Who Is Call­ing the Shots: Social Media Plat­forms or Media Companies?

Just how free and inde­pen­dent are the media? Are the social net­work plat­forms the ones who are call­ing the shots? Is there still a way for media com­pa­nies to hold their ground by means of their news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, and online offers?

in her Duet inter­view with Dr Rieke C. Harm­sen, Dr Cal­daro­la, author of Big Data and Law, dis­cuss­es the cur­rent influ­ence of digi­ti­sa­tion on jour­nal­ism and media.

The way media gath­er rev­enue is chang­ing owing to a lack of income from their tra­di­tion­al source, adver­tis­ing. Mean­while, social media plat­forms are tak­ing over the mar­kets once held by the media. At the same time, how­ev­er, the qual­i­ty is chang­ing because the con­tents are no longer being curat­ed or the cura­tion process is being han­dled dif­fer­ent­ly. What chal­lenges do the media face?

Dr Rieke C. Harm­sen: The pol­i­tics sur­round­ing media have been the sub­ject of heat­ed dis­cus­sion. How can we han­dle the new atten­tion-depen­dent econ­o­my? Renowned media com­pa­nies are under a lot of pres­sure as they must fig­ure out how to improve the way rev­enue is being gen­er­at­ed? Entire mar­kets and adver­tis­ing earn­ings are dis­ap­pear­ing and are land­ing at the door of plat­forms, such as Google, Face­book or YouTube. These plat­forms are reg­u­lat­ing our infor­ma­tion streams by means which are any­thing but transparent.

At the same time, how­ev­er, it has nev­er been more impor­tant for read­ers to obtain qual­i­ty jour­nal­ism. Pub­lish­ing hous­es and jour­nal­ists have to walk a tightrope between rapid online infor­ma­tion und reports which have been thor­ough­ly researched. For the lat­ter we require in-depth knowl­edge and a good fac­tu­al basis in order to ori­ent our­selves and form our own opin­ions. For this require­ment to be met, we need good and secure infor­ma­tion – not to men­tion a respect­ful atti­tude towards dif­fer­ing opinions.

My opin­ion is:

The cri­te­ria for qual­i­ty jour­nal­ism in a dig­i­talised world have not changed. We need objec­tive, fact-based and inde­pen­dent report­ing, con­tents we can eas­i­ly under­stand and as much vari­ety as pos­si­ble in the news cov­er­age.
Diver­si­ty is an impor­tant prin­ci­ple of our democ­ra­cy which we should fuel and support.

Dr Rieke C. Harmsen

As we have already wit­nessed, media com­pa­nies are often being pur­chased by mul­ti-mil­lion­aires from indus­tri­al or com­mer­cial sec­tors or by politi­cians who then influ­ence the con­tent of what is being report­ed or ensure that what is being report­ed is in their favour. What do you think about the rela­tion­ship between the media and social networks?

First of all, it is very impor­tant to dis­tin­guish among the var­i­ous types of media. In Ger­many, for instance, we have a great vari­ety of media: clas­sic news­pa­pers and news por­tals such as SZ, Spiegel or Zeit, pub­lic broad­cast­ers, pri­vate ones, region­al offers, non-prof­it media but also small media com­pa­nies, mag­a­zines, or famous blog­gers. On the oth­er hand, we also have social media, large plat­forms, who also mar­ket them­selves as “media” but have lit­tle in com­mon with qual­i­ty jour­nal­ism. These chan­nels are mere­ly dis­tri­b­u­tion machines, but they are not edi­tors. The fact that they are labelled as “media” puts them in the same cat­e­go­ry as edit­ing desks, a sta­tus which they real­ly do not deserve.

Edit­ing desks, such as those at Spiegel or SZ, have an edit­ing staff which works sep­a­rate­ly from the pub­lish­er or pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny. Many pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies oper­ate in accor­dance with detailed cri­te­ria to ensure qual­i­ty, have legal guide­lines, trans­paren­cy cri­te­ria etc. In this way, edit­ing can remain inde­pen­dent, free, and fol­low our demo­c­ra­t­ic legal frame­work. The press is free and pro­tect­ed by the con­sti­tu­tion and has a checks and bal­ances func­tion in our soci­ety, which is impor­tant and necessary.

