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More people today get news via Facebook and Google than from any news organization in history, and smaller platforms like Twitter serve news to more users than all but the biggest media companies. In The Power of Platforms, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Sarah Anne Ganter draw on original interviews and other qualitative evidence to analyze the "platform power" that a few technology companies have come to exercise in public life, the reservations publishers have
about platforms, as well as the reasons why publishers often embrace them nonetheless.Nielsen and Ganter trace how relations between publishers and platforms have evolved across the United
States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. They identify the new, distinct relational and generative forms of power that platforms exercise as people increasingly rely on them to find and access news. Most of the news content we rely on is still produced by journalists working for news organizations, but Nielsen and Ganter chronicle rapid change in the ways in which we discover news, how it is distributed, where decisions are made on what to display (and what not), and in who profits from
these flows of information. By examining the different ways publishers have responded to these changes and how various platform companies have in turn handled the increasingly important and
controversial role they play in society, The Power of Platforms draws out the implications of a fundamental feature of the contemporary world that we all need to understand: previously powerful and relatively independent institutions like the news media are increasingly in a position similar to that of ordinary individual users, simultaneously empowered by and dependent upon a small number of centrally placed and powerful platforms.
More people today get news via Facebook and Google than from any news organization in history, and smaller platforms like Twitter serve news to more users than all but the biggest media companies. In The Power of Platforms, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Sarah Anne Ganter draw on original interviews and other qualitative evidence to analyze the "platform power" that a few technology companies have come to exercise in public life, the reservations publishers have
about platforms, as well as the reasons why publishers often embrace them nonetheless.Nielsen and Ganter trace how relations between publishers and platforms have evolved across the United
States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. They identify the new, distinct relational and generative forms of power that platforms exercise as people increasingly rely on them to find and access news. Most of the news content we rely on is still produced by journalists working for news organizations, but Nielsen and Ganter chronicle rapid change in the ways in which we discover news, how it is distributed, where decisions are made on what to display (and what not), and in who profits from
these flows of information. By examining the different ways publishers have responded to these changes and how various platform companies have in turn handled the increasingly important and
controversial role they play in society, The Power of Platforms draws out the implications of a fundamental feature of the contemporary world that we all need to understand: previously powerful and relatively independent institutions like the news media are increasingly in a position similar to that of ordinary individual users, simultaneously empowered by and dependent upon a small number of centrally placed and powerful platforms.
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. The Rise of Platforms
Chapter 2. An Epochal Debate Over the Value of Content: The
Historical Development of Google's Relations with Publishers
Chapter 3. "Inextricably Intertwined"? Publishers Dealing with
Platforms
Chapter 4. "Our futures are tied together": Platforms Dealing with
Publishers
Chapter 5. The Power of Platforms
Methods Appendix
References
Notes
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is Director of the Reuters Institute for the
Study of Journalism and Professor of Political Communication at the
University of Oxford. His research is focused on the changing role
of news and media in our societies. He has written extensively
about journalism, digital media, the business of news, political
communication, and related topics in dozens of scholarly articles,
edited volumes, and books, including Ground Wars:
Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns. He is also the
co-author of the annual Reuters Institute Digital News Report, and
has provided expert advice to both governments and news media
companies in several
countries. His work has been covered by a wide variety of media all
over the world, and he has written for El País, The Indian Express,
The Washington Post, and several other publications.
Sarah Anne Ganter is Assistant Professor of Communication and
Cultural Policy in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser
University in Vancouver. She has published widely on media
governance, digital policy and regulation, and journalism, and
analyzes media and digital policy transformations from a
theoretical perspective that focuses on the dynamics and
interactions shaping institutional fields. Her work is published in
scholarly journals, international book projects, and
featured in various media outlets such as ABC Radio Australia,
Rappler.com, The Hill Times, The National Post, The Seattle Times,
and Tilt- UOL. Her co-edited book, Media Governance: A Cosmopolitan
Critique, is
forthcoming with Palgrave MacMillan.
The book uncovers provides a needed starting point from which
conditions of non-Western media environments can be investigated,
compared, and evaluated.
*B. G. Chang, CHOICE*
Whatever your view of whether governments and societies should
break up digital platforms, you'll agree that platform power is
real. Nielsen and Ganter's book provides the most clear-sighted
account yet of how platform power is reconfiguring news publishing.
They offer a historically detailed, conceptually precise, and
institutionally sensitive account of the deeply asymmetrical
relations in which both platforms and publishers are today locked.
Essential reading for those who still care about information's role
in politics.
*Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political
Science*
Even for those of us who study media and tech for a living, it's
increasingly difficult to comprehend the last ten years of seismic
disruption to the way the public discovers, consumes, and shares
information. The Power of Platforms is an important book that
brings welcome coherence and insight into the symbiotic and
increasingly asymmetrical relationship between news publisher and
platforms, how it has upended the media environment, and is
transforming societies.
*Vivian Schiller, The Aspen Institute*
The power of corporate platforms on the distribution and
consumption of news is unprecedented. Nielsen and Ganter's book is
an exceptional, thought-provoking analysis of the intricate
relationships between platform mechanisms and news publishing. This
is truly a must-read for any student of media who wants to
understand the controlling role of digital intermediaries. No
academic of journalism and media studies can afford to miss out on
this valuable treatise of how the business of news production has
transformed in recent years and what is at stake for the public
sphere.
*José van Dijck, Utrecht University, and author of The Culture of
Connectivity and The Platform Society*
The Power of Platforms: Shaping Media and Society provides a
critical look at how large technology companies like Google,
Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram came to dominate media
environments, as well as the impact of platforms on journalism....
the authors elaborate extensively on how behavioral targeting by IT
companies can be used to shift readers away from newspapers and
toward digital media. The findings not only help researchers
address key issues arising from the scale and speed of digitized
and platformed news consumption, but the book will also be a
valuable guide for digital citizens when making daily information
choices.
*International Journal of Communication*
I would say that the work under study has a very heterogeneous
background, with potential interest for public decision-makers in
the context of public regulation policies, but also for publishers
and journalists in managing their relationship with these
conglomerates.
*Joao Carlos Sousa, Metascience*
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