News Publishers’ Innovation of Practices Amid Platform Dominance
Abstract
To news publishers, digital platform companies (or “platforms”) such as Google and Meta present both benefits and risks. Platforms offer publishers certain functionalities and services that may be beneficial, but they have also gained an immense influence over journalism and the business of news, so much so that publishers have become cautious of being over-reliant on them. Given this complex dynamic between publishers and platforms, it is critically important to understand how publishers continuously innovate their practices when engaging with platforms. To shed light on this, this dissertation employs a practice oriented approach and a mix of qualitative methods to longitudinally examine how and why a Singaporean news publisher innovated its editorially oriented practices in relation to platforms. This dissertation covers a six-year period (2015 to 2021)
and includes four studies, each focusing on different aspects of the publisher’s innovation of practices. This dissertation offers four key conclusions: (1) platform significance, which highlights the varying importance of platforms to publishers, the shifting platform landscape and the risks of platform dependency, (2) platform mutability, which foregrounds platforms as ever-changing technological infrastructures that exert authority over publishers and foster dependency, (3) publishers’ platform configuration, which provides a deeper understanding of publishers’ agency to strategically and continually configure a range of platform related practices while attempting to strike a balance between leveraging platform opportunities and maintaining editorial and financial autonomy from them, and (4) publishers’ platform-oriented competencies, which underline the growing importance of workers with platform-related knowledge, skills and expertise, and the impact they have on newsroom dynamics. Overall, this work offers insights into the evolving publisher-platform relationship and raises important questions regarding the sustainability of journalism in a platform-dominated digital media landscape.
Parts of work
Chua, S., & Westlund, O. (2019). Audience-centric engagement, collaboration culture and platform counterbalancing: A longitudinal study of ongoing sensemaking of emerging technologies. Media and Communication, 7(1), 153–165. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v7i1.1760 Chua, S., & Duffy, A. (2019). Friend foe or frenemy? Traditional journalism actors’ changing attitudes towards peripheral players and their innovations. Media and Communication, 7(4), 112–122. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v7i4.2275 Chua, S., & Westlund, O. (2022). Platform configuration: A longitudinal study and conceptualization of a legacy news publisher’s platform-related innovation practices. Online Media and Global Communication, 1(1), 60–89. https://doi.org/10.1515/omgc-2022-0003 Chua, S. (forthcoming). Platform configuration and digital materiality: How news publisher’s innovate their practices amid entanglements with the evolving technological infrastructure of platforms. Journalism Studies.
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
University
Göteborgs universitet. Samhällsvetenskapliga fakulteten
University of Gothenburg. Faculty of Social Sciences
Institution
Department of Journalism, Media and Communication (JMG) ; Institutionen för journalistik, medier och kommunikation (JMG)
Disputation
Fredagen den 29 september, 2023, kl. 13.15 i Linnésalen, Seminariegatan 1B, Göteborg.
Date of defence
2023-09-29
sherwin.chuakh@gmail.com
Date
2023-08-30Author
Chua, Sherwin
Keywords
digital journalism
innovation
news publishers
journalism practices
platforms
practice theory
longitudinal study
Publication type
Doctoral thesis
ISBN
978-91-8069-363-9 (print)
978-91-8069-364-6 (PDF)
ISSN
1101-4652
Language
eng