To enable a more civically educated, consciously elevated and critically aware state of humanity in an increasingly complex and technologically sophisticated world, that we may find common ground within our community and society, to discover truth, to secure a voice for the future of humankind, and to sustain the conduits for accountability and reform towards human liberty and consciousness.
ElectedPress facilitates the organization and proliferation of civically based news and journalism, connecting new concepts and old, to discover opportunity, meaning and wisdom towards the realization of a more prosperous, equitable and attuned state of Earth and humankind.
ElectedPress is a crowd contested multimedia publishing platform and archive. The platform works to bolster the influence and plurality of local news and independent journalism and focuses on the proliferation of transparent, honest and fact-based news and journalism. The platform works to facilitate civil discourse and debate, increase news and media literacy, dissolve echo chamber effects and distribute influence over news and media narratives to the general public.
The site helps to organize and disseminate news and media content by qualifying and leveraging a specialized community and userbase to source, research, verify, corroborate and analyze news and media content in real-time. Users interact with content metrics and attributes in order to identify factual inaccuracies, logical fallacies and bias in so producing better feedback mechanisms to contextualize the accuracy, veracity and credibility of a given news content.
In Spirit & Memoria
“Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed – and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment – the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution – not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply “give the public what it wants” – but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.” ~ “And so it is to the printing press – to the recorder of man’s deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news – that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.” – John F. Kennedy
Natural Rights – Free Thought, Speech & Expression
Freedoms of thought, speech and expression are fundamental human rights. A free society will hold these rights sacred and in absolution because they form a core tenant to our existential meaning in this world and reality.
These rights are essential because they stand in the defense and advancement of ALL other human rights and are instrumental in the advancement of science, philosophy and culture. This is why “Freedom of Speech” and “Freedom of the Press” are enshrined by the “First” Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Freedom of communication, civil discourse and debate, the free exchange of ideas, news and the of press, encourage civic engagement, institutional reform and accountability and enable local and self-governance. They bring awareness of potential dangers exposing blind spots to humanity and connect communities by starting the discussions needed.
The freedom and ability to think, to speak, to engage in civil discourse and debate are at the core of our search for meaning, purpose and understanding in our shared world and at the core of what it is to be a human being itself.
News & Media Censorship
Autocratic regimes seek to censor discussion critical to their own political ideologies and agendas. Autocrats distort reality fabricating inorganic narratives with the intent to sow discord and conflict. Less we succumb to institutional or arbitrary regimes of censorship, If humankind is to overcome its totalitarian tendencies which position towards the dissolution of human rights and livelihoods, the people must burden the responsibility in maintaining their rights to the free exchange of ideas and open communication, to freedom of speech and to freedom of the press.
The extent an autocratic institution, whether corporate, governmental or intergovernmental, would seeks to censor dissenting thoughts or the free flow of communications between its citizens, would reflect the real extent of the doubt among those citizens in the perceived legitimacy of those institutions to be serving in their best interests.
Antithetical to isolationism, information must be open and liberated. The free exchange of communications, thoughts and ideas, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, can work to bridge common ground geographically between cultures and societies bringing them closer together. The free exchange of communications act as a first line of defense imperative diplomatic function in discovering peaceful resolution within domestic and international conflicts.
Democracy, Local Autonomy & Self-Governance
At the foundation of democracy is local autonomy and self-governance. A self-governing people should be well-informed on the important subject matters within their community, the world and their society.
Engagement in civil discourse and debate between the people on these subject matters, and having the tools to separate fact from fiction from a local to a national to an international level is critical to discovering constructive paths forward and maintaining legitimate institutional representation.
Without freedom of thought, speech and the press, or an otherwise free flow of communication between the citizenry, there can be no type of legitimate democracy, election, representation or voting process. The ultimate outcomes in the voting decisions made by a more proactively informed citizenry, must be exclusive to the outcomes of any genuine election or voting process.
A more educated and proactively informed citizenry must maintain a rightful chain of authority to see implemented or abolished, the laws they choose to govern their livelihoods, and maintain representation who would implement those election results and the voters’ will.
Antithetical to democracy and self-governance are autocracies where the concept of human rights are arbitrary and secondary and outcomes in elections or voting processes are implemented in opposition to the citizens true interests.
If there is to be representation and elections where the people are to vote on decisive outcomes, and if those elections and decisions are to implemented in good faith. The people must be allowed the free exchange of ideas and communication and must be given the complete set of facts and full disclosure within news and media to discover the truth to make the best decisions to be implemented within the context of their independent worldviews.
A Free Press
The press facilitates the free flow of information for public dissemination. A free press informs and educates people in the general and special knowledge of their community, local, national and international economies and politics as well as innumerable other insurmountably important and unforeseen aspects within life and society. It provides people with the facts, sources, viewpoints, opinions, data and analysis to review before considering “all” of the information available to come to their own individual and independent conclusions.
In a constitutional republic or liberal democracy, governance is instituted by the people and act as their own localized, decentralized and distributed authority. The government’s role is limited to serve the interests of the public and it should be made up of by the common citizens who it represents. Likewise, the press should be made up of by common citizens and should be representative of the peoples’ diverse viewpoints and interests in order to increase a broad understanding of critical issues at hand.
Organically, the press acts as a voice of representation across a broad spectrum of people, ideas, interests and culture. It should provide a voice for the disenfranchised and the minority. The variety in its perspectives, opinions and analysis should be as diverse as the interests of the people who it seeks to represent.
The press should be decentralized to the extent it provides an abundance and array of relevant sources, critical opinion and analysis independently from one another avoiding bandwagons, group think, conformation bias and conflicts of interest. But the press should operate within a common framework of reality where they will hold one another accountable to the ultimate facts, truths and observant realities of our world.
The press should procure information to protect the best interests of its readers and the public at large. It should provide critical oversight and act as a watchdog on local, national, international, corporate and intergovernmental institutions and sustain accountability to deter corruption and over-reach among these institutions by shedding light and exposing when and where malfeasance and corruption exists.
