Its interesting I am far from a tinfoil hat type but I do think that social media and other information sources have created allot of pressure on the mainstream media business model. I am very skeptical now of using mainstream media as a reliable news source.
Makes me think there might be a business model for reporting facts only on a platform with zero political slant to it or as buggs warns manufactured drama bending content to make it interesting or fit a predetermined narrative. No agenda whatsoever you can be counted on as "the" trusted news source. Your currency "trust". You can keep your integrity by a crowd accountability model. Whatever monetizing methods you have are fully transparent and doesn't run at odds to your brand promise...... but I digress.
Your points are interesting about a threat to our democracy and I bolded the point I would like to exchange thoughts on above. I am not sure it will be a threat to our democracy as such but I do think it is already causing a transformation of the model from top down trusted institution to bottom up validation process. Block Chain is the beginning of this where there is a form of crowd accountability that happens. We are also seeing this sprout up in the conscious consumer brands which are going to be a major player as the younger consumer base grows.
I saw a facilitating session with Gunnar Lovelace who was the founder of Thrive Market and now is the the founder and Co-CEO of Good Money which is an online banking platform. Lovelace recently co-founded Alliance for Good as a community of influencers working together to create a thriving future for humanity and the planet. This takes the form of communities taking control of the power through organizing, purchasing power, and transparency of where their money is being placed and with whom. Companies moving forward will be looking to align with influencers and the agenda of literally their billions of followers focused on social impact at scale (people, planet + profit). If businesses are taking their eye off this movement they are missing a massing Sea change and opportunity.
To summarize traditional formerly trusted institutions like Presidents, politicians, Big Media, Top leaders, financial institutions, are quickly being disrupted by a new wave of bottom up collective communities that are more transparent, with accountability built around an agenda aligned with new set of values. I see this filling the void as your children age into it.
Conversely I see this as tremendously problematic. There has been so much (near subliminal) marketing in mass media for so long on many subjects that the younger consumer base has been functionally brainwashed.
I'm going to step well outside the realm of Covid, so bear with me. I'm not going to post references but if anyone wants, they're either already somewhere in this thread or I'll provide them upon request.
By way of background, I grew up in the city (St. Vital so the Transcona people can be jealous) and have lived my entire life in Winnipeg, save a year in Australia. Somehow I was drawn to agriculture fairly early on (probably something to do with biology being scarce for work unless you're in agriculture). I've worked in Agriculture for over 25 years in extension, research and regulatory roles, usually all three at the same time. While my specialty is entomology I've worked with pathologists, agronomists, breeders and many more facets of agriculture than I can probably recall. I don't proclaim expertise in anything outside my field, but I've been exposed to a great many subjects in the broad field so I have a reasonable handle of what's going on.
One of the favorite phrases when I'm outside a major urban center is to refer to those living in said urban center as suffering from some derivation of the phrase "perimeter-itis". This is the Manitoba phrase for the rural-urban divide. The country folks think that the city is hellacious and everyone is utterly ignorant of agriculture. On the latter part they are largely correct and most people's perceptions of agriculture is only what hits the media. They don't actually understand how food is grown, what sort of stewardship programs are involved and in many cases how any of the processes actually work to the point where many think milk comes from the back of the grocery store (hyperbole, but you get the idea). I'm not contending that urban people are stupid, rather that they are disconnected and ignorant (again, not meant as insulting), much in the same way I shouldn't consider myself knowledgeable in engineering protocols. You don't want me telling you how to build a bridge.
I also have a daughter who is now of university age and I've watched a great many programs that I really don't have much interest in. Some were good (Kim Possible), some were bad (Hanna Montana) but there was a strong Disney flavor in there. Through the entire time I was observing children's programming, Disney has been mentioning organic food throughout. It's subtle, but consistently there. The basic premise/belief is that organic is perceived to be better for you. The rationale is that they don't use pesticides and that pesticides are very dangerous to consumers. Not Disney's rationale, but the primary marketing schemes function along those themes. That marketing/messaging has been going on for at least 20 years (my daughter's age) and probably considerably longer. I tend to notice it much more than anyone else because it's a pet peeve of mine.
