This chapter aims to trace the broadcast origins of press freedom, connect them to journalism's early computational tools and practices, and show how these influenced thinking about press freedom and social media. The main goal, though, is to argue that contemporary press freedom involves sociotechnical work. This is not only because today's news work involves connecting with diverse systems of people and machines but, more fundamentally, because the power to make publics—ideally, the press' chief concern—exists in subtle, often invisible, but always powerful relationships between humans and nonhumans that define the conditions under which shared consequences can be seen. The chapter shows that because publics arise from infrastructures of people and machines, so too must press freedom.
Networked Press Freedom and Social Media: Tracing Historical and Contemporary Forces in Press-Public Relations