The press should operate through the initiation of disclosure and transparency standards holding themselves and one another accountable to their own stated journalistic missions, methodologies and disclosures.
The press should disclose funding sources and sponsors when and where they exist, especially when those funding sources are state or corporate sponsored or when/where a conflict of interest may arise in reporting critical of a funding sponsors direct interest. Ideally funding sources should be numerous and diverse such as receiving funding from a multitude of individual reader/subscriber patronages.
The press is granted exclusive protections to operate with near impunity under the 1st Amendment of the Bill of Rights. This is an immense privilege and opportunity guaranteed to the press and as would be expected from any other entity, the press has an immense responsibility and duty to report the news fairly, accurately and objectively. Through full disclosure, transparency and accountability, the press must maintain its integrity and be honest in the product they’re delivering to their readers and viewers.
The desire to be informed on what is going “over the next hill” is a fundamental need to human survival and existence. The press is valued by individuals and communities because they value the idea of being informed and educated about events and happenings in the world in which they live in a genuine attempt to make responsible decisions for their lives, their families, their communities and for their futures. The press should arm us with knowledge and understanding in the evermore changing, complex and dynamic world in which we live.
The press is in no way immune to its own sets of manipulation, deception, misdirection and propaganda. It is not as much about reporting what information we know but exploring and discovering the information we “don’t know”. That begins with asking the questions most needing to be answered. Ultimately, it is the people who have the responsibility in discerning good actors and information from bad as well as holding the press accountable to a higher standard.
ElectedPress seeks to provide the public the tools to hold the press accountable to transparency, objectivity, logic, truth and reason.
A Broken Press
Today however, the news media landscape has become rife with disinformation, fabrications, sensationalism and propaganda. The news media landscape has become permeated with a garden variety of bias, fallacy and factual inaccuracies sacrificing impartiality and hostile to truths which would counter fabricated and forced narratives. Readers have little utility in distinguishing between objective fact and subjective opinion or credible news outlets and sources. Built on a broken and unsustainable business model, many news organizations today exploit the publics news illiteracy for diminishing ad revenues, producing low-quality, misleading propaganda and trading long-term credibility for short-term ad clicks and viewership.
News and social media companies are incentivized to silo and tailor user news feeds to maximize ad engagement effectively creating echo chambers which reinforces confirmation bias driving unnecessary social divisions and halting or even reversing societal cohesion and harmony.
These types of institutional oligarchies have an interest in seeing their methods remain entrenched for power and profit and politically driven motives stagnating much-needed progress and reforms for society.
Independent and alternative-media sources, who provide a critical diversity of context and analysis, are increasingly and arbitrarily throttled, ghosted, demonetized or censored across major social media platforms they have come to rely on to syndicate their content as these corporate behemoths shift their weight in attempts to maximize profit and maintain control over market share and establishment media narrative.
Many smaller news outlets and local newspapers have either been bought up or have gone out of business as these organizations have struggled to adapt their revenue models to compete in the network age. More and more local news outlets are consolidated under single corporate umbrellas creating conflicts of interest within local politics and communities as well as reducing plurality within the greater news and media industry.
Today 90% of legacy news outlets are said to be owned by just 6 multi-national corporate conglomerates seeking to steer public consciousness and discourse to serve their own entrenched institutional political interests and agendas. This consolidated and oligarchical corporate media apparatus serves as the mouthpieces of a corrupt political establishment leaving no room and gaslighting any and all dissent or alternative voices to their own contrived narratives.
Since 2001, overall trust in U.S. mass media has dropped significantly among the American public and currently has the lowest trust rating on record.
All of this has culminated into the steady deterioration in the quality, accuracy, fairness, transparency, accountability and diversity of ideas and context in our news and journalism industries, galvanizing division among the public, sowing distrust and confusion and posing a primary threat to the continued function and sustainment of localized and self-autonomy and free and transparent societies.
In an ever more technologically sophisticated and rapidly advancing world, it is paramount to reinvigorate, promote and sustain an open, robust, transparent and accountable press ecosystem for the representation of the individual, community and public interests at large.
http://news.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx
http://www.people-press.org/interactives/political-polarization-1994-2017/
Restoring the Press
The press represents the collective voice of the society and that which influences the laws society will be governed under. The press acts as the primary conduit through which transparency, reform and accountability can be made and this is at the heart of democracy itself, that it lends itself to balance reform with accountability across a long term timeline.
Those societies which are most adaptable, balance freedom and individual liberties with long term security and prosperity.
The collapse in trust of the news media may be reflected in the extent the common citizen feels their views are being accurately and honestly represented and portrayed by the news media itself.
As previously alluded to, it is not just what news and information is being reported, but the news and information that is not. That news and information withheld would only hinder the publics collective reasoning and decision making power.
The world and future is uncertain and people rely on news outlets to minimize omissions by presenting all of the relevant facts from an impartial, unbiased and objective perspective.
The press is engrained into free and democratic societies. As a business news publishers serve their customers. Community interests must outweigh corporate interests by keeping the news publishers interests aligned with the broader community.
Governmental or corporate funding and interests must be made transparent in their alignments to the news content they are funding. News content and narratives funded by government or corporate interests, should wherever possible be transposed with news sources entirely disinterested in the subject matter.
It is not about creating an environment with as many competing narratives, but creating an environment where all facts can be made known so there is no longer any incentive to attempt to fabricate narratives or omit facts. Inevitably creating an environment where a comprehensive set of facts and information can be analyzed about a particular news subject and where authenticity and accountability in the news media can be made more transparent.
Though the advent in the ubiquity of information and competing narratives, it is those news organization who can provide the most detailed and impartial account who should resonate most with the broadest audience. News outlets can earn trust by proving they stay true to their principals of good truth telling and journalistic standards.
Within a society who embraces the institution of a free press, outlets should be free to produce whatever type of communication they choose, but if they are presenting themselves as consistently ideological and biased they should be labeled so. News outlets should own who they portray themselves as because the public will do so regardless.
