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:
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

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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

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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

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The Power of
Platforms

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‘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

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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? 🥴

7. https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/12/facebooks-instant-articles-is-now-open-to-all-publishers/

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https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/facebook-online-video-pivot-metrics-false.html

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Desperately Seeking
Audiences

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‘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

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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

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‘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?

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Case Study: Facebook’s
Australian News Ban

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(https://www.acma.gov.au/news-media-bargaining-code)

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(https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-media-bargaining-code)

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Threat

17. (https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/17/21371709/google-australia-paying-for-news-lobbying-media-ads-search-market)

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(https://about.fb.com/news/2020/08/changes-
to-facebooks-services-in-australia/)

19. [ … ]
(https://about.fb.com/news/2020/08/changes-
to-facebooks-services-in-australia/)
(https://mumbrella.com.au/ill-timed-and-misconceived-the-industry-responds-to-facebooks-threat-to-ban-news-in-australia-641475)
[ … ]

20. (https://thewest.com.au/politics/australia-accuses-facebook-of-news-bluff-ng-s-2027888)

21. (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-18/facebook-news-ban-what-just-happened-post-zuckerberg/13166710;
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2021/02/how-australias-facebook-news-ban-will-impact-you/;
https://twitter.com/MonteBovill/status/1362155485881790465;
https://twitter.com/jason_om/status/1362168118383026178)
18 February 2021

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Australian public Facebook pages only (i.e. public pages with a majority
of Australian-based admins). Data provided courtesy of CrowdTangle.
Impact

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Facebook News Ban: 18 Feb. 2021 ~7:00 to 26 Feb. 2021 ~5:00
(Data provided courtesy of CrowdTangle.)

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Facebook News Ban
Weekend

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YouTube unaffected
bit.ly affected
Not classified as news?
Still trying to post
Google unaffected

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New launch?
Sharing news tweets

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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

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News satire flourishes
News satire flourishes
Tweets as pathway to news
What’s left?
Lifestyle, food,
and sports

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Aftermath

30. (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-
23/facebook-reverses-news-ban-on-
australian-sites-media-code/13173984)

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Meanwhile, in Canada
😬😬😬

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https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/april-2022/canada-online-news-act-mistake/

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Next Time

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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.

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Lecture
• NOTE:
• One more lecture to go – in person in BIN-0-K.02!