A Way Out or Another Hurdle? Assessing the Impact of the “News Partnership Evaluation Committee” on Platform Dependence in South Korea

Going Dark

People across the globe increasingly rely on digital platforms to communicate, entertain and access information. Whereas many of these activities were conducted through legacy news media, entities such as Google, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram currently dominate in most national contexts. The business models of digital platforms, their global nature and the pace that digital technologies and services evolve challenge existing regulatory frameworks concerning consumer protection, transparency, and power imbalances, especially in ensuring that substantial market power does not reduce competition in media and advertising services markets. This article deals with regulating relations between digital platforms and news publishers. It discusses recent reforms which respond to the unequal bargaining power between digital platforms and news media publishers. It questions whether tech giants should pay news media for news content that they carry and whether there are guarantees that funds received by news publishers will be reinvested into public interest journalism. By doing so, it examines the competitive impacts and implications of their existing commercial relationships, in particular the role of online advertising in the dissemination and monetisation of news content and the long term impact on the sustainability of the news media sector. It is clear that news media providers and digital platforms are both benefiting from the distribution of news content. However, the digital platforms need to improve the transparency of their operations for news media providers as they have a significant impact on the capacity of news media organisations to build and maintain an audience and derive resources from the media content they produce. Overall, the article asks whether the discourse surrounding digital platform regulation generally, and measures by nation-states to rebalance market relations to the benefit of news publishers, can safeguard public interest journalism, promote reliable information, and promote democracy.

This paper is to analyse the competitive dynamics between news publishers and digital platforms. News publishers and digital platforms are vertical complements in that news publishers publish content that helps digital platforms to attract users. In turn, digital platforms generate traffic for news publishers. However, the relationship between news publishers and digital platforms is not harmonious. While digital platforms are an important source of traffic, news publishers are concerned that digital platforms free-ride on their valuable content, but also that that distribute that content in a manner that commoditizes it, hence harming their brands. News publishers and digital platforms also horizontally compete for user attention and advertising revenues. Internet users in search of news can go to the website or app of their favourite newspaper, but they may also go to Google News, Facebook or Twitter. Similarly, advertisers can spend their online advertising budget on news publishers, but also on Google or Facebook online properties, which for that matter are also publishers. Linked with technological development, the growing ability of digital platforms to target audiences due to their data advantage has turned the market for online display advertising into a Google and Facebook duopoly. Whether the relationship between news publishers and digital platforms is of a vertical or horizontal nature has implications for competition policy. From a vertical standpoint, some of Google and Facebook’s practices vis-a-vis news publishers could be exploitative in nature. Exploitative cases are, however, difficult to run and in some jurisdictions such as the United States, taking advantage of one’s market power is not illegal even if it harms one’s trading partners. Thus, other avenues may need to be explored to counterbalance the digital platform’s market power and to create a sustainable source of income for news publishers, such as, for instance, joint bargaining or the creation of collective licensing mechanisms for their rights. From an horizontal standpoint, while digital platforms cannot be blamed for seeking to maximize their revenues, competition authorities should however prevent them from engaging in strategies that draw traffic away from news publishers and deprive them of advertising opportunities, either through self-preferencing, discrimination, the imposition of formats and standards that reduce the ability of news publishers to monetize their content, or by making it harder for them to access the data generated by the users’ interaction with their content.

This paper analyses the competitive dynamics between news publishers and digital platforms. News publishers and digital platforms are vertical complements in that news publishers publish content that helps digital platforms to attract users, while digital platforms generate traffic for news publishers. News publishers and digital platforms also horizontally compete for user attention and advertising revenues. Internet users in search of news can go to the website of their favourite newspaper, but they may also go to Google News, Facebook or Twitter. Similarly, advertisers can spend their online advertising budget on news publishers, but also on Google or Facebook online properties. Whether the relationship between news publishers and digital platforms is of a vertical or horizontal nature – or a combination of both – has implications for competition policy. From a vertical standpoint, some of Google and Facebook’s practices vis-a-vis news publishers could be exploitative in nature. Exploitative cases are, however, difficult to run and exploitation is not illegal in some jurisdictions. Thus, other avenues may need to be explored to counterbalance the digital platform’s market power and create a sustainable source of income for news publishers, such as, for instance, joint bargaining or the creation of collective licensing mechanisms for their rights. From a horizontal standpoint, while digital platforms cannot be blamed for seeking to maximize their revenues, competition authorities should however prevent them from engaging in strategies that draw traffic away from news publishers and deprive them of advertising opportunities, either through self-preferencing, discrimination, the imposition of formats and standards that reduce the ability of news publishers to monetize their content, or by making it harder for them to access the data generated by the users’ interaction with their content.

