The Skinny
GAGORA - The Guardian Agora - is a platform for The Guardian subscribers to have a constructive dialogue around the news.
This involves -
Understanding the news deeper
Connecting with The Guardian staff
A safe space for expressing opinions.
This strategy can generate multiple revenue streams for The Guardian including more paid subscriptions and the opportunity to sell access to deeper tools for conversation.
The problem with online communities
The problem with most online communities of news sites is that the bulk of the discussions happen in the comments sections and these discussions quickly degenerate into hate speech, spam and trolling.
News sites often try to combat this by moderating comments or by suppressing the comments section in sensitive news sections. However, moderation is resource intensive and suppression stops news from being an active conversation.
The Disruptive Idea
We think News should be interactive - with informed debate and constructive dialogue around specific concepts.
In this paper we propose a multi-layered platform - GAGORA - that enables its users to interact with The Guardian in different layers that are engaging to them.
Users can choose to understand concepts that intrigue them or express their opinions or connect with news creators - all in a constructive environment.
LAYERS
Layers of content to help users understand the news and connect with the contributors
Access deeper content
Users of GAGORA can go deeper than the content that makes it into the final article in The Guardian news site/app by using more of a pull vs a push approach.
A user highlights content areas that she/he would like to understand better.
The content areas that get highlighted by a critical mass of users turn a different color (yellow) and a notification is sent to The Guardian staff.
The Guardian writers annotate the highlighted section with more information.
Something for all subscribers
The annotated content can come in many flavors forming a rich layer of meta content on top of the published articles.
Deeper information from The Guardian staff
There is a transformative impact in users connecting with The Guardian staff and feeling like they’re understanding the news at a deeper level by direct interaction from their favorite writers and journalists.
Fact checked content by verified contributors
Users can graduate to become contributors by providing annotation content that is verifiable and has referenced quality sources.
This can gradually empower the community to provide curated and verified annotations in addition to those provided by The Guardian staff.
A behind the scenes look at journalism
Humor, facts, drafts, thoughts, perspectives, musings and much more to provide users a behind the scenes look at what it takes to bring the news and current affairs to them.
A glimpse into the author’s thoughts
What does a restaurant critic consider comfort food? What does the life of a cricket journalist look like when she/he is on tour? What goes into an investigative report? What entails chasing down leads and cross-check facts?
We think users would love to connect with the person that the journalist/editor is.
Filters
Turning news into a constructive dialogue
We think filters can be used as a very effective tool to help users express their opinions and to see how other users are thinking about specific concepts.
A user chooses a filter to express her/his opinion on a specific annotation content and adds her/his comment to share a thought or information.
The range of filters offered by GAGORA can provide users the flexibility to express their opinions without limiting them to just for or against the topic.
Users can share verifiable links, express their support, frustration, hope, contrarian opinions and much more.
Filters of expression vs Filter bubbles
Filters are loved in the context of Instagram or Snapchat pictures, while filters are vilified in the context of filter bubbles for news readers.
Filter bubbles are often caused when news aggregators or social media apps put a user into one bubble or another based on certain data and push articles of a certain flavor at the user.
GAGORA solves this problem by using filters in the positive context of empowering users to choose which path they want to go down.
Users are in control of picking which filter content they want to read and go as deep as they choose to along that filter.