Press representation may be restored by building infrastructure to facilitate the bolstering of a plurality of granular and independent news reporting and journalism while maintaining an environment where common, transparent and well defined ethical news and journalistic standards are the norm.
Ultimately, it is the duty and responsibility of the people to produce and sustain an ethical, fact-based, honest and accurate news media. One that engages civil discourse, embraces diversity of thought, opinion, and the creation of dialogue on critical issues to better know the world and discover the solutions and paths forward to build a better society for everyone. ElectedPress works to facilitate the manifestation of this infrastructure and these dialogues allowing the people, news outlets and journalists alike a leverage to hold news organizations accountable to their stated missions, methodologies and disclosures, to the objective facts, and to the deeper underlying truth.
It will take reengaging an active, participatory and investigative role and culture among the news interested public and journalists themselves in furthering color to the demand of what news is important as well as an aura of deterrence and dis-incentivization of misinformation and media manipulation.
ElectedPress – The Peoples Press
The name ElectedPress itself should imply facilitating The People, a direct control over news and media narratives from a local/national/international level, adopting a contending influence over which news stories gain more coverage and higher exposure to the greater public.
The name “ElectedPress” should NOT imply mob rule or an anointed class of journalists. Conversely, it acts as a warning of mob rule and seeks to mitigate it, ElectedPress is a place for all voices, especially for those of the disenfranchised and minority.
The name should imply a civic engagement or event in isolating empirical fact from fabricated fiction, and enduring a diverse civil discourse of opinion, analysis and viewpoint on the significance and meaning of the facts discovered. This data culminates into a wide spectrum of information and analysis synthesized into a broad marketplace of ideas.
The design of the platform acknowledges there are a variety of views on any given subject and ultimate truths can sometimes be elusive. Beliefs widely held at one time may change completely as new facts and details come to light. The platform is meant to leave room for different points of view, but views and opinions that are based on the public ability to verify the source material. It is built to enable individuals to discover and consider “all” of the source material and analysis available on a topic to understand the different points of view and considerations before reaching any ultimate determination of what is the Truth on their own.
The site puts a strong emphasis on media literacy and critical thought analysis. Designed to mitigate cognitive dissidence, echo-chambers and group think. Within this common site framework, the userbase employs and leverages a community reinforced, nonexclusive epistocratic role-based hierarchy, to maintain an environment and ecosystem of honest and ethical fact-based reporting; adversarial to news fabrications, manipulations and otherwise dishonest or misleading news and reporting.
News Discovery Network
ElectedPress.com is a “News Discovery Network” which employs a P2P based publishing and archiving platform dedicated to providing a diverse array of news and analysis within a proliferation of local news and independent journalism.
The platform provides a basic geographically dispersed press infrastructure (text, image, video, streaming), which can be leveraged (locally/nationally/internationally) by the people to produce coverage, disclosure and discourse on the topics most relevant and newsworthy to them. It empowers users to capture and document news “when” and “where” it’s happening as well as contest news narratives in real-time by harnessing the power of a miniaturized press studio within the palm of their hand.
The platform creates mechanisms allowing a specialized userbase to raise legitimate doubt and dispute annotated and granular elements within news and media content. ElectedPress creates a risk reward environment incentivizing and sustaining the production of truthful, ethical fact based and accurate news, analysis and reporting in order for news and media outlets to maintain their long-term credibility. The platform helps to create an accountable environment adversarial to media misrepresentations, half-truths, lies and manipulations.
By enabling and leveraging an active and specialized userbase to critically analyze news and media content as it’s published; factual inaccuracies, logical fallacies and biases contained within news and media content can be isolated, documented, contextualized and archived in real-time.
The platform is designed to mitigate and minimize siloed content algorithms and echo chamber structures by producing an organic and broad community emphasized variety of news stories around any given topic. The site provides the reader a diversity of context, opinion and analysis to consider all available information to come to their own independent conclusion and decision as to the veracity within any given news story or topic.
Creating an open ecosphere where the userbase as well as news publishers hold themselves to higher standards and a higher degree of veracity is the goal of the platform.
A Localized Press
By its own nature, the press should be decentralized, geographically distributed, independent and localized.
A critical aspect of the press is to serve the interests and needs of its community at a localized level. Local press facilitates the coverage of local politics, business, organizations and events and the geographically isolated interests of localized communities.
Local knowledge is highly specialized, granular and decentralized in nature. Details and nuance can be provided by persons with specialized local knowledge which cannot easily be reproduced or may otherwise be misrepresented by a news reporter covering a localized news event from a thousand miles away. Local correspondents provide a critical specialization and infrastructure in the procurement of timely and accurate information on a geographically distributed basis.
A local press is essential to healthy communities, local autonomy and free societies. A key aspect to accountability takes place at a face to face or specific geographic location. Local newspapers and press should establish a sense community, organization, responsibility and trust at a localized level.
As important as it is for the press to act as watchdog to the actions of regional, national, international and multinational institutions, organizations, business and governance, it is as important to have a press which acts as watchdogs over “local” institutions, organizations, business and governance as well. The press is about sustaining accountability and transparency over these types of institutions.
By bolstering transparency, accountability, trust and participation between local citizens the local press, we can work to bolster transparency, accountability, representation and trust in news and institutions at a national and international level as well.
The platform creates a localized press infrastructure that small local communities can leverage to create localized press representation and incentivize participation, procurement and sustainment of localized press representation for the wider community at large.
ElectedPress gives citizens tools to report the news when and where it’s happening at a local level. The platform provides function to discover and represent truth from a microlocal to an international and global level.
Legacy and Novel Media Publishers
The site facilitates integration between news and media outlets providing more detailed representation as well as wider and more granular coverage.
Legacy and Alternative news medias can further leverage each other’s news specializations and infrastructures in complementation facilitating a synthesis and symbiosis filling the gaps in news coverage between the two.