News media businesses compete with search engines and social media networks for advertising revenue but at the same time depend on the latter to reach and interact with audiences. The Digital Platforms Inquiry (DPI) completed by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) found that media businesses’ dependency on digital platforms gives companies like Google and Facebook substantial bargaining power over Australian news media businesses. This development over the past decade has caused negative repercussions for the choice and quality of news available to Australians. In response to thegse findings, Australia’s News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code 2021 extends the application of competition law into digital news and advertising markets. The reform is intended to address the impact of digital platforms on the commercial viability of Australian news companies. In this article, we assess the application of competition law to the relationship between news media and digital platforms, including the strength of the DPI findings and the appropriateness of the resulting reforms. We argue that after decades of deregulation of the media sector in Australia the News Media Bargaining Code is a hybrid legislation, which introduces news media industry regulations under the guise of competition law. While we see a continued role for competition law in digital platform markets, this article indicates the challenges posed by digital platforms on media pluralism and the limitations of a market-driven approach to news media policy. news media businesses, digital platforms, advertising, regulation, media policy, Australian competition law, market power, media pluralism, Digital Platforms Inquiry, News Media Bargaining Code

This article provides an overview of news media bargaining codes as a way of regulating relations between digital platforms and news publishers. Taking the Codes developed in Australia and Canada as policy case studies, the paper discusses recent reforms which respond to the unequal bargaining power between digital platforms and news media publishers. Despite these reforms, there are few guarantees that funds received by news publishers will be reinvested into public interest journalism. The article asks whether the discourse surrounding digital platform regulation generally, and measures by nation-states to rebalance market relations to the benefit of news publishers, are likely to yield necessary safeguards required to sustain public interest journalism, promote reliable information, and stabilise democratic societies.

This paper provides a critical reflection on five interconnected issues which give debates about trust and mistrust in news a greater degree of urgency. The first is the changing relationship between news publishers and digital platforms, and the ways in which the growth of ‘social news’ may have enhanced elite dominance of news flows. Second, I consider the ‘accountability revolution’ facing traditional newsrooms, where digital technologies and demands for equity and social justice in both news reporting and representation challenge conventional models of journalism and news coverage. Third, I discuss the crisis of the news media business model. Fourth, I consider the specific impacts of COVID-19, which has served to accelerate trends such as the shift in power towards digital platforms, social justice demands on traditional news media, and the crisis of advertiser-financed media. Finally, I discuss the implications of a turn towards subscription-based news, and the need for new analytical models to understand this development.

