Objectively, we're getting different facts.
What happens if we take all the energy and effort we expend thinking of savvy solutions to client problems, and instead apply them to real ones? I outlined societal problems and landed on news consumption: what happened if you easily empower users with alternate viewpoints and missing perspectives alongside content they’re already reading?
One thing that became painfully obvious during the election, regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, is that it's impossible to talk politics to people that don't agree with you. That's dangerous, if for nothing else than people are simultaneously being filtered into news echo chambers that balkanize their views.
The issue of news consumption had been painfully conflated with the idea of 'FAKE NEWS' via Facebook or the ilk, but it doesn't address the core problem:
People are so winnowed off that they become susceptible to fake news in the first place. They are so weaponized against other points of view that confirmation bias can also slip in and utilize that to devastating effect.
Media literacy through design
Here's the plan: create a platform built around topics, not sources. That's what people share. A platform built around humans and design. Let them find news on their own that matches their own bias. Re-present that. In the process, show them news of equal bias on the other side of the spectrum. Let people self-discover their own bias, without telling them they're wrong.
Next, allow people to selectively de-bias themselves through dark UX patterns (applied for good). Calls-to-action that progressively get less prominent as people move down the bias scale. Information display that highlights the most compelling and bias portions of articles from either side, and other design patterns applied for good use the same mechanisms to deprogram people. Sparklines and data visualization help people to discover passion points to the other side of their own.
Using staff journalists, assisted by algorithmic learning, rich topic articles are assembled the same way, and comprised entirely of content from sources. This allows users to have the most complete factual picture re-assembled for them, while also allowing them to jump off to the original source if they so desire.
Finally: facts will be tracked by topic across sources to help re-assemble legitimacy and allow for journalists to have prior scoops gain authority (or lose it) as an alternate mechanism to debunking fake news.
At least that's the plan. This is my startup. And the other part of the purpose is a hands-on learning in how different the VC/startup process is from the agency. I've got a MVP prototype live today, a deck, UX, design and a roadmap. Today's represent.news is only a flicker of what I'm working towards.
If nothing else, I'm trying to make a difference in the most applicable way I can.