Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen publishes new book on the power of technology companies over news and media consumption
In recent decades how we discover news, how it is disseminated, where editorial decisions are made, and who profits from these flows of information, has changed.
In The Power of Platforms: Shaping Media and Society, Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ), and co-author Dr Sarah Anne Ganter explore the “platform power” that a few large technology companies are now exerting in public life.
Published by Oxford University Press, the book seeks to understand hesitancies publishers have over platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Yet–drawing on extensive research and fieldwork from the UK, US, France and Germany–it examines the reasons why publishers use them regardless.
The book combines work from journalism, platform studies, political science and economics to understand the connections between platforms and publishers.
By examining how publishers have adapted to these changes, the book argues that previously powerful institutions such as the news media have a greater dependence on a small number of powerful platforms.
José van Dijck, Utrecht University, and author of The Culture of Connectivity and The Platform Society, described the book as a ‘an exceptional, thought-provoking analysis of the intricate relationships between platform mechanisms and news publishing.’