Legacy media defined generally by traditional media co-ops, newspapers, news broadcasting networks and magazines maintain established and extensive news media infrastructures and resources not easily reproduced by smaller more granular and independent news outlets. Legacy news media infrastructures and resources can be leveraged by smaller independent and alternative news outlets, generally defined by freelance journalism and citizen driven journalism as well as the blogosphere, vlogosphere or other more obscure mediums etc. in supplementing the curation of their news content for the public at large.
Conversely, legacy media outlets can leverage the more granular, nimble, fluid and specialized niche driven news infrastructure of the independent and alternative news media in supplementing the curation of their news content for the public at large.
Where professional news casters on TV can present an element of authority, citizen journalism, bloggers and vloggers can present an element of authenticity. Where people may otherwise not trust and reject news which doesn’t fit their worldview coming from a site or figure they don’t personally like, it may be more agreeable to accept a truth if it is being presented or relayed from a person whom they like and trust. It is not so important how the message is delivered so long as the message is based within and held accountable to truth, logic and reason.
Creating a dedicated multimedia news platform infrastructure allowing the people to produce their own research, content and commentary will allow for a broad and granular press representation of the news to the public thereby expanding communication, trust in the press and news literacy.
Legacy media and alternative media will work to hold one another accountable to producing honest and accurate news and journalism.
Democratizing News & Media Narratives
The decentralization of the internet has diluted the gatekeeper era of the legacy media. “All the News That’s Fit to Print” being a clear and antiquated representation of gatekeeper bias.
New methods in technology and communication allow for decentralization and distribution in the process of determining what news is more relevant and newsworthy to local, regional and international communities.
ElectedPress establishes a decentralized mechanism which facilitates the userbase and thus the public a direct control and influence over news and media narratives and meta-narratives.
Feedback and symbiosis are generated between the reader and the publisher creating insights into and facilitating a truer and more organic representation within the type of news readers wish to see propagated as well as types of events readers may seek further research, information and coverage on.
Trust metrics and attributes interacted with inside the platform, for example the attribute “Newsworthy”, allow users to boost news they find to be more relevant and of higher concern to an elevated position of exposure throughout the site.
Higher rated news content is organized and displayed into #topic focused threads in addition to a frontpage section distinguished geographically by local, national and international news and media and further stratified by news category and news #topic.
Front Page Example:
Local News – (expandable to dedicated local news page)
Category: #Topic: News Story Headline [image] [stats]
Category: #Topic: News Story Headline [image] [stats]
Category: #Topic: News Story Headline [image] [stats]
National News – (expandable to dedicated national news page)
Category: #Topic: News Story Headline [image] [stats]
Category: #Topic: News Story Headline [image] [stats]
Category: #Topic: News Story Headline [image] [stats]
International News – (expandable to dedicated international news page)
Category: #Topic: News Story Headline [image] [stats]
Category: #Topic: News Story Headline [image] [stats]
Category: #Topic: News Story Headline [image] [stats]
Local, National and International news headings links and category links expand to show more geographically, categorically or #topic relevant stories within the specified selection formulating a semi-comprehensive display of relevant and important news content from the local to the international level.
This initiates a public promulgation to a plurality of media outlets and corroborated sources enabling the public to directly fund and vote for content that is most relevant and newsworthy to them.
The name “ElectedPress” itself should imply facilitating “The People”, direct control over news and media narratives and meta-narratives at a local/national/global level gaining influence over which news stories are escalated in attaining greater public coverage and exposure.
Increasing Media Literacy
The quality and standards of the news media and the press can be only as good as the quality and standards the public holds it to. The public can only hold the press accountable to the extent they are educated on what journalism is and the standards and practices they should be held to. Likewise, the press should be engaged in raising their own benchmark of honest, accountable, ethical and fact-based news and reporting. A news media and press which strains itself in such endeavors.
ElectedPress facilitates a process of increasing media literacy and education in news and journalistic standards as well as helping the public to better identify factual inaccuracies, logical fallacies and bias contained within news and journalism and working to call out and expose when deceptive practices are being applied.
Community curated quizzes and tests are created for users to learn, study and review before qualifying to apply that knowledge into commentary and the greater site. These tests primarily focus on learning basic principles in journalistic standards, as well as identifying factual inaccuracies, logical fallacies and bias or otherwise known as critical thinking skills.
Definitions & Reference
Definitions are important if we want people to be on the same page. A reference database is created where people can refer to reference points to see their definitions are in agreement with one another or not. It is important that we define the terms of our conversations so that we can better interpret common information being delivered.
Common Link Database
A common url database associated with articles or locations of content across the web is created so the public has a dedicated place they can always check the public analysis of given news stories. Third party sites such as news aggregator sites or social media companies can reference this database to judge the veracity of news articles or content in real-time. Journalists or content producers can also leverage this database to gain additional context and insight gathered on any specific news source or url.
3rd Party Annotation
A method is created to analyze and review news content off-site. A web browser plugin links news and media content review back to the main ElectedPress.com website platform. This allows the public hold news organization accountable who do not publish full material to the EP platform or hide their content behind a paywall.
Within the platform curators may post full articles or content to the site or users may post links back to their proprietary sites. A browser plugin will be created to allow the article dissemination and annotation process to be carried over and performed on external third-party sites to then be compiled to develop a general and centralized overview within the ElectedPress site for public review.
News Outlet & Journalist Tools & Utilities
There are many extra features which can and should be implemented into the ElectedPress platform. These features and tools are meant to help facilitate independent news curators and journalists to save time and money and help to produce more engaging, appealing and nuanced news content helping to raise the standards and quality in the news content and journalism they produce.
Some of these tools may include incorporating access to statistical data, programmatic or interactive database engines, api’s, analytics, statistics, maps types, charting tools, stock imagery and many more faculties in producing higher quality and more detailed representative media content.
News Outlet & Content Dispute Process
News stories and their authors are analyzed on several different criteria by general and specialized elements within the site community. Media content posted to the site can be disputed by members of the site community through a content review process.
