The interconnected relationship between technology and its service to humanity is encapsulated by the idea of Public Interest Technology (PIT). Toward Public Interest Technology is an interview series at UVA that focuses on professors who directly or indirectly work with PIT. Last Friday, host MC Forelle interviewed Media Studies Professor Siva Vaidhyanathan in Shannon Library. Vaidhyanathan was a journalist for many years before pursuing his career in academia with a focus on media studies. Specifically, this interview was concerned with Vaidhyanathan’s perspective on media and its impact on society. Can social media truly ever be PIT? Vaidhyanathan reported to not necessarily believe so, but this topic helps to define PIT and the need for new technology today.
Forelle began by asking how Vaidhyanathan would define PIT. It is a genre of study that brings together tech people and social people. Furthermore, what classifies the “public interest” is not the same from country to country, or even city to city, in America. From an ethical standpoint, PIT aims to determine what interventions are useful when it comes to regulations on technology, while policy extends beyond the scope of PIT. There are also different scales of public interest, which is why Vaidhyanathan believes Toward Public Interest Technology should seek to include scholars from a plethora of academic backgrounds, such as media studies, engineering, data science, or even the medical school. Each discipline provides a unique understanding of how technology currently or prospectively serves the public interest, which makes PIT fundamentally interdisciplinary. Vaidhyanathan found even this to be an insufficient definition, however.
Vaidhyanathan then spoke about why he initially became a journalist prior to his work at UVA. In a post-Watergate era, Vaidhyanathan said, he felt a duty to preserve democracy through the press. To this end, Vaidhyanathan had to learn how to convert often complicated topics into digestible information—a skill that would later help him in academia. In this way, Vaidhyanathan discussed his career mostly as an exercise of listening to and digesting information. The type of media Vaidhyanathan was engaging with as a journalist gave him a platform to serve the public interest in a particular way. However, he acknowledged that journalism, in tandem with social media technology, is not always a good example of PIT, as it is easily manipulated and used purely for politically advantageous purposes. Journalism, he believes, is about provocation of thought; it is not itself a full thought. In an attempt to fill this gap, social media loses sight of public interest.
The conversation then shifted to the topic of media policy. Forelle began to question if, insofar as it works against public interest, media should be regulated. Vaidhyanathan responded by emphasizing the power of the media, but that media policy would not create PIT out of social media platforms. Another question arose about what classifies as political participation in a digital age. Vaidhyanathan said that online activism is activism, but often largely ineffective activism. Regardless, social media has become a means to the end of facilitating the gathering of like-minded people. This can be destructive, as was seen here in Charlottesville in 2017, but this event also demonstrates how online activism can lead to visible participation in politics. Vaidhyanathan’s main point about online activism pertained to the lack of deliberation that online forums foster. Social media does not encourage people to deliberate their visions of the good. We prioritize quantity over quality of speech, Vaidhyanathan believes. But in the public interest, social media has the potential to raise awareness and funding for productive places of open deliberation, such as museums, schools, and libraries.
Furthermore, Vaidhyanathan is unafraid of AI in its capacity to influence politics. AI-powered algorithms, as are the basis for major social media platforms, push content in certain ways, but Vaidhyanathan commented that this will not ultimately swing an election. What Vaidhyanathan deemed a more pressing concern was AI’s involvement in more real applications—for example, predictive policing and automated vehicles. These types of things could be potentially dangerous when implemented on any scale because what is data-driven does not equate to what is fair or just. Therefore, he would pay due attention to PIT based on AI.
Vaidhyanathan and Forelle spent the last segment of the interview discussing the dichotomy between propaganda and scholarship. Vaidhyanathan responded as someone in the unique position of professionally writing both scholarship and propaganda. Vaidhyanathan spoke of propaganda not as an inherently bad thing, but as a less careful medium of communication than peer-reviewed academic studies. As a journalist, Vaidhyanathan said he would “hit readers over the head” with blunt information, which usually had no lasting value. Conversely, in his scholarly endeavors as a professor, Vaidhyanathan promotes deeper thought and conversation in media studies.
In a digital age, how we receive information has become less formalized. Interviews such as this one conducted on Friday promote a scrutinizing eye in those of us who consume media routinely. Such would be to Vaidhyanathan’s satisfaction, and this is what his scholarly work hopes to encourage.
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