News Feeds Research Articles

Platform Configuration and Digital Materiality: How News Publishers Innovate Their Practices Amid Entanglements with the Evolving Technological Infrastructure of Platforms

ABSTRACT Technology companies and their platforms are important digital intermediaries for news publishers. Platforms as technological infrastructures have digital materiality and how publishers organise their innovations have become entangled with the digital materiality of platforms. This six-year longitudinal study (2015–2021) examines this entanglement by analysing how and why a news publisher innovated its practices vis-à-vis the changing digital materiality of Facebook and Instagram. Employing practice theory and the platform configuration framework, this study assesses the publisher’s configuration of its editorial activities in relation to shifts in the digital materiality of Meta’s platforms and the reflexivity of newsroom staff. Using a mix of qualitative methods, this study finds that the publisher both embraced and resisted the platforms’ algorithmic changes. While it enhanced video production and distribution to align with the platforms’ preference for audio-visual content, the publisher also developed new practices to counterbalance its reliance on Facebook for news distribution and digital advertising revenue, especially after Meta’s downranking of publishers’ content on News Feeds and the introduction of restrictions for Instant Articles. This study concludes that while publishers are circumscribed by the changes in the platforms' digital materiality, they strategically innovate specific practices to both leverage platforms and reclaim or maintain independence from them.

A STUDY OF NEWS CONSUMPTION PATTERNS AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS

India will have 1 billion smart phone users by 2026, according to a recent Deloitte report Big bets (2022). As for news consumption, a June 2022 article in Mint says that around 72% on Indians access news through smartphones, and only 35% via computers. News aggregator platforms and apps such as Google News (53%), Daily Hunt (25%), In Shorts (19%), and News Point (17%) are also gaining currency Jha (2022). Even though the use of mobile phones is increasing, a 2022 study conducted by the Reuters Institute in 46 markets says that the trust in news is falling, especially with the younger age group. Youth Avoiding News, Says Reuters Study. (2022). The report says, “These groups are critical audiences for publishers and journalists around the world, and for the sustainability of news, but are increasingly hard to reach and may require different strategies to engage them.” This study also marks the difference in the consumption pattern between social natives (18 to 24) and digital natives (25 to 34). While digital natives still stick on to Facebook, social natives have moved to other new networks. Many news organizations are struggling to remain relevant to this group of youth. Using the quantitative survey methodology, this study aims to track news consumption patterns among youth.

News Aggregation using Web Scraping News Portals

In today's fast-paced world, staying informed through reliable and high-quality news is important. However, with an overwhelming number of online publishers and platforms, accessing information from multiple sources can be time-consuming and challenging. To simplify this process, news aggregators have emerged as a solution. These platforms allow users to customize their news consumption by selecting preferred websites and receiving curated articles from those sources in one centralized location. This saves valuable time and effort but also streamlines information gathering in our daily routines. To develop an influential online news aggregator, web scraping for data structuring is crucial. Web scraping involves analyzing a website's HTML structure to extract the desired data. By understanding the underlying structure of web pages, developers can fetch relevant information such as article titles, summaries, authors, and publication dates. People often struggle to find valuable news sources amid the vast sea of information available online. News aggregators address this issue by providing personalized news feeds based on individual interests. Users serve as valuable resources for knowledge tailored to specific preferences. While news aggregators are widely recognized for their popularity and utility, there is still room for improvement in their role in software development. Enhancements could include refining algorithms for more accurate content curation. In addition, Users could include implementing better user interfaces for enhanced user experiences and exploring innovative features like sentiment analysis and topic clustering. By continually iterating and improving upon existing news aggregator platforms, developers can ensure users have access to timely, relevant, and trustworthy news conveniently and efficiently.

Influencing recommendation algorithms to reduce the spread of unreliable news by encouraging humans to fact-check articles, in a field experiment

Society often relies on social algorithms that adapt to human behavior. Yet scientists struggle to generalize the combined behavior of mutually-adapting humans and algorithms. This scientific challenge is a governance problem when algorithms amplify human responses to falsehoods. Could attempts to influence humans have second-order effects on algorithms? Using a large-scale field experiment, I test if influencing readers to fact-check unreliable sources causes news aggregation algorithms to promote or lessen the visibility of those sources. Interventions encouraged readers to fact-check articles or fact-check and provide votes to the algorithm. Across 1104 discussions, these encouragements increased human fact-checking and reduced vote scores on average. The fact-checking condition also caused the algorithm to reduce the promotion of articles over time by as much as −25 rank positions on average, enough to remove an article from the front page. Overall, this study offers a path for the science of human-algorithm behavior by experimentally demonstrating how influencing collective human behavior can also influence algorithm behavior.

