Research Podcast

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*Trigger Warning // suicide

 

For this week’s blog, we have been tasked to find a podcast regarding online communication and then explain how it relates to the subject matter we have learned about this week. 

My podcast is BBC’s The Gatekeepers with Jamie Bartlett, Episode 3: Are You Engaged?  

I was immediately struck by the title of this podcast since it touches on one of the concepts we learned about this week—gatekeepers. Gatekeepers decide what information is rejected or made available to the public (Green, n.d.). Traditionally, a gatekeeper might be an editor of a newspaper. Today, new gatekeepers are emerging in the form of internet platform owners and computer algorithms. 

 In this episode, Bartlett explores how the gatekeepers of the internet have—in their pursuit of sharing information and wanting media users to be more and more engaged with their content—failed to protect them from harmful media as well as from the spread of disinformation, cyber-bullying, and mob mentality. To illustrate this, Bartlett presents us with examples of how two different individuals were victimized in these ways and how the inaction or invention of certain media elements—for example, X/Twitter’s “retweet” option—aided in the innocents’ demise.

One such tragedy was a tween girl who—despite her mother’s best efforts to stop it—was still able to download self-harm and self-hate content, which likely contributed to the little girl’s suicide at thirteen years old. If media gatekeepers actively rejected and deleted this type of content from their sites, they could aid in the prevention of tragedies, such as this one, from happening in the future.

The other example in this podcast episode involves disinformation. Disinformation is another term from our lectures this week, which refers to the intentional spread of false information ("Facts, Opinions, and Beliefs," 2024). In this case, an angry ex boyfriend posted the lie that his video game developer girlfriend had slept with people in order to get positive reviews for a game she had just released. This disinformation was massively Retweeted, and the video game developer, Zoey, and her supporters became the object of abominable hate and threat posts that no one in power took seriously at the time but that traumatized the innocent parties involved. Gamergate is an example of how easy it is for people to bully and act unacceptably online when there is seemingly no consequences—or any protections in place for those injured in these events.

Clearly, online communication has its benefits and joys, but it also has its dangers and horrors. What is the role of gatekeepers in all of this? How much or how little should they be involved?

One possible suggestion for improvement comes in the form of Christians’ Communitarian Ethics, a point of view which encourages media communicators and gatekeepers to act under “[a] moral responsibility to promote community, mutuality, and persons-in-relation who live simultaneously for others and for themselves” (Green, n.d.). Essentially, this means gatekeepers (and I'll add, media users, too) should intentionally set an agenda that promotes amity for humankind in their online activity.

In summary, online communication is a powerful entity that influences human behavior—for better or for worse. “If you [can] direct it, you could have access to the most powerful propaganda machine in the world” (Bartlett, 2024). Therefore, let us work to ensure that this “propaganda machine” is directed in a way that supports human kindness and community.




Work Cited:

Bartlett, J. (Host). (2024, February 12). Are You Engaged? (No. 3) [Audio podcast episode]. In The Gatekeepers. BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001w207.

Facts, Opinions, and Beliefs. (2024). In Canvas (Ed.), COMM 211: Online Communication. Oregon State University.

Green, J. (n.d.). Communicating Online. McGraw-Hill Create. https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781307876413.