Digital Platforms and the Press
Digital Platforms and the Press (Book)
Digital Platforms and the Press argues that there is a growing risk of a platform-dependent press, which threatens democracies across the world. The book provides the first comprehensive account of how platform dependence manifests across the news media sector. 7 b/w illus.
A PDF version of this book is available for free in Open Access: https://openresearchlibrary.org/viewer/61c9d395-19af-4c75-a9c1-b61b494e155b. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License and is part of Knowledge Unlatched.
Edition
James Meese argues that there is a growing risk of a platform-dependent press, a development that threatens liberal democracies across the world. The book provides the first comprehensive account of how platform dependence manifests in the news media sector.
Platform dependence is a concept used to describe what happens when businesses or an entire sector, become reliant on one or more digital platforms for its survival. The situation is occurring across the news industry, to the extent that it is difficult to imagine the production, distribution, and long-term survival of news in liberal democracies without the involvement of platforms.
With governments, regulators and citizens increasingly concerned about platform power, Digital Platforms and the Press is the first book to highlight the long-term economic and social consequences of platform dependence for the news sector.
Featuring a rich selection of case-studies and written in an accessible style, Digital Platforms and the Press provides a strong grounding in relevant debates for the interested student reader, and important takeaways for subject matter experts in journalism studies and media policy.
Digital Platforms and the Press will be of interest to journalism and media policy scholars, other scholars in communication, as well as industry practitioners and policymakers.
James Meese is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Media and Communication, RMIT University and an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society.
List of Figures and Table
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. When News Went Social
2. After the Algorithm
3. Digital Advertising and Democratic Harms
4. The True Cost of News
5. Platforms as Patrons
6. Solutions for a Dependent Press
Conclusion
References
Index
“Going beyond the gestural politics of the ‘techlash,’ James Messe has developed an extremely timely neo-institutional analysis of the changing dynamics of the relationships between digital platforms and news publishers. Alert to legal, commercial and policy nuances and complexities, Meese’s text will become a central point of reference for researchers, policy makers and industry participants alike.”
"In this pace-setting new book, James Meese tackles pressing problems in the increasingly imbalanced relationship between planetary scale digital platforms such as Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook) and Apple, on the one side, and news media, on the other. Meese charts how the former are gaining the upper hand when it comes to the distribution of news, the training of a new generation of journalists and news industry workers, getting paid and, of course, the online advertising market. He not only brings a sure hand and wisdom to his analysis of these issues, but also to the policy options he puts on the table."
