scholarly journals From audiences to data points: The role of media agencies in the platformization of the news media industry

2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372110298
Author(s):  
Ida Willig
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Media Audiences ◽  
Data Points ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Many ◽  
Marketing Budgets

Media agencies have become one of the key actors in the contemporary media industry: by channelling marketing budgets to some media and some platforms and not to others, media agencies play an important role in creating the digital media infrastructure and laying the tracks of the public sphere. Yet we know very little about these commercial middlemen between advertisers and audiences, what they do, and how we should understand their role in the digital media ecology. This article discusses the role of media agencies in relation to platformization with a focus on the news media sector. Based on interviews, publicly available material and trade journals, the article depicts an industry deeply engaged in digitizing, tracking and commodifying media audiences, while at the same time aware of ethical challenges of the digital media infrastructure. This leads to a call for more political attention and critical research on the democratic implications of the new value chains between platforms, advertisers, audiences, media agencies and news media as well as the many tech companies providing derived digital services and products.

Blogging as ‘Recoding’: A Case Study of the Discursive War over the Sinking of the Cheonan

2011 ◽  
Vol 141 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-106
Author(s):  
Yeran Kim ◽  
Irkwon Jeong ◽  
Hyoungkoo Khang ◽  
Bomi Kim
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
The Public ◽  
Digital Network ◽  
The Social ◽  
Discursive Politics ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Media Practices

This article explores how Korean bloggers, in contestation, participate in the social structure of communication and potentially transform it through their vernacular practices of decoding and recoding in the blogosphere. As a neo-liberal regime has been established, citizens practise discursive politics in a seemingly democratic and technologically advanced society that is actually a coercive-controlled communication system. Through the analysis of news blogs on the Cheonan disaster, it is suggested that a majority of bloggers are seen to utilise news media stories to gain leverage for their points of view or to provide counter-arguments against the dominant frames generated by the established news media. The critical reframing of the digital network in Korean society allows a reflexive reading of the Korean digital wave, which should be contextualised within generation politics, economic polarisation and ideological contestation. In order to avoid a nationalistic celebration of the IT power of the country, citizens' digital media practices are analysed as contributions to the democratisation of the public sphere and the enhancement of social openness and participation in the digitised arena of discursive politics.

scholarly journals Digital media and democracy: tactics in hard times

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fenwick Robert McKelvey
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Bush Administration ◽  
The Public ◽  
Hard Times ◽  
The Media ◽  
Tactical Media ◽  
Changing Role ◽  
Public Demand

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,” explains an unnamed Bush administration official. This quote sets the tone for a new edited collection reflecting on the role of the media in constructing reality. The lack of a “truth” does not quell the public demand for one, as Boler aptly points out in her introduction: “The desire and longing for truth expressed by the public demands for media accountability is in tension with the coexisting recognition of the slipperiness of meaning” (p. 7). Media, then, in all their forms, become a central battleground for forging meaning and shaping reality. “Media are the most powerful institutions on earth,” Amy Goodman of Democracy Now claims, “more powerful than any bomb, more powerful than any missile” (p. 199). This series of interviews and articles explores how incumbent powers and media activists compete to produce and reproduce their versions of reality through the media. The contributors use the format to discuss the tenuous relationship between media and democracy and the changing role of the news media, as well as to present examples of tactical media. The resulting collection provides an excellent introduction to the current, troubling media landscape and its tactical opportunities.

Analysis of Data Model for News Media

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
O Balalaieva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Data Model ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Synergetic Effect ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Metadata Model ◽  
Modern Mass

