Platformed publishing? The rise of digital intermediaries and the transformation of online journalism

Across all high income democracies, people increasingly find and access news via search engines and social media rather than by going directly to news sites and apps. In countries like France, Germany, and the US, more people say they find news via search engines than via news sites, and social media is almost as widely used (Newman et al 2015). In this paper, we ask what the rise of digital intermediaries like search engines and social media means for online journalism—in the past associated with dis-intermediation. On the basis of interviews in news organizations across France, Germany, the UK, and the US, we chart the rise of what we call “platformed publishing”, a development where news organizations have far less control over the distribution of online journalism than in the past (but may reach wider audiences) because they publish to platforms defined by coding technologies, business models, and cultural conventions over which they have little influence (unlike earlier print, broadcast and web “1.0” distribution). We discuss how this development means that not only ordinary users, but also previously powerful and relatively independent institutions like the news media, are becoming simultaneously increasingly empowered by and dependent upon a small number of centrally placed and powerful platforms beyond their control—an extension of a broader set of trends variously characterized as the rise of a “culture of connectivity” (van Dijck, 2013) or a “black box society” (Pasquale, 2015). This points to a further intensification of the trends Anthony Giddens (1990) associated with late modernity—a world that provides us with more opportunities than ever before, but that we do not understand or feel we control—by underlining how not only individual citizens, but also social and political institutions like the news media, are becoming dependent on disembedded technological systems. The increasingly central role occupied by a few digital intermediaries marks a potentially profound transformation of the political role and implications of both the news media—traditionally seen as a relatively independent, and independently powerful, institution (Cook 1995)—and of digital media—often associated with decentralization and democratization (Chadwick 2013).