Facebook doesn’t care about your community: why local newspapers still matter

~ Jeremy B. Blevins

If you live in a small town like I do, you probably know exactly when the weekly paper arrives. In my case it comes once a week in the mail: the Northwest Alabamian.

By the time it arrives, much of the information in it is technically “old news.” The same stories have often already appeared in some form on Facebook. A photo from a town meeting. A complaint about a washed-out road. A discussion about a new park or a veterans memorial.

If you’re looking for instant information, the weekly paper is not where you will find it.

But that does not mean it has become irrelevant.

In fact, I would argue the opposite: the local paper still plays an important role in keeping a community tethered to itself in ways that Facebook simply cannot.

The Illusion of Facebook as Community

For many of us, Facebook has become the de facto source of information about what is happening around town.

  • It’s how you see what’s happening at your kids’ schools.
  • It’s how you learn about community events.
  • It’s how you keep tabs on friends and family — or, if we’re honest, occasionally stalk them to satisfy a bit of morbid curiosity.

If we really cared, we would probably text them, call them, or heaven forbid actually visit with them in person. But Facebook offers something easier: a steady stream of updates about people and places we know.

Because of that, we often think of Facebook as a community resource.

But have you ever stopped to consider where all that information actually comes from?

Facebook is not sending reporters into your community. It is not attending your county commission meetings or interviewing local officials. The information exists because people in your community create it and feed it into the platform.

Facebook simply collects it, organizes it, and redistributes it through algorithms.

You Are the Product

Facebook lets you use its services for free because you are the product.

The company makes its money from advertising. Companies pay Facebook to place ads in front of users who might buy their products or services. The value of Facebook lies in its ability to place those ads in front of very specific audiences.
In 2017 alone, Facebook earned $39.9 billion in advertising revenue, with roughly 85 percent of its income coming from advertising (O’Connell, 2018).

To make those ads effective, Facebook builds extremely detailed profiles of its users. These profiles are based not only on what you do within Facebook itself but also on information collected from other websites, apps, and services that share or sell data.

That is why you sometimes see advertisements for things you swear you never searched for. Your online behavior — across many platforms — is being aggregated into a remarkably detailed portrait of your habits, preferences, and interests.

Facebook, Google, and other large technology companies often know more about your daily habits than your own family does. They know the things you search for, the articles you read, and the products you consider buying.

All of this information is aggregated into a massive data profile.

How the Tracking Works

This data collection does not occur only online.

Retailers and marketers increasingly track consumer behavior in physical spaces as well. A 2013 article in CIO Magazinedescribed several ways businesses track customer activity in stores, including Wi-Fi signal tracking, Bluetooth signals from smartphones, and loyalty programs that record purchasing habits (Brandon, 2013).

Individually, each piece of information may seem insignificant. But when aggregated together across many platforms and services, it becomes an extraordinarily detailed picture of who you are and what you like.

As a Christian, I have no problem with an omnipotent and all-seeing God knowing everything about me. God is just.

I do have a problem with corporations operating in something resembling “god-mode,” collecting enormous quantities of information about our lives and using that information primarily to generate advertising revenue.

Modern information technologies are not inherently good or evil. But the humans who operate them may use them in ways that are neither transparent nor beneficial to the people generating the data.

We already know from law enforcement that “anything you say can and will be used against you.”

The same principle applies online.

Anything you search, read, or post may eventually be used to influence what you see, what you buy, or even how you think.

Why the Local Paper Still Matters

So what does any of this have to do with the local newspaper? Quite a bit. The local paper, unlike Facebook, is actually embedded in the community.

In my area, the Northwest Alabamian is locally owned. Its publisher has been part of the community for decades. The paper reflects the interests and character of the people who live here. Much of the content is pro-law enforcement, pro-veteran, and pro-America. In many parts of rural Alabama, that reflects the prevailing sentiment of the community fairly well. The paper is not trying to profile individuals or track their behavior. Its advertising is not targeted to specific people but to the community as a whole. Local businesses buy ad space because they want their neighbors to see it.

When I sit down with the weekly paper, I have to unfold it to read it. I slow down. I read the headlines and turn pages to continue the story.

A few years ago, the road I lived on washed out during a storm while my family and I were away on vacation. When we tried to return home, we discovered there was no easy way to get back. Fortunately, a neighbor allowed residents to cross a dirt path along his pasture until the county repaired the road. After months of delays, I attended a county commission meeting to express my frustration.

The following week, the paper ran a photo of me squared off against one of the commissioners. The article itself was fair and well written, but the two photos side-by-side were a masterclass in visual hyperbole.

  • The community noticed.
  • People talked about the issue, and before long the road was finally repaired.
  • Facebook rarely provides that kind of local accountability.

A Newspaper Is an Investment in the Community

When you buy a subscription to the local paper, you are not just buying information.

  • You are supporting the reporter who attended the meeting.
  • You are supporting the high school student who sold the subscription as a fundraiser.
  • You are supporting local businesses that advertise their services to people they actually know.
  • You are investing in a small institution that exists for the benefit of the community.

Yes, the information in the paper may arrive a few days later than it appears on Facebook. But the source of that information is entirely different. Facebook aggregates information about people in order to sell their attention to advertisers. The local newspaper gathers information about the community in order to tell the community what is happening within it.

  • One model turns people into data points.
  • The other turns them into neighbors.

So the next time you find yourself scrolling endlessly through Facebook looking for a quick dopamine hit (Weinschenk, 2012), remember that what you are seeing has been carefully filtered by algorithms designed to maximize engagement and advertising revenue.

  • Facebook does not care about your town.
  • But your local newspaper does.

And that, in my view, is worth the price of a subscription.

References:

Leave a comment