Jack Brighton's Preliminary Exam
PhD student Jack Brighton will present his dissertation proposal, "Parasitic Platforms and the Crisis in Local News." Members of his committee are Teaching Associate Professor Martin Wolske, Assistant Professor Madelyn Sanfilippo, Associate Professor Anita Say Chan, and Associate Professor Kate McDowell.
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 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.
Existing research has shown 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. 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. The proposed 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.
Zoom information:
Meeting ID:
842 7043 7573
Password:
925880