"Across markets, only around a fifth of respondents (22%) now say they prefer to start their news journeys with a website or app – that’s down 10 percentage points since 2018. Publishers in a few smaller Northern European markets have managed to buck this trend, but younger groups everywhere are
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showing a weaker connection with news brands’ own websites and apps than previous cohorts – preferring to access news via side-door routes such as social media, search, or mobile aggregators.
• Facebook remains one of the most-used social networks overall, but its influence on journalism is declining as it shifts its focus away from news. It also faces new challenges from established networks such as YouTube and vibrant youth-focused networks such as TikTok. The Chinese-owned social network reaches 44% of 18–24s across markets and 20% for news. It is growing fastest in parts of Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America.
• When it comes to news, audiences say they pay more attention to celebrities, influencers, and social media personalities than journalists in networks like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. This contrasts sharply with Facebook and Twitter, where news media and journalists are still central to the conversation.
• Much of the public is sceptical of the algorithms used to select what they see via search engines, social media, and other platforms. Less than a third (30%) say that having stories selected for me on the basis of previous consumption is a good way to get news, 6 percentage points lower than when we last asked the question in 2016. Despite this, on average, users still slightly prefer news selected this way to that chosen by editors or journalists (27%), suggesting that worries about algorithms are part of a wider concern about news and how it is selected.
• Despite hopes that the internet could widen democratic debate, we find fewer people are now participating in online news than in the recent past. Aggregated across markets, only around a fifth (22%) are now active participators, with around half (47%) not participating in news at all. In the UK and United States, the proportion of active participators has fallen by more than 10 percentage points since 2016. Across countries we find that this group tends to be male, better educated, and more partisan in their political vie ws.
• Trust in the news has fallen, across markets, by a further 2 percentage points in the last year, reversing in many countries the gains made at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic. On average, four in ten of our total sample (40%) say they trust most news most of the time. Finland remains the country with the highest levels of overall trust (69%), while Greece (19%) has the lowest after a year characterised by heated arguments about press freedom and the independence of the media." (Summary, page 10)
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"In many countries, especially outside Europe and the United States, we find a significant further decline in the use of Facebook for news and a growing reliance on a range of alternatives including private messaging apps and video networks. Facebook news consumption is down 4 percentage points, acr
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oss all countries, in the last year.
• News use across online platforms is fragmenting, with six networks now reaching at least 10% of our respondents, compared with just two a decade ago. YouTube is used for news by almost a third (31%) of our global sample each week, WhatsApp by around a fifth (21%), while TikTok (13%) has overtaken Twitter (10%), now rebranded X, for the first time.
• Linked to these shifts, video is becoming a more important source of online news, especially with younger groups. Short news videos are accessed by two-thirds (66%) of our sample each week, with longer formats attracting around half (51%). The main locus of news video consumption is online platforms (72%) rather than publisher websites (22%), increasing the challenges around monetisation and connection.
• Although the platform mix is shifting, the majority continue to identify platforms including social media, search, or aggregators as their main gateway to online news. Across markets, only around a fifth of respondents (22%) identify news websites or apps as their main source of online news – that’s down 10 percentage points on 2018. Publishers in a few Northern European markets have managed to buck this trend, but younger groups everywhere are showing a weaker connection with news brands than they did in the past.
• Turning to the sources that people pay most attention to when it comes to news on various platforms, we find an increasing focus on partisan commentators, influencers, and young news creators, especially on YouTube and TikTok. But in social networks such as Facebook and X, traditional news brands and journalists still tend to play a prominent role.
• Concern about what is real and what is fake on the internet when it comes to online news has risen by 3 percentage points in the last year with around six in ten (59%) saying they are concerned. The figure is considerably higher in South Africa (81%) and the United States (72%), both countries that have been holding elections this year.
