Fair-News: Digital Journalism Model To Prevent Information Pollution and Manipulation

Abstract

As digital data circulation increases, information pollution and manipulation in journalism have become more prevalent. In this study, a new digital journalism model is designed to contribute to the solution of the main current problems, such as information pollution, manipulation, and account-ability in digital journalism. The model uses blockchain technology due to its transparency, immutability, and traceability. However, it is tough to provide the mechanisms necessary for journalism, such as updating one piece of information, instantly updating all other information affected by the updated information, establishing logical relationships between news, making quick comparisons, sorting and indexing news, and keeping the changing informa-tion about the news in the system, with the blockchain data structure. For this reason, in our study, we have developed a new data structure that provides both the immutability, transparency and traceability properties of the blockchain and can support the communication mechanisms necessary for journalism. The functionality of our proposed data structure is demonstrated in terms of communication mechanisms such as mutability, context, consistency, and reliability through example scenarios. Additionally, our data structure is compared with the data structure of blockchain technology in terms of time, space, and maintenance costs. Accordingly, while the model size increases linearly in blockchain, the model's size remains approximately constant since the structure we developed is data-independent. In this way, maintenance costs are reduced. Since our model also has an indexing mechanism, it reduces the linear time search complexity to logarithmic time. As a result, the data structure we developed is found to have higher performance than blockchain in the journalism concept. In future studies, it is planned to test all aspects of the model with a pilot application, eliminate its shortcomings, and develop a holistic approach to the root causes of the problems in the journalism focus.