Facebook,news media and platform dependency: The institutional impacts of news distribution on social platforms

Abstract

There is a growing concern around the dependency of news organisations on platforms like Facebook for audience traffic. However, scholars are still working out the extent of this dependency and how it manifests in practice. In this article, we draw on interviews with Australian news professionals and industry fieldwork to provide a nuanced account of this phenomenon. We find that news media organisations have recently started to diversify their distribution strategies and the business models associated with them in response to Facebook’s algorithm changes. While Facebook remains important, we suggest that greater attention needs to be paid to the complex relationships that news organisations have with platforms. This article ends by considering the implications of these findings for international policy discussions centred around the prospect of platform regulation.

Keywords

Algorithms Australia distribution Facebook journalism platforms

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Anderson

Bell

Shirky

(2014) Post-Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present. New York: Tow Center for Digital Journalism.

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (2019) Digital platforms inquiry – final report. Report for the Commonwealth of Australia, June. Available at: https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Digital%20platforms%20inquiry%20-%20final%20report.pdf (accessed 25 January 2020).

Australian Government (2019) Regulating in the Digital Age: Government Response and Implementation Roadmap for the Digital Platforms Inquiry. Canberra, ACT, Australia: Commonwealth of Australia. Available at: https://treasury.gov.au/publication/p2019-41708 (accessed 25 January 2020).

Bannerman

Haggart

(2015) Historical institutionalism in communication studies. Communication Theory 25(1): 1–22.

Bell

(2018) Why Facebook’s news feed changes are bad news for democracy. The Guardian, 21 January. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2018/jan/21/why-facebook-news-feed-changes-bad-news-democracy (accessed 25 September 2019)

Bell

Owen

(2017) The Platform Press: How Silicon Valley Reengineered Journalism. New York: Tow Center for Digital Journalism.

Benton

(2020a) Is Facebook really ‘a news powerhouse’ again, thanks to coronavirus? (No more than it was before). Niemen Lab, 24 March. Available at: https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/03/is-facebook-really-a-news-powerhouse-again-thanks-to-coronavirus-no-more-than-it-was-before/ (accessed 21 April 2020).

Benton

(2020b) The Los Angeles Times’ advertising revenue ‘has nearly been eliminated’. Niemen Lab, 15 April. Available at: https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/04/the-los-angeles-times-advertising-revenue-has-nearly-been-eliminated/ (accessed 21 April 2020).

Blackiston

(2020) Industry responds to mandatory code forcing Facebook and Google to pay for content. Mumbrella, 21 April. Available at: https://mumbrella.com.au/industry-responds-to-mandatory-code-forcing-facebook-and-google-to-pay-for-content-625371 (accessed 21 April 2020).

10.

Boczkowski

(2002) The development and use of online newspapers: what research tells us and what we might want to know. In: Lievrouw

Livingstone

(eds) Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Consequences of ICTs. London: SAGE, pp. 270–86.

11.

Bruns

(2018) Gatewatching and News Curation: Journalism, Social Media, and the Public Sphere. New York: Peter Lang.

12.

Bucher

(2018) If…Then: Algorithmic Power and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

13.

Caplan

boyd

(2018) Isomorphism through algorithms: institutional dependencies in the case of Facebook. Big Data & Society 5(1): 1–12.

14.

Carlson

Usher

(2016) News startups as agents of innovation: for-profit digital news startup manifestos as metajournalistic discourse. Digital Journalism 4(6): 563–581.

15.

Cornia

Sehl

Levy

, et al. (2018) Private Sector News, Social Media Distribution, and Algorithm Change. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Available at: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2018-10/Cornia_Private_Sector_News_FINAL.pdf (accessed 29 January 2020).

16.

Dick

(2011) Search engine optimisation in UK news production. Journalism Practice 5(4): 462–477.

17.

Fussell

(2019) Facebook wants a do-over on news. The Atlantic, 22 August. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/08/facebooks-news-tab-will-be-run-humans-and-algorithms/596554/ (accessed 25 September 2019).

18.

Honan

(2016) Why Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg went all in on live video. BuzzFeed, 6 April. Available at: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mathonan/why-facebook-and-mark-zuckerberg-went-all-in-on-live-video (accessed 25 January 2019).

19.

Hurcombe

Burgess

Harrington

(2019) What’s newsworthy about ‘social news’? Characteristics and potential of an emerging genre. Journalism. Epub ahead of print 23 January. DOI: 10.1177/1464884918793933.

20.

Jeong

Chyi

(2014) Will social media save newspapers? Examining the effectiveness of Facebook and Twitter as news platforms. Journalism Practice 8(1): 1–17.

21.

Kar-Gupta

Protard

(2020) France rules Google must pay news firms for content. Reuters, 9 April. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-france/french-regulator-google-must-pay-french-news-and-publishing-firms-for-using-their-content-idUSKCN21R14X (accessed 21 April 2020).

22.

Lewis

Molyneux

(2018) A decade of research on social media and journalism: assumptions, blind spots, and a way forward. Media and Communication 6(4): 11–23.

23.

Madrigal

Meyer

(2018) How Facebook’s chaotic push into video cost hundreds of journalists their jobs. The Atlantic, 18 October. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/facebook-driven-video-push-may-have-cost-483-journalists-their-jobs/573403/ (accessed January 25 2020).

