Naslov
Digital intermediaries, advertising capture and media pluralism

Autori
Bilić, Paško

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, pp prezentacija, znanstveni

Skup
Communication, democracy, and the public sphere in the age of the internet

Mjesto i datum
Piran, Slovenija, 31.05.2018. - 02.06.2018

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Pozvano predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
Digital intermediaries, advertising, democracy

Sažetak
Surveillance scandals, privacy issues and fake news have sobered up the public visions of the internet since its rampant commercialization started in the 1990s. Yet, new discursive realities are knocking at the door with promises of better society, humanity and democracy through machine learning, artificial intelligence and automated systems. Recent years have seen a surge of academic interest in studying the biases of algorithms and other automated solutions in communication production, dissemination and consumption (e.g. Diakopoulous, 2014 ; Napoli, 2014 ; Helberger, 2016 ; Tambini, 2016 ; Pasquale, 2017). Much of the focus is on political bias and filter bubbles (Pariser, 2011) created by digital intermediaries. Much less attention has been given to the systemic capture of digital advertising investments by major digital intermediaries. The effects of the systemic, digital advertising gap (Bilić, Primorac, 2017) on news industries are already proving costly from the perspective of media pluralism and democracy. Google and Facebook capture more than half of the total digital advertising market value in most European countries. The exact share in each country depends on the size of the respective internet population, internet advertising per capita and the size of national digital advertising market (Winseck, 2017). Systemic drainage of financial resources for sustaining digital news results in precarious working conditions for journalists, low quality of publicly available digital content and a general lack of media pluralism on the internet. From a critical political economy of communication and media perspective (Mosco, 2009, 2017 ; Hardy, 2014), I argue that the digital advertising gap provides a clear example of a ‘market failure’ (Bator, 1958 ; Pickard, 2013 ; 2016) in which the market does not efficiently produce and allocate public goods. In other words, non-regulated digital news media markets are unable to ensure media pluralism in the face of competition with globally dominant digital intermediaries. In this presentation I will analyse basic market data on digital advertising capture by Google and Facebook in European countries in the past several years. I will also provide some theoretical and normative directions in which this systemic failure in digital society can be criticized and amended.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Informacijske i komunikacijske znanosti, Sociologija

POVEZANOST RADA