This document discusses how platforms like Google and Facebook are reshaping the news industry and other institutions. It outlines how platforms have become central to the distribution and monetization of news through digital advertising. Publishers have responded in three ways - coexistence, confrontation, or collaboration. The document also examines the different types of power wielded by platforms, including their ability to set standards, control connections between users and content, take automated actions at large scale, operate with secrecy, and influence multiple domains. It concludes by considering some of the implications platforms have for individual empowerment and institutional dependencies.
1. THE POWER OF
PLATFORMS
What can the case of publishers tell us about how
platforms are reshaping the institutions that enable
our democracies?
PROFESSOR RASMUS KLEIS NIELSEN
INAUGURAL LECTURE, GREEN TEMPLETON COLLEGE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
2.
3. Platforms: Large technology companies that—
have developed and maintain digital platforms
that enable interaction between at least two
different kinds of actors
who in the process come to host public
information, organize access to it, create new
formats for it, and control data about it
and who thereby influence incentive
structures around investment in public
communication (including news production).
8. 8
Sources: Ian Maude, Be Heard Group, data from Google, Facebook, and estimates from Enders
Analysis and eMarketer. Note: both Google and Facebook share some of their advertising with
partners through various revenue sharing arrangements.
(2) Platforms increasingly central to business of news
0
50
100
150
200
250
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
$billion
Estimated global digital advertising revenues, 2005-2017
Google Facebook Others
9. Sources: Company reports.
(3) Platforms have grown very big very quickly
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
Google (1998) Facebook (2004) Axel Springer (1946) BBC (1922) New York Times (1851)
$billion
2017 Market capitalization ($ billion)
2017 Revenues ($ billion)
23. Platform power (5) that operates across domains
RISJ Digital News Report 2017
24. Platform
Power
1) Power to set standards
2) Power to make and break
connections
3) Power of automated action
at scale
4) Power of secrecy
5) Power that operates across
domains
27. THE POWER OF
PLATFORMS
What can the case of publishers tell us about how
platforms are reshaping the institutions that enable
our democracies?
PROFESSOR RASMUS KLEIS NIELSEN
INAUGURAL LECTURE, GREEN TEMPLETON COLLEGE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
28. RISJ Digital News Report 2017 28
References and acknowledgements
This lecture is based in part on research done with Sarah Ganter and has benefited indirectly from discussions with the whole research team at the Reuters Institute for the Study
of Journalism (Alessio Cornia, Annika Sehl, Antonis Kalogeropoulos, Joy Jenkins, Richard Fletcher, Silvia Mayo-Vazquez, Tim Nicholls, and Tom Nicholls, as well as Nic
Newman). In addition, I want to thank David Levy and Lucas Graves for inspirational comments, discussions, and suggestions.
It builds on the work of many others, including—
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