate and foster these interactions. However, as the audience increasingly becomes a part of the narrative, newsrooms might must navigate more substantial roles.
Looking forward, an interesting question arises — will newsrooms find a way to embed themselves within these fluid discussions and perhaps morph into platforms themselves? As these user-net systems proliferate, can they coexist with artificial intelligence’s presence influencing modes of access? Unraveling these questions may reveal an exciting future for newsrooms.
Can newsrooms acknowledge audiences as integral participants in the narrative? The proactive ones certainly will. The term ‘audience’ hitherto suggests a one-way broadcast mechanism. However, the advent of the internet requires a departure from this limitation, ushering in an era of bi-directional, multi-faceted interactions. As a consequence, every newsroom can logically be considered an active hub of community.
While many newsrooms have begun to appreciate the potential of embracing their communities, the journey towards total immersion has just begun. The visitor growth activated by audience teams would likely stall without a receptive community, despite engagement teams leading to novel reporting opportunities. However, there’s a huge potential to establish stronger ties.
Most newsrooms lack an in-depth understanding of their communities’ actual constitutions, making outreach difficult. Traditional roles of audience and engagement teams within the newsroom’s editorial department rather than the product domain highlight a potential disconnect. For any social platform innovation to succeed in-house, a combined effort between the audience, engagement, and product teams seems crucial.
Only newsrooms with innovative and experimental teams might foray into exploring trending platforms like Bluesky when analytics strongly suggest it could boost their audience team efforts. Among others, a small number may succeed in building their unique social platforms to channelize deeper objectives.
Interestingly, the broader trend indicates a general fall in referrals sourced through traditional social media or search engines, likely influenced by AI shaped user patterns. Undertaking experimental strategies becomes imperative. Following this trajectory, narrowly watching companies like Vox Media could be insightful.
Large newsrooms have been historically lagging in accepting new eras of innovation swiftly. Whether there would be wider acceptance of such advancements is contingent on their initial successes. In case of failure, smaller, startup newsrooms could be better candidates to pioneer new innovative approaches.
There are enough instances of successful partnerships with open-source platforms, like how newsrooms began using features of the Ghost software after it adopted fediverse features. The prospect of newsrooms building their CMS appears scarce, with most newsrooms opting for tried-and-tested platforms like WordPress and a handful of others.
Musings over whether newsrooms can transform into social platforms themselves, the answer is an optimistic yes. But will they? That’s uncertain. Organizations that embraced trends like the rise of the internet, mobile consumption, and ubiquitous connectivity had better odds of staying afloat.
AI summary models, notably seen in Google, are designed to provide precise answers to definitive queries. However, journalism or communities seldom conform to simplistic question-answer models. Platforms like Stack Overflow and Quora offer value through quality conversations and contextual data rather than fixed answers.
Optimistically, AI could enable users to discover communities and valuable conversations but replacing narratives developing in comment sections appears far-fetched. Like in previous phases, the future social scenario may likely be shaped by an innovative startup ready to venture. Importantly, to benefit from the current trends, newsrooms need to deepen their understanding of their communities and meet them where they are.
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