Abstract. The article deals with communicative aspect of using metadata in news media. The relevance of the study is due to the objective need for theoretical justification and the specification of new communication models that have arisen with new channels of communication emergence, media digitalization and convergence. Some modern scientific works raise issue of “the communication of metadata model” in connection with the development of metadata journalism. In particular, the purpose of this article is to analyze the components of the metadata model in news media by the standard of the International Press Telecommunications Council. The rNews standard defines the terminology and a data model for embedding metadata in web documents. It was found that the rNews data model is nonlinear, because the communication in new media is positioned as a two-way process of interaction of actors. The model captures the feedback elements: one of its components is the User Comments Class with the relevant attributes, which, on the one hand, helps to make communication more effective, as the active role of the audience is provided, supported and stimulated, and on the other – makes it possible to create the original metatext. In the communicative aspect, the model is based on a two-way asymmetric model that fixes the feedback, but retains the leading role of the communicator. Asymmetry is reflected in the quantitative (disproportion between the number of “professional” and “naïve” communicators), communicative (disproportion of the “voices” of communicators and recipients, interfering with the building a dialogue) and intentional (unequal intentions of communicators and recipients) forms. The model reflects the general trends in the development of modern mass communication: the target setting for the formation not knowledge, but opinion, the removal of barriers to the involvement of audience in communication, the shift of information from the objective, factual, not related to the situation and participants of communication to a pragmatic, subjective one, synergetic effect of interactive polycode content. Issues of modeling communication processes in new digital media, the transformation of the roles of communicators and recipients, the formation and dissemination of polycode content, its impact on the audience are promising areas of further research and can be explored in various aspects.

The Use and Abuse of Digital Democracy

2014 ◽  
pp. 1663-1682
Author(s):  
Rachel Baarda ◽  
Rocci Luppicini
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Social Networking Site ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
The Public Sphere

The field of technoethics explores the ethical challenges that technology poses to the different spheres of society. Recently, scholars have begun to explore the ethical implications of new digital technologies and social media, particularly in the realms of society and politics. A qualitative case study was conducted on Barack Obama's campaign social networking site, mybarackobama.com, in order to investigate the ways in which the website uses or misuses digital technology to create a healthy participatory democracy. For an analysis of ethical and non-ethical ways to promote participatory democracy online, the study included theoretical perspectives such as the role of the public sphere in a participatory democracy and the effects of political marketing on the public sphere. The case study included a content analysis of the website and interviews with members of groups on the site. The study's results can be found further in the article.

Production, Distribution, and Consumption: Extending Studies of Racialized Media beyond Racial Representations

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-11
Author(s):  
Emma Gonzalez-Lesser ◽  
Rhys Hall ◽  
Matthew W. Hughey
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Media Audiences ◽  
Political Economy Of Media ◽  
The People ◽  
Media Distribution ◽  
Racial Representations ◽  
Production Distribution ◽  
The Media ◽  
Laws And Policies

The recent 2016 presidential campaign season and subsequent presidency has created a context in which the general public is looking deeper into the “behind the scenes” influences on the media. Of particular interest has been “fake news” and the biases of various news media outlets. These “behind the scenes” actions occur at production (the encoded ideological meanings and narratives, the material structures, the people involved, and global political economy of media), distribution (marketing strategies, gatekeeping practices, laws and policies, and media-industry customs), and consumption (reception and interpretation by media audiences). In this introduction to our special issue, we outline the relevance of examining these extra-representational processes of racialized media, particularly in today’s climate.

scholarly journals The new commodities of the new media landscape

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (04) ◽  
pp. R01
Author(s):  
Andy Ridgway
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Media Management ◽  
Science Journalism ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Difficult Time ◽  
Science Media

BOOK: Content is king; News media management in the digital age. Graham, G., Greenhill, A., Shaw, D.Andvargo, C., Eds (2015), London, U.K.: Bloomsbury The ‘traditional’ media industry ― newspapers and magazines and the like ― have had a difficult time lately thanks to increasing competition online. This book's chapters consider ways the traditional media can reinvent themselves to secure their future. Two key themes that emerge from the chapters are the importance of building communities and the increasing role of credibility in today's highly-competitive media landscape. While this book does not focus on the science media, many of the conclusions are relevant to it, in fact some are cause for comfort for those involved with science journalism.

