Journalism

The second and final speaker in this AoIR 2023 session is Theresa Seipp, whose interest is in the notion of counterpower. Online, power has now shifted from legacy organisations to platform companies; this is exacerbated by the severe industrial concentration, with a few transnational companies dominating the industry. Current legal frameworks in a number of countries and regions appear unable to address this effectively, not least because they define size by audience metrics rather than control of technologies. Such legal frameworks also often lack a concrete commitment to normative goals. And, of course, the platforms are also able to exercise …

We’ve reached the final session of AoIR 2023, which I’ll moderate – and the first of its two papers is by Azza El-Masri. Her focus is especially on the experience of Lebanese women and queer journalists on WhatsApp. The background to this is the national secular protest movement against the proposal for a tax on WhatsApp – which is a platform of major importance in the country, and a key infrastructure of sociality in a country that has struggled in recent years with major political and economic challenges.

WhatsApp has also been beset with mis- and disinformation originating especially …

And the final speaker for this session, and the whole of the Future of Journalism 2023 conference is Lisa Kristensen, whose focus is on the infrastructure of news, much of which is provided by external technology providers. These infrastructures include software, data, and technologies; search engines and related systems; and protocols and related systems.

The project began by mapping the digital infrastructures of news by examining the technology stacks used by different news organisations; this was done through interviews and observations, trade conferences, Stackshare, and methods identifying third-party tools on Websites. This distinguished production and publishing technologies; distribution technologies; and …

The third speaker in this Future of Journalism 2023 conference session is David Cheruiyot, whose interest is in studying media criticism; such study has a long history, and evaluates expressions of disapproval or judgment of media texts, actors, outlets, or the media as an institution. But such criticism has evolved, especially through the role of social media, where journalists co-exist on the same platform with their critics.

Some such criticism has also been invited and amplified by news organisations themselves, claiming that it improves their news production processes and enhances media accountability. But criticism can also impact on journalists’ conduct …

The next speaker in this Future of Journalism 2023 conference session is the excellent Wiebke Loosen, whose interest is in the relationship between journalism and its audiences; this has long been understood as a monolithic relationship, but there is now a repertoire of relationships to the different constructions of their audiences that journalists may hold. This paper developed a typology of journalist-audience relationships, therefore, and it is based on 52 interviews with journalists of various backgrounds, beats, and organisations in Germany. The interviews sought to determine the communicative figurations between journalists and audiences.

This produced a typology of 11 relationship …

The final session at this Future of Journalism 2023 conference starts with Yoram Timmerman, whose interest is in incremental online news updates. The ability to update news in this way is very different from other news formats, and especially print, of course; information may now be added, removed, or otherwise modified as new details arise. This can be detected computationally by comparing multiple versions of the same article, but there is very limited research on such changes to date – perhaps because of the need for more complex methods for the systematic analysis of such changes.

This study, then, explores …

The final speakers in this Future of Journalism 2023 conference session are Mathias Felipe de Lima Santos and Lucia Mesquita, who are working with the concept of philanthrocapitalism to examine the funding of journalism in the Global South. This philanthrocapitalism represents an evolution of funding models in recent decades: a substantial number of private organisations, including major digital platforms, with a strong focus on capitalist business efficiency are now providing a great deal of the available funding.

An example for this is the Google News Innovation Challenge, providing grants to smaller and larger journalism organisations. How does this affect the …