CONNECTING ONLINE OR GOING OFF THE TRAIL –NOW, YOU CAN DO BOTH

BY REGAN CARTER

TIME AND AGAIN, WHEN SOCIETY HAS EXPERIENCED A PERIOD OF ISOLATION AND SECLUSION, PEOPLE HAVE YEARNED TO EXPLORE. The Black Plague of the 14th century gave rise to the expansion of art and science that defined the Renaissance. The end of the 1918 flu, better known as the Spanish flu, became the transition point into the upending of culture that defined the Roaring Twenties in America.

In much the same way, the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed average citizens to explore a frontier they may have previously taken for granted: the great outdoors. Desperate to escape their own homes, people are venturing out into the wild with more determination than before.

Many new adventurers bring along their handy smartphones in order to help facilitate safe and meaningful passes through nature. While the many features found on most phones these days can offer helpful resources, is it also possible for an app to greatly distort our perception of reality?

This question is at the forefront of Associate Professor Colin Agur’s latest research. As an emerging media scholar focusing his work on mobile communication and its usage in everyday life, Agur interrogates both the pros and the cons of bringing technology into areas previously considered “off the grid.”

NAVIGATIONAL APPS: HANDY HELPERS FOR NEW EXPLORERS

Using an app on a smartphone to assist in an everyday activity is not a new idea to many Americans. We check the weather to decide what outfit we’ll wear, read the news to stay up to date on happenings in our community, manage our finances via banking apps, and more.

When heading out, whether that be to our workspace in an urban environment, or to the great outdoors, mobile apps provide many of the same functions. Agur believes that novice explorers are “using phones as a way to understand nature.” Of course, the obvious safety features present in apps like Google Maps make bringing along a smartphone on your next hike an obvious choice. But Agur has seen much more creative smart technology usage than finding the nearest hiking trail.

Apps you might already have on your phone can take on new capabilities. Foursquare and other social media platforms that offer tagging functions can be used to indicate your exact location to others. Nextdoor can help you share exciting findings with your neighbors. Even the popular music identification app, Shazam, can assist in distinguishing animal calls you may not recognize.

On top of this, the recent rise in augmented reality (AR) has given smartphone users an entirely new way to experience their natural environment. Millions of people discovered how exciting AR can be when the game Pokémon Go launched a few years ago. For the first time in history, it is possible to use real surroundings to assist in a game or virtual reality. However, in Agur’s interrogation of smartphone usage, the fun and games of a cool new app don’t always have entirely positive effects.

A New Sense Of Reality

When you view a real scene through your phone screen, you may simply be doing so in order to have a navigation app point you in the right direction with a bright arrow. Or, you might be using artificial intelligence to help identify buildings, statues, and other notable structures near you. In either case, Agur posits that you are warping your view of your surroundings. In essence, apps can alter our perception of what we see and hear. And this can have consequences.

Take, for example, morel mushroom hunters. These social groups, made up of anyone from recreational hikers to professional naturalists, are interested in locating clusters of these mushrooms, which are particularly difficult to find. In Agur’s perception, there is a game-like sense in scouting out the elusive fungi. It follows, then, that those who actively seek morels may not appreciate an app or website giving away the exact location of a recently discovered cluster. From Agur’s view, “people need to earn their morels” in order to fully experience the joy of the hunt.

The consequences of phone use extend far beyond some mushrooms. It is true that many apps can teach users about the devastating reality and looming threat of climate change. At the same time, many more pose nature as a fun, peaceful environment removed from the stresses of everyday life.

Smartphone apps can help identify nearby creatures, and may even place a few adorable creatures in our phones’ frame of view for us to collect and share virtually.

Agur is concerned that using amusing apps to observe nature “may give us the impression that we’re not destroying the world.” After all, a new adventurer might wonder how climate change could be all that prevalent when the natural world that they seek is readily accessible to them through their phone screens.

These competing notions of smartphone app assistance and hindrance comprise the basis of Agur’s upcoming book, On the Wire: Mobile Communication and the Natural World For his first independently authored book, Agur intends to investigate the larger implications of this widespread phone app usage in everyday exploration, as well as their potential impacts on other social networks and hybrid spaces. While smartphones aren’t going anywhere, he said he hopes this research will remind others of how mobile communication remains woven into the relationships and lives of its users, even as they seek an escape from their regular routines.

Report For Minnesota Completing Second Year

What started as a summer internship pilot program for two students in 2022 doubled in size for 2023, thanks to generous donor support. This summer, program leader Gayle (G.G.) Golden placed four students at out-state newspapers, including the Brainerd Dispatch, Duluth News Tribune, Mankato Free Press, and Willmar’s West Central Tribune. Like last summer, the students receive a stipend and travel expenses to spend 10 weeks learning in a real newsroom. Students were first trained on topics like working in small communities, covering local government, and legal and ethical issues before heading to the outstate communities to complete the program.

Trust In News Project Wraps Up

This summer, Assistant Professor Benjamin Toff finished his time as a Senior Research Fellow with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. During his three-year appointment at the Reuters Institute, Toff led the Trust in News Project, looking in-depth at the phenomenon across Brazil, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States to understand the factors driving declines in trust in news around the world, including what trust means to people, what sources they turn to and why, and what publishers and platforms can do to help people make more informed decisions about what news they can trust. After gathering extensive qualitative and quantitative data from the four countries, Toff’s team is pointing to a mix of different contributing factors undermining the public’s trust in news, including the changing ways people are consuming news, especially on digital platforms, as well as the impact of political and other influences that shape people’s understanding of what it is that journalists do and do not do. The team believes there is no single trust in news problem, which means there’s no single solution, and in many cases building trust comes with trade-offs the news organizations must assess. The team studied different aspects, including how news organizations behave, how audiences use digital platforms, and how underrepresented groups feel about the coverage of their communities. Once the final report publishes this September, the team plans to put together a book drawing all the different parts of the project together. Toff rejoins the School full-time this fall to lead the Minnesota Journalism Center.