• Worries about how to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy content in online platforms is highest for TikTok and X when compared with other online networks. Both platforms have hosted misinformation or conspiracies around stories such as the war in Gaza, and the Princess of Wales’s health, as well as so-called ‘deep fake’ pictures and videos." (Executive summary, page 10)
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"Mehr Freiheit und mehr Demokratie waren die großen Versprechen des Internets. Doch inzwischen konzentriert sich die Macht bei einigen wenigen Tech-Giganten. Dabei bietet das Netz selbst eine Lösung, um sein ursprüngliches Freiheitsversprechen zu bewahren: die nichtkommerzielle digitale Gegenwelt
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. Zu ihr zählen etwa die Online-Enzyklopädie Wikipedia, die Twitter (X)-Alternative Mastodon, der Browser Firefox oder der Messenger Signal. Es liegt an uns, wie stark wir die digitalen Herausforderer machen. Stefan Mey stellt in Porträts die Protagonist*innen, Ziele, Strategien und Geschäftsmodelle der digitalen Gegenwelt vor. Von ihnen gibt es weitaus mehr, als wir gewöhnlich denken. Sie sind die digitalen Gegenstücke von Greenpeace, Attac oder Amnesty International und formen die digitale Zivilgesellschaft. Um das Internet besser, fairer und freier zu machen, muss man nicht Informatik studieren, kein Start-up gründen und auch kein Hacker sein." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"This playbook is designed for media managers and journalists who are looking to monetise their social media channels and diversify their income — particularly in countries where English is not the predominant language. It will provide you with practical strategies and tips for creating and moneti
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sing content on social media, as well as insights into the unique challenges and opportunities that come with operating in a non-English speaking environment. Whether you’re a seasoned media professional or a novice just starting out, this book is the perfect guide to help you navigate the complex world of social media monetisation and succeed in the digital age." (Introduction, page 7)
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"Harmful actors use an ever-expanding range of digital spaces to spread harmful ideologies and undermine human rights and democracy online. Understanding their evolving ideas, online networks and activities is critical to the development of a more comprehensive evidence base to inform effective and
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proportional efforts to counter them. But generating that evidence base can challenge the technical capabilities, resources and even ethical and legal boundaries of research. We are concerned that these issues may be worsening just as the options for spreading harm online increase. This difficulty in conducting digital research systematically, ethically and legally results in a situation where trade-offs have to be made between competing priorities, including the desire to understand and mitigate harmful content and behaviours online, the preservation of privacy and the adherence to legal agreements. We argue in this report that this does not need to be the case; solutions are available, and actions should be taken as soon as possible to ensure a future-proof scenario in which researchers have the tools to monitor, track and analyse harmful content and behaviours systematically, ethically and legally. This report outlines the findings from the research phase of a project by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and CASM Technology; it is funded by Omidyar Network. The aim of the project is to identify and test research methodologies for monitoring and analysing small, closed or hardly moderated platforms. The report provides applied examples and evidence for the limitations and dilemmas encountered by researchers. In three short research case studies, focusing on Telegram, Discord and Odysee (in German, English and French respectively), we seek to apply different methodological approaches to analyse platforms that primarily present technological, ethical and legal, or fragmentation barriers." (Executive summary)
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"Platformization has been used to describe how platforms such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, WhatsApp and TikTok have become increasingly important for how people communicate and access information, including news. But to what extent have news media systems in different countries become platformized?
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Using online survey data from 46 countries, we show that: (a) although over 90% of internet users use at least one social platform, there are large country differences in the proportion that use them to access news; and (b) large country difference in the proportion that still go directly to news websites and apps. Furthermore, we find (c) that country differences at least partly reflect path dependency, more specifically the historic strength of the newspaper market leading to lower levels of news platformization and continued high levels of direct access. These findings show how platformization varies in different parts of the world, provide a framework for capturing how it changes over time, and highlight the potential benefits of bringing together platform studies and comparative media systems research." (Abstract)
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"Online and platform content that may cause harm through the breach of human rights is sufficiently widespread to have raised concerns about the potentially severe implications for the future of trust, safety, democracy and sustainable development. A certain amount of this content is curbed by the d
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ominant commercial platforms’ content moderation mechanisms. Much still escapes their nets and in worst cases is algorithmically amplified and even supported by advertising. Some smaller platforms expressly allow hatred and conspiracy theories, even facilitating the organisation of offline attacks on democracy. The roots of the problems lie in : ‘attention economics’, automated advertising systems, external manipulators, company spending priorities and stakeholder knowledge deficits. Of value in addressing these problems will be the development of guidelines for regulating platforms, centred on safeguarding human rights, promoting transparency and limiting the business processes and technical mechanisms that underpin potentially harmful content online." (Key trends uncovered, page 2)
