Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

The Relative Importance of Social Media for Accessing, Finding, and Engaging with News

The growing use of social media like Facebook and Twitter is in the process of changing how news is produced, disseminated, and discussed. But so far, we have only a preliminary understanding of (1) how important social media are as sources of news relative to other media, (2) the extent to which people use them to find news, (3) how many use them to engage in more participatory forms of news use, and (4) whether these developments are similar within countries with otherwise comparable levels of technological development. Based on data from a cross-country online survey of news media use, we present a comparative analysis of the relative importance of social media for news in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, covering eight developed democracies with different media systems. We show that television remains both the most widely used and most important source of news in all these countries, and that even print newspapers are still more widely used and seen as more important sources of news than social media. We identify a set of similarities in terms of the growing importance of social media as part of people’s cross-media news habits, but also important country-to-country differences, in particular in terms of how widespread the more active and participatory forms of media use are. Surprisingly, these differences do not correspond to differences in levels of internet use, suggesting that more than mere availability shapes the role of social media as parts of people’s news habits.

The Labors of Internet-Assisted Activism: Overcommunication, Miscommunication, and Communicative Overload

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the use of Internet elements in political activism through a close ethnographic case study of a volunteer group involved in the 2008 U.S. Democratic presidential primary. Whereas the literature on political activism has generally argued that the Internet provides low-cost communication that facilitates collective action, this case highlights the labors that accompany Internet-assisted activism. The analysis, based upon participant-observation, identifies three interrelated problems with which the activists struggled: overcommunication, miscommunication, and communicative overload. Drawing on concepts taken from science and technology studies, the article argues that these problems have sociotechnical roots and arise from the specific affordances of an increasing number of Internet elements. Such elements reduce the up-front costs associated with communication for the sender, but they generate new transaction costs when integrated into heterogeneous assemblages with no shared communication protocol, no clear infrastructure or exostructure, and no significant means of tempering the tendency towards ever greater amounts of communication.

Mundane Internet Tools, the Risk of Exclusion, and Reflexive Movements—Occupy Wall Street and Political Uses of Digital Networked Technologies

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HOW NEWSPAPERS BEGAN TO BLOG: Recognizing the role of technologists in old media organizations’ development of new media technologies

In this article, I examine how ‘old’ media organizations develop ‘new’ media technologies by analyzing processes of technological innovation in two Danish newspaper companies that integrated blogs into their websites in very different ways in 2007. Drawing on concepts from science and technology studies and sociology and building on previous research on blogging by news media organizations, I analyze how the three different communities involved in the development process – journalists and managers, but also the often-overlooked community of technologists – articulated different versions of what blogging ought to be in each organization and tried to shape the technology and pull the development work in different directions. On the basis of interviews with key participants, I show how the two newspaper organizations (equally ‘old’ media) came to develop nominally the same ‘new’ medium (blogs) for nominally the same purpose (journalism) in quite different ways through tension-filled and often contentious collaborative processes. I argue that researchers interested in understanding technological innovation in the media industry need to consider the important and active role played by the community of technologists (project managers, computer programers, information architects, etc.) that are increasingly integral to how legacy media organizations operate in a new and ever more convergent media environment under circumstances of great economic uncertainty, and discuss the wider implications for how we understand processes of technological development in the news media and the realization of the democratic potentials of new media technologies.

Participation through letters to the editor: Circulation, considerations, and genres in the letters institution

This article analyzes who participates in newspaper-mediated debate through letters to the editor, how they come to do it by passing muster under six editorial considerations, and what the three genres (storytelling, criticism, and appeal) of letters allow them to participate in. The starting point is a sedimented ideal of media that citizens can use — an ambition for media that are not only watchdogs, sources of information, or entertainers, but also enablers of participation. The contemporary incarnation of this ideal in printed newspapers is what is here identified as the ‘letters institution’. Its patterns of circulation and contribution, editorial considerations, and narrative genres constitute a fragmented contentious zone between politics, the media, and the private life of the limited number of citizens who get a chance to express themselves through the concrete operations of one of the institutions that gives the abstraction ‘the public debate’ whatever reality it has.

