When Aditi Rajagopal and her friends — Winsen Canda Wibawa Tjong and Jovan Yeo — realised how easily our perception of the world is being manipulated through a few clicks of the mouse, they decided to counter it (in theory).
The students of Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore, created Telegraft, a cross platform plug-in that allows users to read and save content without restricting incoming news with filters. “It was important to us that the plug-in was not a digital stalker that hovers over all your online activity, but a pop-up that works like footnotes,” explains Aditi.
Telegraft is still an idea but has managed to get some attention; it recently won the best ad pitch for an advertising competition called D and AD New Blood, held in London. “It hasn’t been turned into an app yet. That takes a lot of coding, but the technology is all there. We drew inspiration for features from existing apps and put it together in a way that made sense,” says Aditi.
Cookies and cache
One of the reasons we love the Internet so much is because it is (supposedly) a free space; it is the gateway to information of all kinds. But there is darkness that lurks in the corners and creates a massive blind spot.
No matter where we go, it shadows us under a cloak called ‘personalisation’, leaving only a bread crumb trail of cookies and cache. So, without much thought, we consume what we are fed and relevance turns into a more superficial narrative.
On how and why the idea was conceptualised, she elaborates, “It was conceptualised when we were kicking around some ideas, and one of my teammates said ‘What if you could read news right off WhatsApp?’. I personally read my news off an app. I don’t sit down with a cup of coffee in the morning and take it all in. I search for what I need, when I need it, and it comes straight to my phone. I think that’s what a lot of young people do nowadays, and that’s why we felt like we needed to push the envelope even further.”
With the app, one can get information they want from their messenger services and save it for later. And since it doesn’t have filters, information is less biased and doesn’t only cater to trends.
While information has always taken its time to filter in, these days, it has turned into a profitable opportunity that drops only what it thinks is relevant to us, regardless of what is happening. The news that reaches each person is different; it is specially tailored and doesn’t account for change.
Blurred lines
With the line between print and digital media slowly starting to blur, the content we read is turning more ‘mainstream’. News is becoming synonymous with online trends. But Aditi thinks print media will never lose its relevance because, “It has credibility, though it has been diluted by the advent of blogging. On the Internet, anyone can write anything. Even the most trusted information base, Wikipedia, is open source. In that sense, print still has a stronghold. The relevance of information is important.”
Calling the manipulation of information “pandering to the masses” and “dramatisation of news to make profit”, she adds, “People’s rapidly dwindling attention has given rise to this phenomenon called ‘clickbait’, which dramatises news just to sell. It’s incredibly sad, because when news providers begin to pander to this, they lower their standards to please the audience. Thankfully, this is still more of a digital phenomenon.”