Hypernews and the problem of objectivity

By Martin Engebretsen

ABSTRACT

Can hypertext contibute to the development of a more objective mediation of news? The aim of my position statement is to justify such a belief. The first step is to propose an understanding of the term objectivity. A moderately pragmatic definition can be based on a claim for plausible (not “true”) assertions and relevant (not total) wholeness. The next step is to show that the main theoretical obstacles for textual objectivity may be somewhat reduced through a replacement (or development) of presentation structure; from a narrative-like structure to a network-like structure.

KEYWORDS: Hypertext, journalism, objectivity, text structure, epistemology

The aim of my project is to explore theoretically and practically the potential for change that the hypertext technology offers to the specific text genres of news reports.

The core of the project belongs to the field of epistemology, more specifically to the relation between the technology of hypertext and the description of social realities. Approaching the question from different angles, I try to justify the belief that hypertext can contribute to the development of a more objective mediation of news.

The first step of such a justification project is to deal with the term objectivity itself; propose an understanding of the term which is both scientifically acceptable and practically suitable in the specific context of journalism.

Basing this discussion on the pragmatic semiotics of Peirce, a phenomenological epistemology following the line from Husserl to Schütz, and Rorty’s neo-pragmatic theory of truth, I come up with the following proposal. It is a moderately pragmatic definition, claiming plausible (not “true”) assertions and relevant (not total) wholeness:

An objective news presentation contains only plausible assertions. That assertion count as plausible which is justifiable in confrontation with both uttered and thinkable objections.

An objective news presentation provides a wholeness in the description of the event in question, in the sense that any aspect of the event which is viewed as relevant by any person involved in the event or in the news discourse, must be included in the description.

Premise: Objectivity in this context is best understood as a continuum, not a dualistic quality of existence or non-existence.

This renewal of content could contribute to removing the term “objectivity” from the shelf of illusions back to that of ideal goals. Such a removal would be beneficial especially to certain academic and professional branches dealing theoretically or practically with different kinds of factual reality description. The production of news represents one such branch, the science of history another.

The next step in the project of justification is to defend the view that the text genres of these branches may obtain a higher degree of objectivity by replacing their traditional narrative-like structures with network-like hypertextual structures.

My belief is that the three main theoretical obstacles for textual objectivity may be somewhat reduced through such a replacement (or development) of presentation structure.

The three theoretical obstacles constitute an essence of the anti-empiristic and later linguistic (or hermeneutic) turn in the social and human sciences (especially in Europe) throughout the second half of this century.

1. The text is a construction, not a reflection of the world

2. The form of the genre determines the content of the text

3. The social world is a world of many realities

The first obstacle has to do with the fact that observation and description always will be linked to a certain degree of interpretation, which is a cognitive and thus subjective activity.

This is the reason why a descriptive text can never be a reflection of the world, but rather a construction, which simultaneously describes and defines the world.

Using hypertext, the mediating journalist is not forced to interpret the reality as strongly as he has to when using a traditional narrative as a frame for his description. He can search relevant information and then show it, instead of making a new narrative of it. The stronger part of the interpretation (e.g. relation-making) is left to the individual reader to conduct.

Secondly, the conventions of the text genres direct the handling of the (journalistic) content by ways of selection, reduction and adjustment. This “framing” power may be reduced when using a flexible, open hypertextual structure instead of a strict and claiming structure like the narrative. The narrative structure tend to force the participants of the news discourse to view the world as a stage for stereotypical dramas. When constructing a piece of hyper-news, one can apply any structure that will work as a relevant analytic tool for ordering the text material. One option is to apply a structure governed by a subjective-objective-axis. (Prototypes will be demonstrated at the consortium.)

The third of these theoretical obstacles has to do with the nature of news events. Usually they consist of human actions and human interaction - which should not be described in terms belonging to the physical sciences (cf. the debate of objectivism vs. subjectivism in the social sciences). These events constitute a social world, where different participants with different perspectives will experience different realities.

A hypertextually structured news presentation can better reflect the coexistence of different perspectives and different aspects of the social world, because it is not - like the traditional news story - restricted by conventions claiming unity, wholeness and a stringent logic.

According to this line of thought, one might assume that hypertext systems offer better tools for objective mediation of news events than the technology of linear text does.

REFERENCES

Husserl, Edmund (1960) Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Haag: Nijhoff

Peirce, Charles S. (1958-1960) Collected papers, edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press

Rorty, Richard (1979) Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Princeton : Princeton University Press

Schütz, Alfred (1962) "On Multiple Realities" in Collected papers , Volume I: The Problem of Social Reality, edited by Maurice Natanson. Haag: Nijhoff