Digitization has fundamentally transformed both news media industries and markets. Since the emergence of the Internet, news consumers are increasingly turning to a combination of offline and online environments to consult news updates. This research aims to investigate news media repertoires in Flanders in the era of convergence. The study elaborates on what news outlets are being combined news media repertoires (also called ‘cross-media news diets’) (RQ 1) and what motivations audiences rely on for choosing these specific news outlets (RQ2). In today’s progressively converging news media environment, audiences are confronted with an abundance of content offered via both traditional and new media outlets. To cope with this news overload, audiences increasingly compose a personalized media diet or news media repertoire. Hasebrink and Domeyer (2012) define news media repertoires as relatively small subsets of news media composed by audience members. News audiences are thus seeking access, navigating in and making sense of the multitude of news messages across print, broadcasting, online and mobile media platforms (Schroder, 2014). The repertoire-approach is particularly valuable, since it offers a framework necessary for grasping news consumption in the networked media era. It follows Schroder’s (2011) assumption that audiences are inherently cross-media. Simple classifications based on the most-used medium, as used in the mass media era, are not only difficult to apply but also increasingly outdated (Lee & Yang, 2014). As a matter of fact, news consumption is not just a simple choice between traditional and new media; audiences actively combine different news sources into complex patterns of media use (Yuan, 2011). This study thus aims to investigate what news media repertoires are composed and how audiences compose particular news diets. It draws upon a mixed-method approach, which involves a Q-sorting task, embedded in much larger in-depth, face-to-face interviews (N = 42). The qualitativequantitative Q-sort technique (Schroder & Kobbernagel, 2010) is used to investigate subjectivity and requires the informants to sort a number of statements on a fixed normal distribution with a predefined number of positions, according to a specified dimension. Each position is thus associated to a numerical value. In this case, the statements were 36 types of news media, following a bi-polar dimension ranging from ‘does not play a role in my life’ to ‘plays an important role in my life’. In the analysis, principal component analysis is used to reduce the informant correlation matrix to a simple structure. This implies that patterns of informants sharing a similar stance towards news media are derived, and hence participants with similar news repertoires are identified. These components or groups of informants are then used to guide the qualitative analysis, which is the focal point of attention in this study. Results will show a variety (approximately six to eight) of news repertoires can be defined, based on three dimensions: (1) consumption on traditional and/or new platforms, (2) news content preferences, and (3) the serendipitous nature of news use. After mapping the currently adopted news media repertoires, a subsequent phase of qualitative analysis will follow in order to reveal the users’ motivations for these news media repertoires. The patterns revealed in the Q-sort will serve as analytic tools, guiding the search for an in-depth understanding of why these news outlets are combined into the adopted news media repertoires. The focus of the qualitative phase lies on expectations towards news outlets, news use habits as well as trust in news media. References Hasebrink, U. & Domeyer, H. (2012). Media repertoires as patterns of behaviour and as meaningful practices: A multimethod approach to media use in converging media environments. Participations, 9(2), 757-779. Lee, H., & Yang, J. (2014). Political knowledge gaps among news consumers with different news media repertoires across multiple platforms. International Journal of Communication, 8, 21. Schroder, K. C., & Kobbernagel, C. (2010). Towards a typology of cross-media news consumption: a qualitativequantitative synthesis. Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook, 8(1), 115-137. Schroder, K. C. (2011). Audiences are inherently cross-media: audience studies and the cross-media challenge. Communication Management Quarterly, 18(6), 5–27. Schroder, K. C. (2014). News media old and new: fluctuating audiences, news repertoires and locations of consumption. Journalism Studies, 1-19 (ahead-of-print). doi: 10.1080/ 1461670X.2014.890332 Yuan, E. (2011). News consumption across multiple media platforms: A repertoire approach. Information, Communication & Society, 14(7), 998-1016. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2010.549235

Editorial Commentary

In recent years, the European and Macedonian television etherare experiencing major changes. The process of digitalization of television has been completed in most European countries, while in a smaller number it is still ongoing. Digitalization of television means production, transmission and reception of television programs in digital form through the use of digital methods for modulation and signal processing.
 The process of digitalization of televisions in the Republic of North Macedonia was carried out during 2013, although the first scenario for digitalization was to be completed by the end of 2012. By decision of the Government of the Republic of Macedonia, analog signals were switched off on 31 May 2013, and The very next day, on June 1, 2013, the digital broadcasting started. From a legal point of view, this process passed without enough public debate, media managers were brought before a final act, and at the last minute they were forced to sign contracts and documents for the transition from analog to digital signal. This was especially negatively reflected on the work of the regional televisions whose programs, under very unfavorable financial conditions, are distributed by a digital public communication network operator. The Association for Private Media of the Republic of North Macedonia, at the time of the adoption of the regulations, categorically states that the current conditions for digitalization are too much for the televisions, above all economically unjustified and completely unacceptable in the current situation. Additionally, the frequency spectrum management in the Republic of North Macedonia is under the competence of a special regulator - the Agency for Electronic Communications, which is also an independent regulatory body, while the decisions for issuing licenses in the broadcasting area are made by the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services (previously Broadcasting Tip).
 The main claim of this research is that a strategically designed regulatory policy, if it strives to achieve media and cultural pluralism, in the implementation of the digitalization process, must take into account the conditions for economic sustainability and development of regional television.
 The main goal of this research is an analysis of the process of digitalization of terrestrial televisions, which was conducted during 2013 by the Government of the Republic of Macedonia and the regulatory bodies of the broadcasting activity.
 A qualitative research strategy will be applied in the research. The following methods for data collection or analysis will be used: qualitative analysis of documents; analysis of secondary data; in-depth interviews with owners or managers of regional televisions and in-depth interviews with experts in the field of media policy and in the field of management and broadcasting; qualitative analysis of interview transcripts.
 Regional televisions are a very important factor in informing the citizens in the regions where they are broadcast. The survival of regional televisions should be a concern, above all for the central government, but also for the local one. Thereby, it is necessary to take into account the specifics of the regional televisions. The purpose of this paper was to present the real situation, as well as the important role of regional televisions in the Republic of North Macedonia, but also to point out recommendations for their continuous sustainability. In addition to the above conclusions and recommendations, it is necessary to keep in mind that this is a particularly sensitive topic that is presented in this paper in the simplest possible way. However, due to its complexity and importance, the need to deepen research in this area is pointed out in order to contribute to the development of a more effective strategy, plan and guidelines for creating positive conditions for sustainability and development of regional televisions.

