2. 职称英语
  3. (1) There are two big problems with America’s news and information landscape

(1) There are two big problems with America’s news and information landscape

游客2023-10-21  18
问题     (1) There are two big problems with America’s news and information landscape: concentration of media, and new ways for the powerful to game it.
    (2) First, we increasingly turn to only a few aggregators like Facebook and Twitter to find out what’s going on the world, which makes their decisions about what to show us impossibly fraught. Those aggregators draw—opaquely (不透明地) while consistently—from largely undifferentiated sources to figure out what to show us. They are, they often remind regulators, only aggregators rather than content originators or editors.
    (3) Second, the opacity (不透明性) by which these platforms offer us news and set our information agendas means that we don’t have cues about whether what we see is representative of sentiment at large, or for that matter of anything, including expert consensus (共识). But expert outsiders can still game the system to ensure disproportionate attention to the propaganda they want to inject into public discourse. Those users might employ bots, capable of numbers that swamp actual people, and of persistence that ensures their voices are heard above all others while still appearing to be humbly part of the real crowd.
    (4) What to do about it? We must realize that the market for vital information is not merely a market.
    (5) The ideals of the journalistic profession—no doubt flawed in practice, but nonetheless worthy— helped mitigate (缓和) an earlier generation of concentration of media ownership. News divisions were by strong tradition independent of the commercial side of broadcasting and publishing, while cross-subsidized by other programming. And in the United States, they were largely independent of government, too, with exceptions flagrantly (明目张胆地) sticking out.
    (6) Facebook and Twitter for social media, and Google and Microsoft for search, must recognize a special responsibility for the parts of their services that host or inform public discourse. They should be upfront about how they promote some stories and de-emphasize others, instead of treating their ranking systems as trade secrets. We should hold them to their desire to be platforms rather than editors by insisting that they allow anyone to write and share algorithms (演算法) for creating user feeds, so that they aren’t saddled with the impossible task of making a single perfect feed for everyone.
    (7) There should be a method for non-personally-identifying partial disclosure: my Twitter-mates could be assured, say, that I am, in fact, a person, and from what country I hail, even if I don’t choose to advertise my name. Bots can be allowed—but should be known for the mere silhouettes (侧面影像) that they are.
    (8) And Facebook and Twitter should version-up the crude levers of user interaction that have created a parched, flattening, even infantilizing discourse. For example, why not have, in addition to "like, " a "Voltaire, " a button to indicate respect for a point—while disagreeing with it? Or one to indicate a desire to know if a shared item is in fact true, an invitation to librarians and others to offer more context as it becomes available, flagged later for the curious user?
    (9) Finally, it’s time for a reckoning with the bankrupt system of click-based advertising. By "bankrupt" I don’t mean that it’s bad for America or the world, though it is. Rather, by its own terms it is replete with fraud. The same bots that populate Twitter armies also inspire clicks that are meaningless—money out of the pockets of advertisers, with no human impact to show for it. There are thoughtful proposals to reseed a media landscape of genuine and diverse voices, and we would do well to experiment widely with them as the clickbait architecture collapses on its own accord.
    (10) While there is no baseline (基线) pure or neutral architecture for discourse, there are better and worse ones, and the one we have now is being exploited by those with the means and patience to game it. It’s time to reorient what we have with a focus on loyalty to users—honestly satisfying their curiosity and helping them find and engage with others in ways so that disagreement does not entail doxxing (人肉搜索) and threats, but rather reinforcement of the human aspiration to understand our world and our fellow strugglers within it. (本文选自 The Atlantic) [br] What can NOT be concluded about the aggregators from the two examples of Facebook and Twitter?
选项 A、People have gradually become dependent on them to get information.
B、The way they collect information remains the same.
C、They not only put information together but also edit them.
D、Visitors cannot verify whether the content they show reflects public opinions.
答案 C
解析 推断题。原文第二段第二句提到，这些聚合类网站大多数从无差别的信息源取材以确定给我们展示的内容，紧接着第三句进一步强调它们只是聚合类网站，而非内容的发明者或编辑者。由此可知，脸书和推特这些聚合类网站只是将信息聚合，并没有编辑信息，C与原文表述不符，故C为正确答案。该段第一句提到我们日益转向少数几家聚合信息的网站去了解世界动态，如脸书和推特，由此可知，人们逐渐依赖聚合信息类网站来获取信息，A与原文表述相符，故排除；第二句指出这些聚合类网站从信息源取材的方式不透明，但却一致，由此可知，它们收集信息的方式一致，B与原文表述相符，故排除；第三段第一句提到，这些平台提供新闻和设定我们所接收到的信息时的不透明性意味着我们没有相关线索可以得知我们所看到的内容是否代表了公众的意见，由此可知，访问者无法核实这些聚合类网站展示的内容是否代表了公众的意见，D也与原文表述相符，故排除。
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