The level of quality in news and journalism content is integral to creating an accurately and well-informed citizenry and general public. News outlets and journalists have a duty and obligation in producing a product which aligns with their stated missions and goals. News organizations fail in their own obligations when they use practices intended to distort or manipulate the facts to produce a story which does not entirely adhere to the facts. Some of the primary methods used may include fabrication of sources, factual inaccuracies, logical fallacies, sensationalism and factual or contextual omissions among many others.
These are just a few of the many manipulations a news organization may apply in being ingenuine in the production of their news and media content. ElectedPress facilitates the isolation of deceptive practices contained within news, media and journalism. It seeks to bring media manipulations to light and make the public aware of these to engage a more intuitive and consciously aware news viewer as well as raise the standard in the quality of production of accurate news and media content.
The same that would go for any other type of consumable product or service, the consumer has a right and a duty to hold their news organizations accountable to the type of product they would claim to deliver. Conversely, news consumers should maintain standards in which they hold news outlets and journalists accountable and standards should not overly burden or restrict the important work that news outlets and journalists do.
Grading the trust of elements in news and information can be of a subjective nature. Likewise, individuals and the general public must factor their own limitations of specialized knowledge and biases when dealing with new information. One key is maintaining a site community which adhere to a rules-based review process in order to maximize material contexts in a content review and grading process.
Article review creates an important mechanism in allowing the public to hold news publishers accountable as well as create metrics in distinguishing honest news publishers from malicious ones with the aim of discovering higher degrees of truth contained within news and media content as well as exposing errors for correction.
In addition to maintaining an environment of honest and fact-based news and information, a review process is created in order to identify factual inaccuracies, logical fallacies and bias within news and media content posted on as well as off the site platform. The review process adds attributes and metrics to news content providing readers additional context exposing falsehoods and to qualify media content veracity.
Each content article (text, video, streaming, post, other) may be broken down annotated and reviewed by individual content bodies, down to the paragraph or segmented sentence level. For instance, the content articles title, sub-title, main content body (text, streaming, video content) and additional artifacts (links, sources, images, etc.) within an otherwise complete content article, will all be considered individualized elements and may be disseminated, analyzed and graded on an individualized and segmented level to produce a complete overview compiling down to a individually graded metrics.
Headlines and content body are graded separately on accuracy and contextualization. This should help to create feedback for a reader to determine the accuracy of an article and create an element of accountability for publishers when creating accurate news content.
Article review and dissemination may be conducted and the results may be segmented by user types (common user, paid user, fact checkers, content curators, groups) into accumulated type metric packets to produce a more palatable, informative and efficient method in managing and consuming commenting analysis. User types may vote metrics on individual comments or analysis to push more valuable, original and informative content to wider exposure.
Publishers should be incentivized to modal quality content which matches guidelines to reporting and discussing content which is accurate and relevant to their readers. In order to maintain rating metrics which are favorable to their long-term credibility and continued viewership, they must stay accountable to producing accurate and quality analysis.
Blockchain to Press = Bread to Butter
Historical news content can add valuable context to creating a complete story and picture of the present.
In addition to the many services the press provides, a critically important function is to act as a historical record and archive. When a newspaper is printed it indirectly serves this purpose by creating a physical and empirical record of reported dates, places and events.
A critical deficiency within the present internet infrastructure is data permanence. In the online digital age, there are no guarantees any data source or content can be retrieved at that same web address at a future date. In addition to this, when a website is removed from the web, all content links posted from that website become broken and may be lost forever. With the cost of data storage decreasing, users have the ability to monetize data permeance on a distributed ledger or pier to pier type network.
Ideally, all content and interactions could be archived on a distributed open market storage network so archived content may become mirrored and censor resistant. The site seeks to utilize blockchain technology to create transparency and data permanence to promote a less censorious news publishing environment.
Blockchain tech may serve to recreate the physical record of news and information a printed newspaper has historically served. Creating a data archiving market of user funded data content can work not only to build an important use case of blockchain technology but also facilitate broader adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency tech.
Ad revenue centric journalism degrades the value mechanism of news content. One aspect being that if all news content is priced the same, free, then consumers may have a more difficult time determining real value.
In order to establish and maintain an archive of data for the publics long-term historical reference, users may fund the bandwidth and storage costs of data content.
Operators
Operators are specific characters which can be used to reference users’ articles and other content objects. These are generated automatically by the platform when a new #hashtag has been registered by being added to content material by the publisher. For the following examples, we will use the Hashtag #demo. All operators should be hyperlinked whenever feasible within the site.
Each operator creates a unique display of data visualization and contextual reference for the user and publisher to interact with.
( ## ) – Pool
( _ ) – Pool subtopic
( # ) – Common hashtag topic
( ~ ) – Timeline renders a timeline creating a visual display and historical reference to #topic related content.
( ! ) – Source operator is used to denote that a word references a ‘source’ object related to the Hashtag content. For #demo, the corresponding fact library will be !demo. Clicking on a !demo link will bring up all source objects referenced to #demo.
( @ ) – User/Channel used to denote that a word references a user or channel. Clicking on an @ link will direct you to the user or channel profile. Using a @user as a precursor to a ~timeline or #topic, for example, @user~timeline will display and isolate all contributions user has made to #topic ~timeline
( % ) – Source Metrics/Analytics, a dedicated page to consolidate metrics on url or sources feedback metrics.
( ^ ) – Civil Servants/^Civil Services, used to disclose that a user type is a corporation, politician, political organization or service.
( $ ) – Ads/Classifieds, acts as a way to fund campaigns for short or long term projects, such as in depth investigative journalism and documentaries films or advertisements.
##Pools – Dissolving Echo Chambers
Open networking elements as well as content display methods structured into the fabric of the platform work toward the effect of countering and dissolving echo chambers.
The press by its own nature and as it should be is decentralized. Readers may not always hear corresponding stories or story corrections that might refute an article error or point of view.
Despite confirmation bias and media compartmentalization, echo chambers are created and driven further by personalized search and social media generated algorithms.
