Mediated by the giants: Tracing practices, discourses, and mediators of platform isomorphism in a media organization

Abstract

News media are increasingly interwoven with social media platforms. Building on institutional theory, we trace the repercussions of the platform infrastructure inside a media organization by focusing on organizational discourses and practices in connection with the journalistic use of social media. The empirical material includes interviews, field notes, chat logs, and documents collected from a public service media organization during a 6-month on-site and virtual ethnography. The findings show how platform pressures intertwine with content production, audience representation, journalistic values, and organizational development, thus manifesting the infrastructuralization and institutionalization of platforms in the media industry. While the interviewees articulated tensions related to adopting social media, the fieldwork data revealed forms of mimetic and normative isomorphism, mediated by platform data and professional roles in the organization. Moreover, the platform infrastructure seems to cultivate both critical and aspirational talk in the organization, which implies a more complex relationship beyond coercive platform power.