How­ev­er, the finan­cial sit­u­a­tion of many pub­lish­ing hous­es has become dif­fi­cult. They are sim­ply no longer able to finance them­selves by means of adver­tis­ing nor can they live off of online sub­scrip­tions.  Rough­ly 90% of media com­pa­nies which pro­duce jour­nal­is­tic con­tent are con­vinced, accord­ing to stud­ies, that the rev­enues from sales, adver­tis­ing and sup­ple­ments are no longer suf­fi­cient to finance clas­sic print media. They have to come up with new solu­tions. They run events, sell wine or pro­duce oth­er prod­ucts which have noth­ing to do with the clas­sic news busi­ness. Nev­er­the­less – at least accord­ing to a 2022 Reuters study con­cern­ing media – the pro­por­tion of online users who employ a news ser­vice which has to be paid for (often a sub­scrip­tion) is on the rise, albeit slow­ly, and has reached the 10% mark. Users have seem­ing­ly realised that qual­i­ty jour­nal­ism comes at a price.

A lot of dif­fer­ent media – espe­cial­ly social media – con­sid­er them­selves to be a mar­ket­place for infor­ma­tion and refuse to take on respon­si­bil­i­ty – at least in the US – for the con­tent of their mar­ket­place. Will this atti­tude remain or is it chang­ing and break­ing down already?

Social media have been under an increas­ing amount of pres­sure late­ly, which is a good thing. Par­tic­u­lar­ly when they dis­trib­ute mes­sages and news, social media must attain the stan­dards of qual­i­ty media and have to do their share to fight fake news. Organ­i­sa­tions, such as Algo­rithmwatch, have good rea­son to com­plain that we do not have enough trans­paren­cy. We must know what the data basis is of these sys­tems and how deci­sions are being made. 

Many plat­forms explain they use likes and com­ments to deter­mine what con­tents are to be shown to users. Stud­ies have shown, also those by Algo­rithmwatch, that many algo­rithms employ a vari­ety of dubi­ous func­tions, such as pref­er­ences or emo­tions, for exam­ple. An exper­i­ment was able to prove that pho­tos with naked skin, for instance, were dis­trib­uted more wide­ly, regard­less of whether the user want­ed to see them or not. A solu­tion could be to allow research insti­tu­tions to have a look at these func­tions, a process which would have a legal basis of course, or at least be able to get a hold of the data in question.

Infor­ma­tion appears on end devices with­out hav­ing a real per­son actu­al­ly say­ing them face-to-face. Because of this imper­son­al nature, it becomes eas­i­er to spread false­hoods and car­ry out smear cam­paigns and bul­ly­ing quite freely, for exam­ple. Are dig­i­tal media feed­ing grounds for con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, rumours or extrem­ist views?

The cred­i­bil­i­ty of the media has suf­fered in the past years, to be sure. The com­pa­ny Medi­aL­ab Bay­ern put togeth­er a study which con­sid­ered the rela­tion­ship between the audi­ence and jour­nal­ists or media. The result was that, although Ger­man media had not lost any of their cred­i­bil­i­ty, the read­ers had still reduced their media con­sump­tion because they sim­ply no longer wished to read so many neg­a­tive reports. Many pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies react­ed by chang­ing the way of report­ing and using meth­ods like “solu­tion jour­nal­ism”. Jour­nal­ists still bring up the prob­lems but sug­gest solu­tions or make clear how a sit­u­a­tion could be changed.

There are also quite a few organ­i­sa­tions and net­works which are all work­ing against con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and fake news. Many edi­to­r­i­al desks have set up their own fact check­ing units to ver­i­fy state­ments and put them in their prop­er con­text. In this way, emo­tion­al debates, even those appear­ing in social net­works, can be made more fac­tu­al. Among these we can include the “fact find­ers” of the Tagess­chau which specif­i­cal­ly checks and eval­u­ates arti­cles. The Bavar­i­an broad­cast­ing sta­tion has devel­oped a “fact fox data bank” and, at the same time, a num­ber of inter­est­ing start-up com­pa­nies have sprung up, such as the start-up “Facts for Friends” which was ini­ti­at­ed by Katha­ri­na Klimkeit (CEO) and Valerie Scholz (CCO). Final­ly, let’s not for­get about the col­lec­tive group called “Cor­rec­tiv” which offers top notch jour­nal­is­tic reporting.