Echo chambers can create outward social strife and division as well as keep people from discovering deeper truths and knowledge in their local communities and in their world. When echo chambers are perpetuated, they lead to otherwise seemingly multivariable or parallel realities which manifest within the general public creating a type of collective cognitive dissidence at the real-world level.
Echo chambers can be reduced by organically displaying a variety of news stories and related sources into common user curated news ##Pool threads.
Denoted by a double hashtag “ ## ”, publishers can add ##pools by topic keyword to their content allowing it to be combined with other similar topic related content. ##Pools present a “near term and more recent” representation of topic relevant news and stories. ##Pools are hyperlinked and when clicked render to combine relevant and similar like news content into a dedicate ##Pool related thread from a wide variety of news sources.
Further, users with curator roles can aid in maintaining order and relevance to #topic threads by grading the relevance of added ##Pool hashtags.
Keeping everyone on the same page, ##Pool keywords which are manually added to content, transposes an otherwise inorganic algorithmic effect in the display of news content creating a common and static display of curated topic related material.
This provides the user a simplified and organized access to a strong diversity, array and variety of news sources, analysis and dialogue within any given news topic and will function to reduce the echo chamber effect and create the more ubiquitous and homogeneous level of news awareness which can be shared across the general public.
~ Historical Timelines
With so much going on in the world today and the persistence of the 24hour news cycle, it can be easy to forget how news content today may be relevant or in contradiction, etc., to news content of the past. Providing a basic method in categorization, discovery and utilization of important news content from the past is an element missing from the mainstream news ecosystem today.
Timelines, represented by the tilde “ ~ ” symbol, create a visual interface to discover historical news and media content adding a historical reference and context within given news #topics.
Historical content items correspond into a horizontally displayed timeline to create a visual month/year date driven historical content perspective. Timeline items may include excerpts of influential headlines and content from the #topic news stories through time and can be expanded to the full historical news item.
Readers can search historical content through multiple filter layers to better serve in discovering granular type historical content. Historical data within news stories and #topics adds clarity, depth and context critical in producing a more informed, knowledgeable and educated citizenry. It can be important in determining the relevancy, veracity and credibility of any given current news story or #topic.
Historical perspective and context are important for the individual, the citizen and the collective public psyche in making wise choices in their lives and communities. It is said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”, which could imply if we remember our past and history instead of avoiding it, we can use it to be wary of and avoid those mistakes made in the past and use the good to work toward building a better more harmonious and peaceful future.
Historical information is important in determining the overall veracity of news content and information. Sustaining a presence of historical data can help put to bed many otherwise consistently debunked notions that persist in the world and create a more solid and universal knowledgebase with which to focus the discovery of higher truths, knowledge and education.
Whether due to poor reporting or deliberate attempts to mislead audiences, historical context is often withheld from news stories which would give readers a broader more informed and contextualized perspective. Maintaining transparency within historical perspectives provides accountability within news and journalistic practices serving to fulfil the mission of the press in properly representing and informing their readers and community.
Timelines are used in gaining historical perspective to hold us accountable to our commitments as individuals, journalists and communities and are used to hold our business and community leaders and elected officials accountable to theirs.
!Source Registry
Quality, transparency and accountability of source material is a critical element in the production of news and journalism. Source material is often mischaracterized, misdirected and abused within news stories and content lowering the standard and trust in the production of news and journalistic content. Sources are repeated across media outlets diffusing conversation happening around given !source material and driving echo-chambers.
Authenticity and transparency of source material is possibly the biggest deficiency in the production of quality, ethical and fact-based news and journalism. Transparency of sources is imperative and qualifies the quality, integrity and authenticity of news and journalistic content. Sources should be clearly marked and identified within news content. Where source material is reposted by additional news outlets, sources should be clearly identified so readers can trace back source material to its original publication.
A central repository is created where source material can be corroborated, verified and undergo public dissemination and conversation. Content meta fields create a standardization in identifying the apparent credibility and accuracy of individual news source items.
!Sources reference meta data which work to verify the authenticity of source data material. In effect, all content posted to the site creates a !source containing a default set of meta data attributes. In addition, further meta data attributes can be attached to a !source object to allow for corroboration and to create further context and credibility. Ultimately, the !source meta protocol allows for the determination in the verity and veracity of posted !source content and seeks to create ubiquitous standardization in the transparency of source material as well as create a central repository where public conversation can be had around any given !source material.
A central repository is created where source material can be corroborated, verified and undergo public dissemination and conversation.
Sources create a public profile to contextualize discourse around a given news story.
Quality, transparency and accountability of source material is a critical element in the production of news and journalism.
@User – Profiles
Profiles, defined by @username, are used to create transparency, disclosure and accountability around news outlets, publishers and organizations media claims and news content.
Profiles allow the public to more readily identify, review and verify any media organizations mission, methodologies, disclosures, funding sources and corrections as well as keep a history of the overall perceived credibility of any news organization.
Profiles may contain additional context attributes to add towards the transparency and disclosure process by which to verify the authenticity of a user identity. Profiles also present the accumulation of credibility metrics by curating content and interacting with the user base.
Because all content posted to the site is posted through a user’s account, user profiles store a history of content uploads, social interactions, roles etc. associated with a user profiles actions within the platform.
User profiles are made to increase transparency into the types of content being posted. Different users may have different requirements for anonymity and therefore different levels of identity verification are permissible.
The user profile page creates a place where a user can organize and display their news brand and news content. The user profile page contains a number of elements to facilitate a news publisher in the syndication of their news and content.
This may include media content associated with the publishers brand including websites, podcasts, books, articles, pictures, videos, streams etc. or otherwise provide a display and aggregation of a news publishers brand and content material.
Publishers
Publisher template roles are built on top of profiles and are used to distinguish user role types as well as add additional layers of transparency such as disclosure and methodology. User templates roles define and represent the type of content a user may publish and be graded against as well as the types of content the site community can expect to see.