24.

Matheson

(2004) Weblogs and the epistemology of the news: some trends in online journalism. New Media & Society 6(4): 443–468.

25.

Mayhew

(2020) Guardian group takes action to protect business in face of £20m half-year revenue shortfall. Press Gazette, 15 April. Available at: https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/guardian-group-takes-action-to-protect-business-in-face-of-20m-revenue-shortfall (accessed 21 April 2020).

26.

Meade

(2020) News Corp to suspend print editions of 60 local newspapers as advertising revenue slumps. The Guardian, 1 April. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/apr/01/news-corp-to-suspend-print-editions-of-60-local-newspapers-as-advertising-revenue-slumps (accessed 21 April 2020).

27.

Meyer

(2013) Why are upworthy headlines suddenly everywhere? The Atlantic, 8 December. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/why-are-upworthy-headlines-suddenly-everywhere/282048/ (accessed January 25 2020).

28.

Molyneux

Coddington

(2019) Aggregation, clickbait and their effect on perceptions of journalistic credibility and quality. Journalism Practice. Epub ahead of print 16 June. DOI: 10.1080/17512786.2019.1628658.

29.

Mosseri

(2018) Bringing People Closer Together. 11 January. Available at: https://about.fb.com/news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi-bringing-people-closer-together/

30.

Moyo

Mare

Matsilele

(2019) Analytics-driven journalism? Editorial metrics and the reconfiguration of online news production practices in African newsrooms. Digital Journalism 7(4): 1–17.

31.

Myllylahti

(2018) An attention economy trap? An empirical investigation into four news companies’ Facebook traffic and social media revenue. Journal of Media Business Studies 15(4): 237–253.

32.

Napoli

(2014) Automated media: an institutional theory perspective on algorithmic media production and consumption. Communication Theory 24(3): 340–360.

33.

Napoli

(2015) Social media and the public interest: governance of news platforms in the realm of individual and algorithmic gatekeepers. Telecommunications Policy 39(9): 751–760.

34.

Napoli

(2019) Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age. New York: Columbia University Press.

35.

Newton

(2017) Instant recall. The Verge, 16 April. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/16/15314210/instant-articles-facebook-future-ads-video

36.

Nielsen

Ganter

(2018) Dealing with digital intermediaries: a case study of the relations between publishers and platforms. New Media & Society 20(4): 1600–1617.

37.

Oremus

(2018) The big lie behind the ‘pivot to video’. Slate Magazine, 18 October. Available at: https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/facebook-online-video-pivot-metrics-false.html (accessed January 25 2020).

38.

Owen

(2019) Here’s what we know so far about the upcoming Facebook News tab. NiemanLab, 11 September. Available at: https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/09/heres-what-we-know-so-far-about-the-upcoming-facebook-news-tab/ (accessed 25 September 2019).

39.

Pickard

(2017) The big picture: misinformation society. Public Books, 28 November. Available at: https://www.publicbooks.org/the-big-picture-misinformation-society/

40.

Pickard

(2019) Democracy without Journalism? Confronting the Misinformation Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

41.

Rashidian

Brown

Hansen

, et al. (2018) Friend and Foe: The Platform Press at the Heart of Journalism. New York: Tow Centre for Digital Journalism. Available at: https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/the-platform-press-at-the-heart-of-journalism.php (accessed 25 September 2019).

42.

Rashidian

Tsiveriotis

Brown

, et al. (2019) Platforms and Publishers: The End of an Era. New York: Tow Centre for Digital Journalism. Available at: https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/platforms-and-publishers-end-of-an-era.php (accessed 29 January 2020).

43.

Robinson

(2011) Convergence crises: news work and news space in the digitally transforming newsroom. Journal of Communication 61(6): 1122–1141.

44.

Salinas

Balakrishnan

(2018) Rupert Murdoch threatened Mark Zuckerberg in 2016 with a war over Facebook. CNBC, 12 February. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/12/facebook-rupert-murdoch-threatened-mark-zuckerberg-in-2016-with-a-war.html (accessed 23 January 2020).

45.

Tandoc

Jr (2014) Journalism is twerking? How web analytics is changing the process of gatekeeping. New Media & Society 16(4): 559–575.

46.

Tandoc

Jr Maitra

(2018) News organizations’ use of Native Videos on Facebook: tweaking the journalistic field one algorithm change at a time. New Media & Society 20(5): 1679–1696.

47.

Tandoc

Jr Lim

Ling

(2018) Defining ‘fake news’. Digital Journalism 6(2): 137–153.

48.

Vaidhyanathan

(2018) Anti-Social Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

49.

Van Dijck

Poell

(2013) Understanding social media logic. Media and Communication 1(1): 2–14.

50.

VanNest

(2016) Where is your site traffic coming from? Parse.ly, 14 December. Available at: https://blog.parse.ly/post/5194/referral-traffic/ (accessed 11 March 2020).

51.

Van Napoli

Caplan

(2017) Why media companies insist they’re not media companies, why they’re wrong, and why it matters. First Monday 22(5) Available at: https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/7051/6124 (accessed 25 September 2019).