A num­ber of large com­pa­nies, such as Google and Face­book, have been invest­ing sub­stan­tial amounts of mon­ey in jour­nal­ism. In this way, they help to finance media com­pa­nies, research projects, con­gress­es, train­ing pro­grams and pro­fes­sor­ships. What have been the effects of this type of financ­ing on the world of media?

The infra­struc­ture of the media changes dra­mat­i­cal­ly depend­ing on which coun­try you are con­sid­er­ing. In the US, for instance, there is a long tra­di­tion of sup­port­ing projects and sys­tems. This trend has been mak­ing head­way in Europe now. I view this devel­op­ment with some con­cern. We need to have a debate in Ger­many where we con­sid­er the pub­lic financ­ing of inno­va­tion in the media sec­tor. The sup­port pro­grams of Google and Face­book are mere­ly PR mea­sures, as a poll of media rep­re­sen­ta­tives has made clear, which serve to patch up the shaky rela­tion­ship to the media and, most impor­tant­ly, to avoid regulation.

A study by the Otto Bren­ner Foun­da­tion has shown that finan­cial sup­port is not being dis­trib­uted even­ly, thus lead­ing to an even greater lack of bal­ance in the media world. The ten­den­cy is towards large, com­mer­cial­ly dri­ven media com­pa­nies gain­ing more and more pow­er and influ­ence while small pub­lish­ing hous­es and organ­i­sa­tions, like NGOs or NPO media hous­es, are grad­u­al­ly dis­ap­pear­ing from the world of pub­lish­ing. Oth­er prob­lem­at­ic issues are the lack of trans­paren­cy of the funds, the increas­ing influ­ence on media com­pa­nies, which is lead­ing towards a hes­i­ta­tion to “draw blood,” as it were, and “self-reg­u­la­tion” on the part of jour­nal­ists. Media com­pa­nies are becom­ing tech­no­log­i­cal­ly speak­ing more and more depen­dent while, at the same time, plat­forms are suck­ing away knowl­edge – and we just don’t know what they plan to do with the knowl­edge they have acquired.

I think we need more reg­u­la­tions and state-run pro­grams. We have to push for tech­no­log­i­cal change in media. This could be fund­ed by pub­lic pro­grams and test­ed at uni­ver­si­ties. We should also not for­get about var­i­ous ini­tia­tives and small organ­i­sa­tions as well as NPOs and NGOs and ensure they get their share of the lime­light. How can they be sup­port­ed by larg­er media com­pa­nies with­out being swal­lowed up? How can inno­va­tion in small and mid-sized media com­pa­nies be encour­aged and financed? A foun­da­tion could help to unite the big play­ers at the Euro­pean level.

The media have increas­ing­ly become more influ­en­tial and are becom­ing the instru­ments of pow­er of just a few peo­ple. Media can also be used to ensure that politi­cians, civ­il ser­vants, CEOs and so on lose their posi­tions. They can also serve to fur­ther the inter­ests of cer­tain sec­tors. Have we reached the point where we should start con­sid­er­ing the media to be the fourth area of power?

At the moment, we are expe­ri­enc­ing unprece­dent­ed changes in the media. Large media com­pa­nies are buy­ing up small region­al news­pa­pers which is lead­ing to a real con­sol­i­da­tion of media sys­tems. I have my doubts whether small­er and medi­um-sized pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies will sur­vive, for the legal, statu­to­ry, and tech­no­log­i­cal require­ments have sim­ply become too com­plex. At the same time, I believe diver­si­ty to be an impor­tant prin­ci­ple of our democ­ra­cy. For this rea­son, we have to fig­ure out which instru­ments can be used to pro­tect those small and medi­um-sized pub­lish­ing hous­es, to strength­en their inde­pen­dence and to retain that diversity.

Eth­i­cal ques­tions relat­ing to the media are more rel­e­vant than ever. Dur­ing the past years most edi­tors and news­rooms have under­gone a rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion. They have had to com­plete­ly change owing to decreas­ing rev­enue from adver­tis­ing, increas­ing glob­al­i­sa­tion and ongo­ing tech­no­log­i­cal trends. Edi­tors have also had to restruc­ture them­selves in terms of organ­i­sa­tion and con­tents. Nowa­days most work fol­low­ing spe­cif­ic guide­lines and press reg­u­la­tions. Val­ues such as pre­ci­sion, inde­pen­dence, objec­tive­ness, human­i­ty, and account­abil­i­ty are being list­ed specif­i­cal­ly in oper­at­ing pro­ce­dures and rules of con­duct. Nam­ing one’s sources is now expect­ed, along with fact check­ing and turn­ing down finan­cial favours. In my opin­ion, many pub­lish­ing hous­es have become more cred­i­ble rather than less in the last few years.