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"This report presents the results of deep dive experiments into the risks associated to the design, deployment and use of generative AI to facilitate gender-based violence. It assesses the possible impact posed by generative AI that enables the creation of more realistic ‘synthetic’ media, ‘ha
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llucinations’ or biases in the outputs, automated harassment campaigns, and the ability to build ‘synthetic histories’ and compositional deepfakes. Lessons learned from the prompt-injection experiments conducted on how gender-based cyber-harassment templates are and can be generated are presented. It concludes with measures to be put in place by generative AI companies and the technology companies that platform them, by regulators and policy makers, by civil society organisations and independent researchers, as well as users." (Back cover)
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"The COVID-19 pandemic has reorganized existing methods of exchange, turning comparatively marginal technologies into the new normal. Multipoint videoconferencing in particular has become a favored means for web-based forms of remote communication and collaboration without physical copresence. Takin
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g the recent mainstreaming of videoconferencing as its point of departure, this anthology examines the complex mediality of this new form of social interaction. Connecting theoretical reflection with material case studies, the contributors question practices, politics and aesthetics of videoconferencing and the specific meanings it acquires in different historical, cultural and social contexts." (Publisher description)
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"New Screen Ecology in India is an open access book that provides an in depth exploration of the digital transformation of the Indian media industry. Smith Mehta takes a deep dive into the world of social media platforms and their impact on contemporary film and television production, arguing that t
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hey have fundamentally shifted the creator dynamics of these industries. Through first-hand research with creators, platform and portal executives, and intermediaries such as talent agents and multi-channel networks, Mehta develops the concept of the new screen ecology. He reveals how the Indian screen industries are affected by the social relations between these agents, and how industrial practices are blurring the amateur-professional divide through creator and content interdependencies. Mehta goes beyond theoretical analysis by interrogating the production practices of 13 different platforms and portals, including Hotstar, Netflix, YouTube, and TVFPlay. He analyses the extent to which they benefit from the lack of censorship and restrictive industrial practices that are characteristic of traditional media structures." (Publisher description)
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"O artigo analisa os impactos da plataformização na criação de redes de divulgação coletiva de podcasts no Brasil, formadas por grupos tradicionalmente subalternizados como mulheres, comunidade LGBTQIAP+, população negra, entre outros. A partir de entrevistas, os dados demonstram que a luta
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contra a invisibilidade nas plataformas digitais de áudio permite o encontro e a troca de experiências entre os participantes, um enfrentamento à desigualdade e a colaboração mútua dos grupos na defesa de direitos, além de sustentar o apoio do cenário de rádio expandido para a emergência de novos atores e novas tensões sociais por meio do podcasting." (Resumo)
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"An urgent finding of this first Fairwork Mexico report was impact platform work has on the physical and mental health of workers. Indeed, in megacities like Mexico City, and in urban environments marked by traffic congestion, pollution and fast-paced city life, workers’ bodies are being reduced t
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o an extension of the algorithm. Almost half of the workers we interviewed for this report reported that working for digital labour platforms affects them physically or mentally." (Editorial)
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"In the algorithmic era, both users and the platform battle for visibility. Chinese fans are savvy users who explore the hidden algorithms behind platform functions. With the collectively developed algorithmic imaginary, digital fandom communities negotiate with the platform over algorithms to optim
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ize the visibility of celebrities they endorse. Drawing from participatory observation and semi-structured interviews in Chinese online fandoms of an idol group, INTO1, we detailed how fans as digital users collectively explore, interpret, and creatively utilize algorithms to increase their idol’s visibility. We conclude that visibility, as a representation of algorithm power, is co-defined through the constant push-and-pull between digital users and the platform. This paper contributes to both algorithm and fandom studies by describing large-scale non-professional users’ daily construction of the algorithmic imaginary in the unique context of Chinese fandom and beyond. It also discusses broader civic implications of fans’ algorithmic practices to wider digital users in China." (Abstract)
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"Efforts to govern algorithms have centerd the ‘black box problem,’or the opacity of algorithms resulting from corporate secrecy and technical complexity. In this article, I conceptualize a related and equally fundamental challenge for governance efforts: black box gaslighting. Black box gasligh
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ting captures how platforms may leverage perceptions of their epistemic authority on their algorithms to undermine users’ confidence in what they know about algorithms and destabilize credible criticism. I explicate the concept of black box gaslighting through a case study of the ‘shadowbanning’ dispute within the Instagram influencer community, drawing on interviews with influencers (n = 17) and online discourse materials (e.g., social media posts, blog posts, videos, etc.). I argue that black box gaslighting presents a formidable deterrent for those seeking accountability: an epistemic contest over the legitimacy of critiques in which platforms hold the upper hand. At the same time, I suggest we must be mindful of the partial nature of platforms’ claim to ‘the truth,’ as well as the value of user understandings of algorithms." (Abstract)
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