The Use and Abuse of Digital Democracy

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 50-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Baarda ◽  
Rocci Luppicini
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Social Networking Site ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
The Public Sphere

The field of technoethics explores the ethical challenges that technology poses to the different spheres of society. Recently, scholars have begun to explore the ethical implications of new digital technologies and social media, particularly in the realms of society and politics. A qualitative case study was conducted on Barack Obama’s campaign social networking site, my.barackobama.com, in order to investigate the ways in which the website uses or misuses digital technology to create a healthy participatory democracy. For an analysis of ethical and non-ethical ways to promote participatory democracy online, the study included theoretical perspectives such as the role of the public sphere in a participatory democracy and the effects of political marketing on the public sphere. The case study included a content analysis of the website and interviews with members of groups on the site. The study’s results can be found further in the article.

Accelerating Adoption of a Digital Intermediary Tax

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-148
Author(s):  
Elda Brogi ◽  
Roberta Maria Carlini
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Tax Avoidance ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Policy Proposal ◽  
Public Media ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Media Pluralism ◽  
The Media

The role of the digital platforms as intermediaries to the news has deeply changed the media environment. The chapter focuses on the economic threats to media pluralism, related to the concentration of the market and the disruption of the news media industry, resulting from the digital platforms’ business model; and argues for the role of fiscal policy in redistributing part of the tech dividend and in supporting media plurality. The policy proposal is a digital tax designed to support news media viability and media pluralism. The need for a reform of international corporate tax rules to tackle tax avoidance in the digital economy has been largely debated at OECD and at EU level, with different proposals of a digital tax; less attention has been given to the use of the revenues raised by such a tax. We argue that earmarking part of the digital tax’s revenue to sustain professional journalism is a way to finance a public good that, in the new digital environment, risks being undersupplied. Public media policies should be carefully designed to guarantee fair, objective and non-discriminatory distribution of the resources, to avoid media being captured by political interests. The search for resources to fund the post-Covid economic crisis in most of the EU countries could act as an accelerator of the adoption of a digital tax; to use part of its revenue to support media pluralism may be a structural way to counteract the ‘infodemic’.

scholarly journals "Three Attitudes to 140 Characters The Use and Views of Twitter in Political Party Communications in Sweden"

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Grusell ◽  
Lars Nord
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Information Dissemination ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Campaign Strategies ◽  
Party Strategies

Abstract Digital media in general, and social media in particular, are a distinctive feature of contemporary election campaign strategies. This article adds to the on going discussion of the political power of social media by exploring political party strategies behind the usage of social media. In this study we specifically focus on Twitter (a micro blog) during the latest National Election Campaign in Sweden in 2010. The study exams the degree and character of Twitter usage among parties and prominent party members, and relates content to the declared communication strategies regarding the role of Twitter in the campaign. Methodologically, the paper is based on a quantitative content analysis of all party tweets and on personal interviews with all party campaign managers. The results show campaign purposes. However, the content analysis confirms only a modest party use of Twitter messages and Twitter patterns where messages are most often related to current news media activities and are of a one-way character, with more focus on information dissemination than on interactive dialogue with voters.

scholarly journals Rethinking journalism standards in the era of post-truth politics: from truth keepers to truth mediators

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (7) ◽  
pp. 1340-1349
Author(s):  
Asimina Michailidou ◽  
Hans-Jörg Trenz
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Information Seeking ◽  
Value Of Information ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Ethical Guidelines ◽  
The Public ◽  
Professional Field ◽  
Fact Finding ◽  
The Public Sphere

In this article, we argue for a pragmatic understanding of the role of news media and journalism not as truth keepers but as truth mediators in the public sphere. In the current debate on ‘post-truth politics’ the emphasis is often put on the formulation of ethical guidelines and legal solutions to regain control over ‘unbound journalism’ or to re-establish truth in the news media. Instead of holding journalists individually accountable for the spread of fake news, we consider truth as an unstable outcome of fact-finding, information-seeking and contestation, where journalists act as professional brokers. Journalists are not individuals that are closer to facts or more devoted to truth than others. They are rather embedded in a professional field of journalism practices that help to establish the value of information in a trusted way that becomes acceptable and convincing for the majority. Standards and procedures of journalism can therefore not be applied in a way to detect truth in an absolute way and defend it against falsehood, but to approach truth in the most reliable and acceptable way. The truth value of information then becomes the (unstable) outcome of a democratically necessary procedure of critical debate facilitated by journalists.

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