The wall between journalism and advertising in times of platformization of the news. Evidence from the Italian case

Abstract

The aim of this article is to identify the changes that have occurred in the function of the “wall” separating the newsroom from the business department in the years of the digitalization of news production, up to its platformization. To do this, we will focus on the Italian case, which is particularly interesting because it is a context in which journalism is more unlikely than elsewhere to generate revenues by exploiting the potential of digital environments, such as native advertising. We will test the strategies through which four media outlets (two legacy media outlets, The Post Internazionale and Domani, and two digital-born media outlets, Will Media and Factanza) seek a balance between using native advertising and preserving their editorial independence, in a multi-sided market in which such independence concerns on the one hand advertisers and on the other hand platforms. Through a content analysis of the production of these four media outlets, and in-depth interviews with their editors and marketing and social media communication experts, we will also attempt to link the above-mentioned strategies to the ways in which the media outlets relate to the power of platforms.