Rethinking News and Media System Design Towards Positive Societal Implications

Since this century, the speed, availability, and plethora of online informational content have made it increasingly difficult for humans to keep an overview of real-world situations, build a personal opinion, and sometimes even decide on the truth. Thereby, personal opinion-making and public discourse became harder - two essential building blocks that keep a democratic society alive. HCI thus needs to rethink news, information, and social media systems to mitigate such negative effects. Instead of polarising through emotional and extremely framed messages, informational content online should make people think about other opinions and discuss constructively. Instead, through polarization and filter bubble effects, people lose openness and tolerance for the existence of opposing opinions. In this workshop, we will discuss how we can redesign our information technology for a better societal impact. We will present key takeaways from the social sciences and discuss how we can implement them using recent HCI findings and digital technologies.