Will new laws be need­ed for dig­i­tal media and tools?

The EU has made a good start con­cern­ing new leg­is­la­tion for the media, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regard to con­sumer rights. The so-called “Dig­i­tal Ser­vices Act“ pro­vides for social net­works and online busi­ness­es to have mea­sures in place to pro­tect users from ille­gal con­tent, goods and ser­vices. Hate post­ings and mis­in­for­ma­tion have to be removed quick­ly by law. In addi­tion, there are also organ­i­sa­tions such as the Euro­pean Jour­nal­ism Obser­va­to­ry which are try­ing to influ­ence EU pol­i­tics as far as qual­i­ty, ethics, free­dom of the press and media poli­cies are concerned.

There are, how­ev­er, some dis­turb­ing devel­op­ments. Crises and wars are endan­ger­ing free­dom of the press at the glob­al lev­el. Free­dom of the press is declin­ing in Ger­many accord­ing to the organ­i­sa­tion Reporter ohne Gren­zen (reporter with­out board­ers). One of the rea­sons for this can be attrib­uted to the hos­tile reac­tions and vio­lence faced by many jour­nal­ists who report­ed on those who were deny­ing that there was a pan­dem­ic, to name one exam­ple, or about var­i­ous crises, gen­er­al­ly speaking.

Fur­ther­more, not all legal devel­op­ments in Ger­many are to be viewed in a pos­i­tive way. The Cyber Secu­ri­ty Strat­e­gy of the Ger­man gov­ern­ment, for instance, is going to lead to more sur­veil­lance. Over 200 jour­nal­ists, for instance, were being mon­i­tored by the spy­ware “Pega­sus”.  We need to strength­en the rights for infor­ma­tion and pro­tect­ing the sources for those work­ing in the media.

Final­ly, the media com­pa­nies will also have to change. Some edi­tors have blurred the dis­tinc­tion between edi­to­r­i­al and com­mer­cial con­tents and are sell­ing “native adver­tis­ing”, mean­ing adver­tis­ing texts which have been inte­grat­ed in the lay­out of the edi­to­r­i­al work. This devel­op­ment harms the cred­i­bil­i­ty of inde­pen­dent news reporting.

How is this sec­tor being affect­ed by AI and Big Data? What devel­op­ments can we expect to see?

Algo­rithms are chang­ing our world. The math­e­mati­cian Cathy O‘Neil said “Algo­rithms are opin­ions embed­ded in code”- and this holds true for jour­nal­ist reports which are based on algo­rithms. We are expe­ri­enc­ing a dra­mat­ic change in how jour­nal­ists work: Many media com­pa­nies are using so-called “robot jour­nal­ism” for weath­er reports or for report­ing on sports. There are speech assis­tance sys­tems and rec­om­men­da­tion algo­rithms on news websites.

Algo­rithms sim­pli­fy our lives and improve many process­es – even in jour­nal­ism. At the same time, how­ev­er, we can see how algo­rithms rein­force the con­tents of fil­ter bub­bles and help spread con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. Of course, this affects our soci­ety. As jour­nal­ists, we have to think about how we want to work and use algo­rithms. We need trans­paren­cy, a code of ethics and need to broad­en the dis­cus­sion about Big Data.

The task of qual­i­ty media is, among oth­er things, to expose wrong­do­ings and to reflect the com­plex nature of soci­ety. For this task to be ful­filled, we need to make sure that a bias is avoid­ed when using algo­rithm-based sys­tems and to sup­port under­rep­re­sent­ed groups.

Dr Harm­sen, thank you for shar­ing your insights with regard to the cur­rent influ­ence of digi­ti­sa­tion on jour­nal­ism and media.

Thank you, Dr Cal­daro­la, and I look for­ward to read­ing your upcom­ing inter­views with recog­nised experts, delv­ing even deep­er into this fas­ci­nat­ing topic.