Platform Power Over News
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Lecture 12 in the course From Gatekeeping to Gatewatching: News and Journalism in the Digital Age. This lecture series addresses the continuing transformation of the production and consumption of journalism in the contemporary media environment. It provides a brief history of the impact of participatory online news production and engagement practices – from the first wave of citizen journalism to the social media platforms of today – on how news content is disseminated and experienced; examines reactive and proactive responses to these changes by news organisations and journalists; and explores the longer-term impact of these developments on the public sphere, touching on the power of social media platforms and their role in shaping their users’ information diets. Readings are largely drawn from Gatewatching and News Curation: Journalism, Social Media, and the Public Sphere (Bruns, 2018), with additional readings recommended for selected lectures. Reading for this lecture: Meese, J., & Hurcombe, E. (2021). Facebook, News Media and Platform Dependency: The Institutional Impacts of News Distribution on Social Platforms. New Media & Society, 23(8), 2367–2384. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820926472
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Platform Power Over News
- 1. CRICOS No.00213J Platform Power: How Social Media Platforms Reshape the News Industry Prof. Axel Bruns Guest Professor, IKMZ, University of Zürich a.bruns@qut.edu.au — a.bruns@ikmz.uzh.ch
- 2. CRICOS No.00213J Mock Exam and Exam 😱 • Mock Exam: • Test run to make sure your technology is working • 16 Dec. 2022, 07:00 to 22:00 • https://hs6.epis.uzh.ch • Log on, find the sample exam, make sure everything works • Exam: • 23 Dec. 2022, 10:15 to 11:00 • https://hs6.epis.uzh.ch • 45 minutes – 34 Kprim questions • Four answers per question – mark each as true or false • Four correct answers: 2 points; three correct answers: 1 point; otherwise 0 points
- 3. CRICOS No.00213J Journalism and Social Media • Last week: • Are online publics connected, or fragmented into echo chambers and filter bubbles? • This week: • What power do the major platforms have over the emerging media ecosystem? • Next (final!) week: • Concluding thoughts on the social news media network
- 4. CRICOS No.00213J The Power of Platforms
- 5. CRICOS No.00213J ‘platforms’ technological organising principles transform news media organisations and make them align with the social and economic objectives of social media companies’ — Meese and Hurcombe, following van Dijck & Poell
- 6. CRICOS No.00213J Facebook and the News • A chronology: • 2006-2013: news outlets gradually create their Facebook presences • 2013: algorithm changes increase the visibility of news posts on users’ timelines • 2015-16: Facebook Instant Articles: articles served within Facebook platform • 2016: increasing scrutiny of Facebook’s role in disseminating mis- and disinformation • 2016-17: Facebook’s ‘pivot to video’ leads to news staff layoffs and video producer hiring • 2016: Facebook found to have inflated video engagement metrics • 2017-18: Facebook pivots away from Instant articles • 2018: no more special treatment for news – algorithms prioritise social connections instead • 2020s: into the Metaverse? 🥴
- 8. CRICOS No.00213J https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/facebook-online-video-pivot-metrics-false.html
- 10. CRICOS No.00213J ‘it was kind of that social boom where [the company were] like ‘Oh, there’s this social thing, we should be part of it’. And they approached me and they were like, ‘Do you want to sort of lead it?’ I had no experience in it but I was like, ‘Why not?’ — Interview 12 in Meese & Hurcombe ‘it was so easy to get heaps of reach and engagement. They were like simple things, if you put up a photo gallery, Facebook would deem every swipe of the photo, every click on a photo within that gallery as [ ...] engagement. So, your reach and engagement would be phenomenal’ — Interview 11 in Meese & Hurcombe ‘[after the algorithm changed] it wasn’t that the content was any less quality [...] it just didn’t reach the same audience that it previously did’ — Interview 06 in Meese & Hurcombe ‘we started focusing a little bit more on SEO which we had never done before because we were that focused on social, we just did not care about SEO’ — Interview 06 in Meese & Hurcombe ‘all rode the wave of mass reach and awareness [and] got a foothold [so that now] the audience now knows us’ — Interview 08 in Meese & Hurcombe
- 11. CRICOS No.00213J Platform Dependency • If it’s not Facebook, it’s… • Google • Instagram • Messenger • WhatsApp • TikTok • … • But: ‘a more productive way of understanding these developments is to view journalism (like all institutions) as “constantly in flux”, home to a variety of actors with competing motivations’ — Meese & Hurcombe
- 12. CRICOS No.00213J ‘news media organisations generally churn through strategies as they move from one possible solution to another. If we look at how news media organisations handled the Web and social media, there is a consistent narrative of conservatism, change and departure’ — Meese & Hurcombe ‘companies generally leave junior staff to experiment with (and eventually advocate for) new technologies. Alongside these junior staff, new entrants to the sector, whether they are amateur bloggers or social news sites, also stand as innovative exemplars who can build (or reshape) their operations around new technology’ — Meese & Hurcombe ‘when the new model fails, news media organisations depart from it, change their strategic focus and look for another solution’ — Meese & Hurcombe ‘this longer narrative of change shows that news media organisations have never truly adapted to the online environment and tend to move institutionally from solution to solution’ — Meese & Hurcombe Should governments step in to help news organisations work with social media platforms?
- 13. CRICOS No.00213J Case Study: Facebook’s Australian News Ban
- 15. CRICOS No.00213J (https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-media-bargaining-code)
- 18. CRICOS No.00213J (https://about.fb.com/news/2020/08/changes- to-facebooks-services-in-australia/)
- 22. CRICOS No.00213J Australian public Facebook pages only (i.e. public pages with a majority of Australian-based admins). Data provided courtesy of CrowdTangle. Impact
- 23. CRICOS No.00213J Facebook News Ban: 18 Feb. 2021 ~7:00 to 26 Feb. 2021 ~5:00 (Data provided courtesy of CrowdTangle.)
- 24. CRICOS No.00213J Facebook News Ban Weekend
- 25. CRICOS No.00213J YouTube unaffected bit.ly affected Not classified as news? Still trying to post Google unaffected
- 26. CRICOS No.00213J New launch? Sharing news tweets
- 27. CRICOS No.00213J Near total loss for news sites News satire flourishes Bit.ly news links inaccessible Food media ban reversed Google as pathway to news YouTube as pathway to news
- 28. CRICOS No.00213J News satire flourishes News satire flourishes Tweets as pathway to news What’s left? Lifestyle, food, and sports
- 31. CRICOS No.00213J Meanwhile, in Canada 😬😬😬
- 32. CRICOS No.00213J https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/april-2022/canada-online-news-act-mistake/
- 34. CRICOS No.00213J Readings 12. 9.12.: Platform Power: How Social Media Platforms Reshape the News Industry Meese, J., & Hurcombe, E. (2021). Facebook, News Media and Platform Dependency: The Institutional Impacts of News Distribution on Social Platforms. New Media & Society, 23(8), 2367– 2384. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820926472 13. 16.12.: Conclusion: A Social News Media Network Bruns, A. (2018). Conclusion: A Social News Media Network. Gatewatching and News Curation: Journalism, Social Media, and the Public Sphere. Ch. 9. Peter Lang.
- 35. CRICOS No.00213J Lecture • NOTE: • One more lecture to go – in person in BIN-0-K.02!