{"id":29113,"date":"2024-07-17T10:36:27","date_gmt":"2024-07-17T08:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newselfinvestigation.belenweb.com\/?p=29113"},"modified":"2024-11-13T11:44:49","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T10:44:49","slug":"digital-boundaries-what-fact-checkers-need-to-know-about-promoting-focus-and-protecting-rest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newselfinvestigation.belenweb.com\/es\/digital-boundaries-what-fact-checkers-need-to-know-about-promoting-focus-and-protecting-rest\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Boundaries: What fact-checkers need to know about promoting focus and protecting rest"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is the third in a series of blog posts, culminating later this year with a guide for fact-checkers on mental health and well-being.<\/span><\/i> Learn more about the program here<\/span><\/i><\/a>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>

By Emma Thomasson, Training Manager of the program Mental Health Leadership for Fact-Checkers.<\/strong><\/p>

Our third training session was led by Pablo M. Fern\u00e1ndez, author and podcast host, and regional manager for Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Fund for Public Interest Media. He was previously the executive and journalistic director of Chequeado and an editor at Argentina\u2019s La Naci\u00f3n so he has firsthand experience of the challenges of setting boundaries while managing a fact-checking operation.<\/span><\/p>

Here\u2019s what we learned:<\/span><\/p>

1. Newsrooms have been slow to adapt to digital communications<\/b><\/h4>

There have been three milestones in the last few decades that have made it harder for journalists to set boundaries. First came the mass adoption of the Internet in the mid to late 1990s, then came the development of smartphones that allowed the newsroom to follow you everywhere, and finally the widespread adoption of remote work during the Covid pandemic, which meant the end to physical limits on when and where journalists are expected to work.<\/p>

However, most newsrooms have not stopped to think about what these shifts mean in practice and how we might need to change our ways of communicating to respond, and to help journalists and fact-checkers protect themselves in our always-on culture.<\/p>

2. If everything is urgent, nothing is. Clarify your response time<\/b><\/h4>

Most of us suffer from an \u201curgency bias\u201d: beeping, flashing notifications on our phones and laptops make it hard for us to decide which messages really need our urgent attention. Journalists and fact-checkers, particularly those who work in a breaking news environment, are hardwired to believe they have to respond to everything quickly.<\/span><\/p>

Darria Long, an emergency room doctor, urges us to stop describing our lives as \u201ccrazy busy\u201d and start using the same kind of triage practices that are standard in hospitals to help us determine what is really urgent: \u201cHere\u2019s the truth: when you\u2019re running around in \u2018Crazy Busy Mode\u2019, you\u2019re simply harming your ability to handle the \u2018Busy\u2019,\u201d Long says in her<\/span> charla TED<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>

Practical tip: <\/strong>Las investigaciones<\/span><\/a> shows that non-urgent work emails sent during non-work time feel more urgent for receivers than for senders. The sender underestimates the stress that the receiver perceives. In fact, one out of every two people assumes you want an answer in 30 minutes. The sender of messages can counteract this urgency bias by explicitly noting when they expect a response.<\/span><\/p>

3. Protect your focus \u2013 do a digital check-up to hack yourself<\/b><\/h4>

Multitasking is glorified in our profession (it is sometimes mentioned as a required skill in journalism job ads), but research shows we are more likely to make mistakes if we try to do more than one thing at once. Every time we are interrupted, it takes <\/span>23 minutos<\/span><\/a> en retomar el estado de concentraci\u00f3n. <\/span><\/p>

One<\/span> estudio<\/span><\/a> showed that people who are interrupted while trying to complete a task experience more stress, higher frustration, time pressure and effort. Participants in the program told us they are most likely to be distracted by messaging apps like WhatsApp and Slack.<\/span><\/p>

(I am writing this on a train sitting next to a woman who is on a conference call making it very difficult for me to focus on the task at hand \u2013 I keep meaning to buy noise-canceling headphones, and now it feels more urgent).<\/span><\/p>

Practical tip:<\/strong> Pablo encouraged us to do a regular <\/span>digital check-up<\/b> to find out how much time we are spending on different tools each day (on the day of the training I discovered I had already used WhatsApp for 26 minutes).<\/span><\/p>

He then advised us to make conscious decisions about when and how we can be distracted, rather than allowing the default settings on our phones and computers to determine that for us. Many participants have already limited their use of social media, particularly Twitter.<\/span><\/p>

\u201cLeaving everything turned on is like living with a Christmas tree covered with flashing lights,\u201d Pablo said. \u201cYou have agency.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

4. What does ASAP really mean? We need to agree on communication preferences for our teams<\/b><\/h4>

We all need to be much clearer about when we need an answer to our messages so that the recipient can prioritize, and hopefully switch off when they are not working. Be clear about when you need a response. An example: a colleague sent a long voice message on WhatsApp at 5pm on a Friday evening but accompanied it with a note: \u201cNot urgent, you can listen on Monday.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

Given our urgency bias, managers should also use email tools that allow them to <\/span>programar mensajes no urgentes<\/b> to only be delivered during working hours.<\/span><\/p>

Pablo introduced the idea of the priority pyramid to help teams to agree on which communication tools they prefer for different kinds of messages. \u201cIf the team can agree that the phone is for really urgent things, if no-one is calling you out of hours, you don\u2019t need to be checking,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>

5. Remember we are all different<\/b><\/h4>

Some people like to chat online all the time, but team leaders should give people the option not to keep checking messages. It can be a helpful team exercise to discover whether you have any shared values that can help guide how you approach your work and how you collaborate.<\/span><\/p>

Many of the participants said they value \u201ccollaboration\u201d highly, but that might conflict with another common value among journalists of \u201cfreedom\u201d. It can help a team discuss and agree digital boundaries if they are aware of these potentially competing values.<\/span><\/p>

How our team put this into practice<\/b><\/h4>

It\u2019s one thing to learn about setting digital boundaries, and it\u2019s another to implement them, especially in a busy fact-checking organization where the news can happen at any minute. Pablo challenged the participants to try to make it through breakfast the next day without checking their phones. Not many of us succeeded.<\/span><\/p>

Here are some tips our group collected from Pablo\u2019s talk for handling different tools:<\/strong><\/p>