In a world of fake news and alternative facts, reality is no longer a black and white world of true and false. The guy who once said everyone’s entitled to their opinions but not their own set of facts was clearly not alive on a social media planet.
Why ultimately do we keep one theory to ourselves or share another with our stakeholders? Whether we’re analyzing our searches, interpreting the evidence, sourcing the witnesses or packaging the presentation… It’s all through the lens of why.
The answer is not expressed as a rounding error, picking the side you’re on, or even throwing up your hands in disgust. It’s to start seeing the world we’re in through the lens of those who bring it to us — the information provider.
What motivates them to determine what they want us to know?
That motivation holds the key to what shows up in our news feeds, our search results, and by extension, our dinner tables, water coolers, and yes, what we pass-along through our devices.
In Searching Out Loud (“SOL”), questions of bias, sincerity, credibility, and fact selection are all tethered to one irreducible factor: The motivations of the information provider. There can be no sense-making of search results without a grounded understanding in why that information finds us in the first place.
SOL is more then an instruction on latest version of your software or favorite search engine. It’s not a What but a Why book. Knowing why you get the results you do, helps you get the results you want.