⦁ Commenter
⦁ Commentator
⦁ Curator
⦁ Editor
⦁ Curator
⦁ Publisher
⦁ News/Media Outlet
⦁ Journalist/Photographer
⦁ Fact Checker
Content Types – Each user account can post content in the form of a comment, update, post, video or stream
⦁ Commenting/Annotating
⦁ Network Update (short text 300 characters or less)
⦁ Long Form Text Article (long text 301 characters or more)
⦁ Image
⦁ Video
⦁ Video Streaming
Each content medium type provides additional commenting, critiquing and public review and analysis features.
In order to create additional transparency for readers as well as facilitate the organizing of news content material types, qualified publishers may tag and define the types of content being published.
⦁ Objective
⦁ Opinion
⦁ Interview
⦁ Debate
⦁ Documentary/Mini-Documentary
⦁ Etc.
Content Monetization
Funding for journalists, publishers and content curators is critically important to the development and sustainment of granular based local news and independent journalism. ElectedPress seeks to monetizes traffic on multiple levels online as well as off.
A primary method of monetization happens at the user subscription level. Subscribers fund journalists and content curators on a per view basis. Users may pay a fixed subscription fee and users subscribe to channels where that subscription fee is distributed between channels the user is subscribed to on a per view basis. For example, if a subscriber pays $9.99/month, that $9.99 amount will then be divided amongst the channels the user is subscribed to, payout is determined by the publisher content the user physically views. In addition, subscribers can customize where their subscriber fee goes or may use their subscription fee to pay specific amounts directly to the publisher as they choose.
Subscriptions are incentivized in order to support local and independent news and journalism and subscribers can gain additional benefits to the site such as the elimination of advertising content channels as well as additional access such as independent commenting channels.
Journalists and users alike can setup funding campaigns on news topics they want more focus and coverage on. Users may directly fund content data bandwidth covering an important site expenditure and sustaining the operability of the platform.
Users also may fund the archiving of news content material creating transparency in data lifespan and location. This function enables data permanence creating a data expiration date which corresponds to the funds provided for the archiving of news content and providing a guaranteed time and location of information on the web.
Data transfer and usage is tracked at the content piece level, algorithms may predict the amount required, per reader, to meet bandwidth, management fees and the user-base requirements. User funded bandwidth and archiving costs create independent metrics which may be used to reflect the perceived value news content.
A stream that has the potential for creating additional revenue specifically for newspapers and print media is the integration of an electronic to print classified ad network utilizing the existing offline classified display ads pages available in the hard copy of print media.
Through disclosure and transparency ElectedPress seeks ways to maximize revenue generation and distribution across media channels for news and media publishers.
Ad Network
The site can facilitate the monetization of a proprietary advertising network where revenues can be shared to drive additional revenue for news outlets journalists and publishers as well as sustaining the ElectedPress site.
Ads are designed to add value to the user base and community. Elements built into the ad platform should exceed industry standards for transparency and meet all local and national legal requirements.
The site builds an ad network tailored to help advertisers navigate and gain exposure within news content ecosphere. This ad revenue is shared with news content providers as well and creates an indirect and separated method of news content corporate sponsorship.
Ads may be interactive between public and companies who advertise their products. Companies must have public company page setup on ElectedPress to handle accountability and disclosure of advertising material with public if a company wishes to market their product on ElectedPress platform.
Currencies
In order to facilitate a p2p or decentralized blockchain type network. The platform may utilize a single or multiple tokens representing different functionalities within the site.
EP Equity – This coin is used as an equity backed by the ElectedPress site itself and serves to fund the executive actions and operations of the ElectedPress platform.
EP Commodity – The commodity coin is used to fund the distributed network nodes and is backed by the distributed and decentralized computational and storage power of the network. The value of this coin is backed by the value of the data and information being stored across the ElectedPress distributed computational network. Network nodes may directly seed the archiving and delivery of news content.
EP Currency – This coin acts as a direct currency to facilitate the funding and monetization of independent news curators.
Moderation
ElectedPress is unique in that it is a platform dedicated to news and journalism and raising the quality and standards within. The platform is also dedicated to creating civil discourse and debate around so many of the important topics and issues we face in the world today. Because of this, the platform holds its commentators, publishers and curators to a higher standard from the onset.
An important element to moderation within the platform begins with a user’s intent in commenting and communication. Does the commenter or publisher intend to speak the truth? Does the commenter or publisher intend speak free from factual inaccuracies and logical fallacy? Does the commenter or publisher intend to speak on matters that are meaningful and truly important or divert attention away from those important topics?
These are some of elements which a commenter or publisher must adhere to before engaging in discourse and some of the elements a commenter or publisher may be moderated on by the greater site community.
ElectedPress strives to bring out the best in people in their conversations and seeks to produce discourse and debate which is intelligent, meaningful and civilized.
Every user must adhere to hierarchal communication and community guidelines before engaging in conversations within the site. Because of the political nature of the platform, it is likely more prone to abuse by bad actors who would collaborate in using deceptive practices to sow discord and divert attention away from critical topics and issues.
While we don’t agree with censorship, it is ultimately necessary to maintain a form of moderation to sustain healthy dialogue and news relevant content. Therefore, the bulk of moderation must happen at the user driven level. Every user within the platform has the ability to moderate content for the greater community.
Moderation happens primary at the user level. Moderation attributes are attached to comments and media content in order to reflect the quality and types of comments and content being made. This may stand in contrast to the types of attributed disclosures a publisher attaches to their content as well.
Users can mute other user profile, conversation or topics. When another user is muted, it does not remove their content from the platform but removes it only from the view of the user account who does not wish to hear that particular dialogue or content material.
User should want to have their message heard and therefore will be carful to post commentary which adheres to community standards.
Conclusion
ElectedPress is a platform that aims to democratize news and media narratives by giving users direct control and influence over the content published on the platform.
The platform will utilize feedback and interaction between readers and publishers to create a more organic representation of the type of news readers want to see and events they want to see covered.