Are people incidentally exposed to news on social media? A comparative analysis:

Scholars have questioned the potential for incidental exposure in high-choice media environments. We use online survey data to examine incidental exposure to news on social media (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter) in four countries (Italy, Australia, United Kingdom, United States). Leaving aside those who say they intentionally use social media for news, we compare the number of online news sources used by social media users who do not see it as a news platform, but may come across news while using it (the incidentally exposed), with people who do not use social media at all (non-users). We find that (a) the incidentally exposed users use significantly more online news sources than non-users, (b) the effect of incidental exposure is stronger for younger people and those with low interest in news and (c) stronger for users of YouTube and Twitter than for users of Facebook.

Dealing with digital intermediaries: A case study of the relations between publishers and platforms

The rise of digital intermediaries such as search engines and social media is profoundly changing our media environment. Here, we analyze how news media organizations handle their relations to these increasingly important intermediaries. Based on a strategic case study, we argue that relationships between publishers and platforms are characterized by a tension between (1) short-term, operational opportunities and (2) long-term strategic worries about becoming too dependent on intermediaries. We argue that these relationships are shaped by news media’s fear of missing out, the difficulties of evaluating the risk/reward ratios, and a sense of asymmetry. The implication is that news media that developed into an increasingly independent institution in the 20th century—in part enabled by news media organizations’ control over channels of communication—are becoming dependent upon new digital intermediaries that structure the media environment in ways that not only individual citizens but also large, resource-rich, powerful organizations have to adapt to.

The Absence of Structural Americanization Media System Developments in Six Affluent Democracies, 2000–2009

Several comparative media researchers have hypothesized that the media systems of affluent Western democracies are becoming more and more structurally homogeneous—that they are becoming “Americanized.” This article uses data on newspaper industry revenues, commercial television revenues, Internet use, and funding for public service media from a strategic sample of six countries to test the structural version of the convergence hypothesis, looking at the period from 2000 to 2009. (The countries included are Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States.) The analysis demonstrates an “absence of Americanization” as the six media systems have not become structurally more similar over the last decade. Instead, developments are summarized as a combination of (1) parallel displacements, (2) persistent particularities, and (3) the emergence of some new peculiarities. Theoretically, economic and technological forces were expected to drive convergence. The article suggests that the reason these forces have not driven convergence in recent years may be that the interplay between them have changed as part of a broader shift from the mass media, mass production, and mass markets characteristic of twentieth-century Western societies and toward the fragmented media landscapes, tailored production, and niche marketing increasingly characteristic of early-twenty-first century affluent democracies.

Framing the Newspaper Crisis: How debates on the state of the press are shaped in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom and United States

This article argues that discourses of a newspaper “crisis” should not be regarded simply as descriptions of the actual state of the press but also as a means by which strategic actors frame the situation. The emerging frames can have substantial consequences for media policy making. The study identifies four key frames used to portray the newspaper “crisis” and discusses their relevance for public debates in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. Similarities and differences are examined through 59 in-depth interviews with policymakers and industry executives as well as a qualitative analysis of policy documents and relevant media coverage. The study demonstrates that debates on the newspaper “crisis” are only partly influenced by (1) economic realities and (2) media policy traditions in the six countries but also reflect (3) the strategic motives of powerful actors and (4) the diffusion of frames across borders, particularly those coming from the United States. A transnationally uniform paradigm emerges according to which the state is expected to play the role of a benevolent but mostly passive bystander, while media companies are expected to tackle the problem mainly by developing innovative content and business strategies. This liberal market paradigm displays one blind spot however: it does not seriously consider a scenario where the market is failing to provide sustainable journalistic quality.

‘Frozen’ media subsidies during a time of media change: A comparative analysis of media policy drift in six Western democracies

Media systems around the world have changed in significant ways in the early 21st century. In this article, I analyse how various forms of media subsidies have changed in response to these transformations in a sample of six different affluent democracies. On the basis of interviews, official documents and secondary sources, I show that media subsidies have largely remained frozen in their late-20th century form. The absence of major reform means that media subsidies are increasingly subject to policy drift, a process by which the operations and effectiveness of policies change not because of deliberate reform, but because of changing conditions on the ground. Analysis of interviews with relevant stakeholders suggests that the main obstacles to reform across all six countries are: (1) limited political attention to the problem; (2) strong incumbent industries protecting their interests; and (3) a perceived shortage of desirable, cost-effective, and governable alternatives to existing policies.