Compare Costco to Superstore/Safeway/Sobey's. If you go into Costco you'll find probably 40-50% of their processed products are labeled as organic, as well as a smaller proportion of their fresh sales. If you go into any of the other three stores you'll find that the organic/natural sections represent somewhere in the range of </=10%. One of those numbers jives approximately correctly with how production is done in North America and really the rest of the world, though I confess I don't have Afghanistan's numbers at hand, for example. Less than 10% of grain, meat, produce is produced organically. There are multiple reasons for this, consistency of quality and yield being the two main issues; fear of a zero yield because control options are very limited in the case of a disease or insect outbreak. There's also a tremendous lack of consistency among various organic groups as to standards. They approximate, but in the U.S. for example there tends to be at least one oversight organic group per state and often more. They tend to model after OMRI.org more than anything else so it's a reasonable approximation of what's being done. If you know what you're looking for on OMRI's webpage you'll find multiple pesticides listed for acceptable use. They are allowed because they are of "natural" origin, usually, but not always meaning botanical origin (sulphur and copper obviously not fitting that). The problem is that natural does not equate to benign in any way, shape of form. But you'll run across arguments that will suggest we've evolved with them so they are safer. Poppycock! Lots of natural stuff will kill you quick as day to the point where natural is largely a meaningless word, but one that appears all over the place on food. Either way, organic production does allow for pesticide use, just a limited suite. If you want to get into the toxicology of it all, I'm afraid that it will paint a somewhat less friendly picture as well. But people don't really like toxicology because they tend to find that many things they consume (alcohol, sugar, caffeine, salt) are more often than not more toxic than the pesticides they are griping about. And if you're thinking that's not really part talk, whoo boy, you are right. People shut that shit down.
Going back to the media and tying in Disney, the primary thrust is that organic is good for you and the environment, better than conventionally grown food. But if you look at unbiased studies you'll find that nutritionally there isn't really any difference. Looking at equally unbiased studies you'll find that on average organic food yields about 2/3 or 67% of what conventional food does, meaning you need more land to produce the same amount of food. Where does that land come from? You aren't growing oranges in Arborg. So aren't we concerned about the environment? Of course, that's why we don't want pesticides. Right? Anyone see the conundrum here? But if we take groups of individuals to be the arbiters of what is right in the case of agriculture, we're now taking a generation that has grown up on social media, MSM (abbreviated for brevity, not as a pejorative), influencers and consensus thinking and they are going to dictate what is correct? You have just spelled out disaster for agriculture by using misinformation rather than sound thinking. The intention is noble but utterly lacking in factual basis.
Costco is the prime example of this sort of approach. They are very socially aware. When we get their magazine in the mail I read their articles and they are pushing an agenda that isn't sustainable, always trying to source organic food for everything. Well, I have news for you. Even though math is hard, if worldwide production of organic food is only at 10% and nearly 50% of the product at Costco is organic there's something going on that isn't above board. I have no doubt that Costco believes it's getting organic product (as an aside, next time you're in Safeway read the "Organics" label, you'll be a bit surprised) but the problem is they can't possibly be. Remember, all the other grocers are selling organic product and Whole Foods in the U.S. takes up a big share of the market. Where is the other 80% of the organic food sourced? I'll give you a hint: it's not from North America. Primarily the sources are China and Turkey. Though in Turkey's defense it's largely Russian product being moved through Turkey. It's labeled as organic, sold as organic and it's not. I've been to China and been in green houses where they've been spraying product on the produce. When we asked what it was they said fertilizer. Got news for you, most pesticides have pretty unique odors and we could easily tell what it was, and it wasn't fertilizer. It was reputedly an organic greenhouse.
Look through any social media, you'll find everyone talking about organic food, cosmetics, pillow cases. But look closely at your influencers - many if not most of them are deriving income from this. That's your trusted source?
Much of what we're being told these days is to sell product . It's why I so often use this video:
This new model you mention is popular and useful for corporations not because they're going to do good. They might believe it, but they'll often be wrong. The reality is that it comes with a built in marketplace. I've seen mommy-bloggers that have millions of followers that foist really shitty and inaccurate information on their followers. Those followers lap it up. If you're selling a product what's better than a spokesperson with 5 million unquestioning followers? Not much really and the expenditure to sponsor that influencer is infinitely smaller than any advertising campaign.
I'll leave you with this: you've seen the Triscuit ads for their Non-GMO project verified crackers, yes? Well in North America, the source for the grain that goes into those crackers, there isn't a single acre of GMO wheat in commercial production. It has not yet been approved. But that's what the public wants and what the company perceives the consumer wants. The problem is that it's about as meaningless as it could possibly be, because there isn't a cracker produced in North America using North American grown grain that has any GMO in it at all. Don't get me started on the word "natural".
Remember, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.