A policy analysis of nuclear safety culture and security culture in East Asia: Examining best practices and challenges

Digital domestic work platforms have grown in the past few years, enabling employers to source paid domestic work via an app. Few studies have looked at the impact that digital domestic work platforms have on the working conditions and well-being of domestic workers. This study draws on the International Labour Organization’s Decent Work framework to explore the extent to which the domestic work platform SweepSouth offers opportunities for decent work. Findings are based on in-depth qualitative interviews with domestic workers employed by SweepSouth. The research revealed that working hours and autonomy were experienced as positive by domestic workers. However, wages remain insufficient to sustain a quality life. Furthermore, the lack of control over work time, an absence of union representation and collective bargaining power, and no social benefits have a negative impact on domestic workers’ working conditions. Algorithmic ratings from clients also put extra pressure on domestic workers to render quality cleaning services. Finally, this study shows that domestic work remains unstable and insecure and that digital domestic work platforms do little to improve the lives of domestic workers.

Along with the rapid development of online news production and consumption, information spreads rapidly among news portals through reprinting and re-posting. Understanding the dissemination process of online news has important implications for policy making, crisis management, and brand imaging. As the frequency of news reprinting between two news portals expresses the social relationship between them, the topological properties of complex networks of news portals indicate the dynamic patterns of online news dissemination. This research is the first study that examines patterns and organizational structure of online news networks based on historical data collected from more than one thousand Chinese news portals. Main findings reveal that information can spread widely and rapidly through online news portals. Specifically, some major news portals exchange information with each other frequently and they exchange information with small news portals directly, implying that hot-spot events, even they are first reported by a small news portal, can be re-posted by many major news portals in a short time and then spread over the Internet quickly. The dense connections between many major news portals ensure that the spread will not be influenced greatly by the refusal to report typical events of a small part of major news portals.

The transformation in the media landscape in Indonesia is underscored by the emergence of digital-centric media entities and a new mode of news production distinctly divergent from traditional journalism. The purpose of this study is to examine the evolving business model of digital journalism, a sector experiencing rapid growth following the advent of the internet, social media, and the consolidation of online journalism since 2010. Employing a qualitative-descriptive method, this research is designed to capture the digital journalism business model in Indonesia's post-traditional print and broadcast media systems. From 2021 to 2023, the authors meticulously observed the contents and management of selected news media outlets, conducted semi-structured interviews, and gathered pertinent documents. The key question of this study centers on the nature of the business model underpinning journalism on digital platforms and its repercussions for the interest of news production and publication. The study reveals that business models for digital news media remain unstandardized, and the ecosystem of platform-based journalism has yet to achieve a healthy climate. From the perspective of digital news consumption, the prevailing culture of gratuitous (free) news culture and the concern of keeping trusted news media pose significant obstacles for news corporations in sustaining their operations.

The Cultural and Creative Industry (CCI) has a major contribution to economic and social development, but arts workers in Indonesia still face challenges in digital job search. This study aims to analyze the perception and experience of art workers towards Job Search Efficacy (JSE), which is an individual's belief in finding work effectively through digital platforms. Using a qualitative approach and Participatory Action Research (PAR) design, data was collected through in-depth interviews with ten art workers in Jakarta from various subsectors. The results showed that JSE was influenced by three main factors: personal factors (confidence, motivation, and digital literacy), social and community factors (support from family, friends, and art collectives), and technological factors (adaptability to algorithms and digital work platforms). Most of the informants said that conventional platforms such as LinkedIn or JobStreet have not supported the need for freelance and portfolio-based art work. Therefore, this study recommends four main policies: (1) contextual digital training based on the art subsector, (2) the development of art-specific digital work platforms, (3) increasing access to devices and internet connections, and (4) strengthening communities as spaces for learning and collaboration. These findings are expected to form the basis for policies to create a more inclusive and sustainable digital work ecosystem for arts workers.