Messy: How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World

by Tim Harford

There’s the Internet, of course, a cornucopia of news and opinion, but we sample its riches selectively – often without realising how the selection is made. Consider the way the troubles of Ferguson, Missouri, were covered by social media in the summer of 2014 after a police officer, Darren Wilson, shot and killed a young black man, Michael Brown. Night after night of confrontation between police and protesters barely made a ripple on Facebook. The most likely explanation for this is that Facebook was set up for sharing good news. (This was before Facebook’s introduction of other one-click responses.) You signalled your approval of a post by clicking ‘Like’, which feels like an inappropriate response to a photograph of a masked protester or a line of riot police. Because such photographs aren’t ‘Liked’ much, Facebook’s algorithm doesn’t tend to display them much; Facebook users might also self-censor, avoiding grim and controversial topics.