Description
Book SynopsisMore people today get news via Facebook and Google than from any news organization in history, and smaller platforms like Twitter serve news to more users than all but the biggest media companies. In The Power of Platforms, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Sarah Anne Ganter draw on original interviews and other qualitative evidence to analyze the platform power that a few technology companies have come to exercise in public life, the reservations publishers have about platforms, as well as the reasons why publishers often embrace them nonetheless.Nielsen and Ganter trace how relations between publishers and platforms have evolved across the United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. They identify the new, distinct relational and generative forms of power that platforms exercise as people increasingly rely on them to find and access news. Most of the news content we rely on is still produced by journalists working for news organizations, but Nielsen and Ganter chronicle rapid chang
Trade ReviewThe book uncovers provides a needed starting point from which conditions of non-Western media environments can be investigated, compared, and evaluated. * B. G. Chang, CHOICE *
Whatever your view of whether governments and societies should break up digital platforms, you'll agree that platform power is real. Nielsen and Ganter's book provides the most clear-sighted account yet of how platform power is reconfiguring news publishing. They offer a historically detailed, conceptually precise, and institutionally sensitive account of the deeply asymmetrical relations in which both platforms and publishers are today locked. Essential reading for those who still care about information's role in politics. * Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science *
Even for those of us who study media and tech for a living, it's increasingly difficult to comprehend the last ten years of seismic disruption to the way the public discovers, consumes, and shares information. The Power of Platforms is an important book that brings welcome coherence and insight into the symbiotic and increasingly asymmetrical relationship between news publisher and platforms, how it has upended the media environment, and is transforming societies. * Vivian Schiller, The Aspen Institute *
The power of corporate platforms on the distribution and consumption of news is unprecedented. Nielsen and Ganter's book is an exceptional, thought-provoking analysis of the intricate relationships between platform mechanisms and news publishing. This is truly a must-read for any student of media who wants to understand the controlling role of digital intermediaries. No academic of journalism and media studies can afford to miss out on this valuable treatise of how the business of news production has transformed in recent years and what is at stake for the public sphere. * José van Dijck, Utrecht University, and author of The Culture of Connectivity and The Platform Society *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Chapter 1. The Rise of Platforms Chapter 2. An Epochal Debate Over the Value of Content: The Historical Development of Google's Relations with Publishers Chapter 3. "Inextricably Intertwined"? Publishers Dealing with Platforms Chapter 4. "Our futures are tied together": Platforms Dealing with Publishers Chapter 5. The Power of Platforms Methods Appendix References Notes
