A social media and networking platform aimed to give individuals access to both viewing and sharing first-hand and reliable news through the eyes of locals of the impacted area, hence, prevent individuals of all age from shaping their opinion based on the ongoing disinformation and intentional propaganda present on today’s social media and public news platforms.
With social media being easily accessible to anyone with an Internet connection nowadays and users getting easily exposed to intentional propaganda and disinformation from an early age, individuals need a platform that will not only share credible but also up-to-date first-hand information/news while eliminating the disinformation and intentional propaganda from its’ user’s feed.
Social Media is everywhere and changes the way we live, what we learn, and what we are exposed to. Because of this, generations of many Millennials and especially Zoomers are shaping their mentality, ideology, norms, and views on important topics based on the propaganda and disinformation that they are being exposed to through social media and biased news on their daily bases. The algorithm behind the user’s feed on today’s social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter allows space for a domino effect which often results in widespread non-credible information and intentional propaganda among users.
With these platforms continuing to be actively used by individuals from an early yet not affectively controlling the spread of disinformation and intentional propaganda, there’s a major risk that current and future generations will continue to shape their mentality, ideology, norms, and views on important topics based on the propaganda and disinformation that they are being exposed to through social media and biased news on their daily bases.
As my problem space mostly evolves around zoomers, I conducted an online survey among 27 representatives of Gen Z across North America, Europe, and Eurasia & held 2 user interviews that helped me reveal the following pain points:
My preliminary user research to validate the problem with disinformation on social media and public news has produces some surprising findings and feedback:
According to survey respondents and interviewees, there is no single platform that is independent of government control to facilitate their search for reliable news. Hence individuals either don’t seek out news or perform a strategic search to find reliable and unbiased news, making the process more difficult and uncertain than it would’ve been with our proposed solution.
To find reliable information users state to:
The conducted research has made it clear that individuals have a tendency to seek sources with the most active audience-scope, sticking to the ideology “the more views/visits, the more reliable”. It is also clear that individuals prefer to consume news in a short-clip format over reading a whole article about it first.
While news in both of these formats is available today, they are present on different platforms, making users go back and forth from one platform to another. Second, even when an individual performs a strategic search and spends a decent amount of time researching reliable news, the found news are noted to be biased, one-sided, closed-minded, manipulating, and often judging as generally reported by all participants of the conducted research. Everyone deserves a safe space, free of judgment and full of honesty/integrity to view and share trustworthy news from the first hands of locals of the impacted area. In other words, everyone deserves to know as well show the truth and not be misled, misinformed, or exposed to intentional propaganda currently present on social media and public news platforms.
Alētheia is a social media and networking platform aimed to give individuals access to viewing and sharing firsthand and reliable news information from locals of the impacted area. This interactive media platform will allow users from all over the world to post short, strictly “news-specific” clips of the impacted local area as well as attach a short descriptive paragraph to it prior to posting. By restricting users’ ability to only make news’ posts about the current location/country they’re in, adding interaction restrictions, as well as integrating propaganda detecting tools, Alētheia will help its users to see the actual truth behind the story posted by firsthand and reliable source, which in turn will help to prevent individuals of all age from believing the ongoing disinformation and intentional propaganda present on current social media and public news platforms. There is a critical need, market, and desire for this type of product, as heard in user surveys and interviews.
To make the users experience even less time consuming, “filter” feature can be added. This will allow to specify the users search not only based on the news category, distance, or location, but other identifiers as well depending on what users would like to have the most.
Continue to be costumer obsessed.
I plan to take my experience and lessons learned with this project to develop a new product with a team of designers and engineers. If in the future, I am at a point where I have the time and resources to fully execute this, this is definitely a product I would enjoy developing and bringing to life.