IS 400 Colloquium: Jack Brighton

The iSchool Colloquium (IS 400) is a venue for presentation and discussion of research and professional activities by faculty, students, staff, and guest speakers. The colloquium is hosted in person and virtually. All are welcome to attend.

Abstract: The U.S. news industry has been in rapid decline since the mid-2000s. Search and social media platforms have disrupted news publishers’ relationships with audiences and advertisers by appropriating control over news distribution and advertising revenue. Local newsrooms are closing at an unprecedented rate, leaving communities with little or no access to local news. U.S. Big Tech firms captured news audiences and revenues by reshaping the practices of journalism in ways that conform with the technologies and business processes of the platforms. This has allowed the platforms to extract personal data from news audiences for profit-making activities such as targeted advertising and trade on data markets, while integrating news work within the infrastructures of surveillance capitalism. Previous research has focused on the dominance of Big Tech platforms over the news industry and the extent of the local news crisis. Detailed histories have been written about the emergence of platform power and how it has reshaped the work practices, organizational structures, and economics of journalism. Ethnographic research has documented how news organizations have adapted to the social media landscape and its ever-changing demands for reaching news audiences. Existing work chronicles how the rapid takeover of information infrastructures by Big Tech corporations has disrupted the institutions of news, just as it now increasingly disrupts public sectors such as education, libraries, and community service. But still missing is an empirical analysis based on critical theory of agency and power in relationships between the socio-technical systems of news and Big Tech. My research addresses this missing piece: how news publishers helped initiate the crisis by embracing Big Tech platform technologies and audience-building strategies, thereby disrupting their relationships with audiences and advertisers and losing control over news distribution and revenue.

Jack Brighton has worked as a local reporter, multimedia producer, web developer, and executive in public broadcasting and non-profit news. During the COVID-19 pandemic he returned to academia to study the intersections of journalism and technology. His research interests include information history, social and critical theory, and the origins, use, and consequences of information systems and practices. He explores sociotechnical systems from both technical and sociological perspectives; the social, economic, and ideological context of their design, implementation, and governance; and the impact of historical and contemporary information systems on human welfare and social equity. His doctoral research is focused on the restructuring and decline of the news industry in the age of Big Tech platforms, and the shifts in power over news distribution and revenue that threaten the survival of local news.

Questions? Contact Yingjun Guan.