Trust metrics and attributes, such as the “Newsworthy” attribute, will allow users to elevate the visibility of news they consider relevant and important. Higher rated news will be organized and displayed in topic-focused threads and on the front page, which is stratified by geographic location, news category, and news topic.
This will create a more comprehensive and diverse display of relevant news content from the local to the international level.
ElectedPress also aims to protect individual and localized autonomy through the promotion of decentralized power and a voluntary predicate. The platform believes that this will allow for the elevation of consciousness and the creation of a more harmonious and prosperous society.
Because each human being owns themselves to the extent their existence and being is “not” subject to license from the state. Champions of human rights today bear the responsibility in securing these liberties as there is no historical precedent to guarantee their continued existence.
Tendencies toward authoritarianism and totalitarianism may be made obsolete through the development, adoption and success of practical alternatives. Alternatives which operate and sustain themselves by creating purpose, wisdom and meaning for the human being through producing mutually beneficial prosperity and through an elevated state of individual and collective human consciousness.
Humanities battle and struggle to achieve Independence, Liberty and Truth has been a pursuit lasting for eons. Humankinds biggest enemy and threat may primarily be to its own self. To the degree laws are made to dictate the behavior of humankind is an acknowledgment and testament to the degree in failure of humankind to treat itself and humanely with dignity, reason, trust and respect.
In a sense, many laws could be considered a suppression of the collective human shadow and a stagnation or regression in the evolution of the individual and collective human consciousness. We must realize and acknowledge our individual and collective boundaries and extremes. We must realize, expose and understand our own individual and collective shadows in order to elevate and harmonize human consciousness.
The people must realize the power they hold to form the type of world and reality they wish to see. That change must happen from within the hearts and the minds of individuals and humanity collectively in order to manifest itself into the real world.
Humankind must reflect on itself. Will it work to help lift one another up based on lasting mutual relationships of trust, respect, peace, harmony and abundance or will it continue through deception to perpetuate a state of metaphysical ignorance and darkness.
Humankind must discover and realize its middle, authentic and integrated path, a center that balances self-autonomy and liberty with prosperity.
With ultimate freedom there comes ultimate responsibilities and it is the will and the eternal vigilance, voice and action of the people who must uphold and defend these rights and freedoms against neo-colonial adversaries who would dissolve these rights into cultural and historical oblivion.
The ElectedPress platform works to enshrine and protect individual and localized autonomy based on universal natural law and natural rights including those of the freedoms of thought, speech, communication, press, association and assembly, to name just a few.
Once again, humanity faces a crossroads in evolution and history.
Can it ascend to a higher state consciousness based on liberty, localization and self-autonomy and governance? Through the advocation of a decentralized distribution of power and based on a predicate which is of a voluntary nature? Or will humanity relinquish its own self-autonomy, regressing into a state of plutocratic technocratic centralization and neo-feudal autocracy?
Since the dawn of civilization, society has enabled specialization and exploration within philosophy, science and technology bringing new insights into the many great unknowns of our world and universe. This knowledge has brought great prosperity and abundance to the world putting us within reach of a society of post-scarcity as it relates to Maslow’s Hierarchy and basic human survival needs.
The invention of the printing press introduced a great flourishing and democratization of knowledge and information. It brought the increase of basic literacy to common people and proliferated the renaissance and the enlightenment thrusting society and culture into and through the age of modernism and post-modernism.
The internet, as the first type 1 network brought us access to the culmination of the world’s knowledge and made it available virtually instantaneously and globally within the palms of our hands.
The access to and decentralized nature of the internet has led to a great awakening on a mass scale among segments of the public, where the old walls and gatekeepers of legacy news and information sources are being bypassed, torn down and exposed for the ideologically driven agendas and autocracies in which they once protected and served.
Though to date, this awakening has grown on a more individual and compartmentalized basis. There is always a resistance to change.
ElectedPress seeks to take this awakening mainstream towards a human based singularity by consummating the power of authority and narrative and sustaining a transfer of that power back into the hands of the people proliferating localized autonomous communities, self-governance, self-ownership and self-responsibility.
ElectedPress, by creating the platform, mechanisms and infrastructure to foster the critical awareness and responsibility necessary, where the people can once again, understand, partake and engage to form the type of local community, world and society they wish to realize.
Recent philosophical eras have brought us the age of modernism and post-modernism. But these philosophical eras have served civilization and society to the finite extent of their practicality and usefulness. The culmination in the ubiquity of their adoption has exhausted their effectiveness and usefulness as a servant to society, as they devour the very juxtaposition which would harbor their purpose and necessity in the first place.
As a fundamental truth, the state of nature and the universe exist within cycles and oscillations, thus philosophical doctrines have not remained static at a societal level.
The constructionism and deconstructionism of the modern and post-modern eras have gifted us an incredible amount of insights into, literature, research and knowledge within science, technology, philosophy and culture. Is a new philosophical era, Meta-Modernism, based on transparency and authenticity is upon us.
Acknowledging the inherent truths within both coherence and correspondence epistemology, culminating into an interdisciplinary apperception within science, technology, philosophy, aesthetics, art and culture. A philosophy and movement which recognizes cycles and oscillations inherent within nature, culture and society embracing them and works to find balance and unification between them to build a more conscious, intelligent, peaceful, natural and sustainable civilization and meaningful place for human beings themselves. One able to guide humanity and civilization to new heights and understanding of its reality and universe as well as of itself and its own place in it.
We have an incredible opportunity today to explore our individual and collective human consciousness as never before to catalyze a flowering of human consciousness.
A catalyzation away from neo-feudalistic dogmas and moral relevancy and toward adopting civic globalism based on universal natural law and natural rights. As a force of unstoppable nature, law and rights which are universal and inherent existing across all people and cultures of the world.
Technology is changing our world faster than ever. It is more important than ever we sustain and bolster a local, independent and robust press to work towards informing their communities on the realities, potential dangers and solutions to build a more stable, prosperous and harmonious world for today and for our future.
— ElectedPress