Digitization offers completely new opportunities for knowledge processing and networking that we as a society can use. This also means leaving the attention economy behind and, for example, placing strategic social megatopics on resubmission. To achieve this, science and journalism need to move closer together to think in terms of joint information platforms.
»The more we absorb into ourselves, the greater our mental capacity becomes.« (Seneca)
Journalism often prepares topics in an unstructured way and in individual cases. However, social developments (e.g. social inequality) and global challenges (e.g. climate crisis) cannot be presented well in individual cases, as topics are lost sight of far too quickly instead of being regularly resubmitted. Long-term scientific data and indices are more suitable for illustrating processes of social change and bringing the journalistic question into focus: Where do we stand as a society?
Various building blocks are needed for this: Science and journalism must move closer together and, in data journalistic, cross-media projects, develop a kind of digital collective memory that gives society orientation in solving social problems.
Those who make strategic use of the digital knowledge architectures can thus also provide journalism with a new social added value by acting as a mediator between science and education and further developing its control function for democracy in the digital world. futur eins wants to help make the full range of digitization options available to journalism and develop the information platforms of tomorrow.
The first age of social networks was a gigantic global success with a new form of human interconnectivity and communication, but also dark underbellies of destructive disinformation and propaganda. What can we learn from the first age, about business models, blueprints, algorithms, and echo chambers, and do better in the next?
A media order that emphasizes the remoteness of the media from the state, seeks to secure diversity, protects public-law systems from market power, and seeks to prevent monopolies of opinion as well as economic cartels is still a good foundation for a modern or even technically revolutionary media world. We think future-proof concepts that protect and further develop this foundation.
News needs perspective. Constructive journalism is the logical development from the insights we have gained about journalism in the last century. We want to help editorial offices to develop their working methods and to think up new formats.