Good News – Bad News. Proportion between Positive and Negative Headlines in the Global News Feed (Based on the Google News Aggregator)

This article tests the assertion about the dominance of the negative agenda in the media space. To this end, Google News, the world’s largest news aggregator, was taken into account, on the basis of which the ratio of positive and negative news headlines in the information flow was analyzed. Three stages of research were conducted, each one week long with 16 country versions of Google News. In total, it was considered a little less than half a million news headlines. According to the results, 70.54% of the headlines turned out to be positive. This outcome questions the stereotype of the dominance of negative agendas in the global news stream. As it turned out, the ratio of positive and negative news depends on the language (versions of Google News in one language showed very similar results) and the day of the week (the news is a little more positive on Sundays), but does not depend on the level of freedom of speech, cultural and geographical factors.

Abundance and some parameters of reproduction for pink salmon <i>Oncorhynchus gorbuscha</i> on Sakhalin coast of the Tatar Strait

Annual data on biomass and number of pink salmon in catches, mainly landed from their feeding aggregations by trap nets, are presented for the Sakhalin coast of the Tatar Strait in 2003–2022. Number of the spawners entered to the rivers of this coast and number of the juveniles migrated downstream are assessed for some years. Dynamics of the pink salmon run to the rivers does not correlate with the dynamics of this species catch in the coastal waters that confirms the earlier conclusion about mixed origin of pink salmon in the feeding aggregations at the coast. The basis of pink salmon catches in recent years is the fish originated from the rivers of the adjacent mainland coast, whereas the stocks of pink salmon on the Sakhalin coast of the Tatar Strait are in depression caused by unfavorable environmental conditions of their spawning and embryonic development (as the spawning grounds erosion by extreme floods) and subsequent feeding of juveniles in the coastal waters (as heavy storms in the time of their migration from rivers).

Worldcrunch

Worldcrunch is a curated collection of international news stories from over 40 countries and 15 languages, translated into English by multilingual journalists. Based out of Paris, France, Worldcrunch was launched in 2011 and was traditionally focused on individual subscribers. However, this year Worldcrunch is prioritizing institutional site licenses. Worldcrunch is designed as a day-to-day news source rather than as a research database. Searching, printing, and downloading capabilities are limited, but Worldcrunch provides many ways to browse for articles, and an advanced search feature is forthcoming. Thankfully, no advertisements are visible to subscribers, unlike with many US-based newspapers. Pricing is reasonable for both individuals and institutions, and the insight into international news is unbeatable. This comes from the combination of news stories written by local journalists, English translation by multilingual journalists, and an editorial staff with a keen eye for stories that have a commonality to readers across all cultures.

Facebook’s News Feed Algorithm and the 2020 US Election

Facebook plays a substantial role in shaping exposure to news and information, a role that is particularly significant during democratic elections. This article aims to characterize Facebook’s contribution to news exposure during the 2020 US election. Using internet browsing data from 1.3 million desktop panelists in the United States, we analyze audience flows from Facebook to news and information publishers ( N = 3,247 websites) labeled according to quality (high or low) and geography (non-local or local). We find that Facebook ranked as the fourth largest external referral source to publishers. Our analysis further shows that, among the panel of 1.3 million US adults visiting these publishers via desktop computers, Facebook disproportionately amplified low-quality publishers and extended their audience reach during the study period. We also find evidence that Facebook’s intervention to improve “news ecosystem quality” by tweaking their News Feed algorithm was associated with fewer daily visits to low-quality publishers, but seemed to have a similar effect on other publishers and, according to Facebook-provided data, had little effect on month-over-month traffic. We discuss limitations, open questions about platform impact, and directions for future work.

Манипулятивные приемы в кликбейтных заголовках интернет-СМИ

The paper deals with manipulative means in clickbait headlines of online media. The aim of the article is to distinguish and examine the used in implicit clickbaits manipulative means which help to cultivate the reader’s interest and make them pass to the article. The relevance of the current investigation is determined by a wide spread of clickbaits in media cyberspace, the users’ negative attitude to them and their constant evolvement for concealment and formal conformation to the criteria of non-blocked headlines. The analysed material comprises the clickbait headlines in online media whose announcements are presented on large Russian news aggregators. The material was selected within 2018-2022. The overall number of investigated materials is 3050 units. The material is analysed using such methods as introspection, conceptual modelling, unselected and purposive samplings and interpretative analysis. The analysed material shows that according to the degree of connection with the article clickbat headlines can be divided into 4 types: 1) clickbait headlines of “universal” wording applicable to texts with any content; 2) clickbait headlines which are not connected with the content of the article, 3) clickbait headlines connected with the content of the article via their non-sensational parts; 4) clickbait headlines reflecting the content of the article. Three first types are considered obvious clickbaits while the last one is an implicit clickbait. The manipulative means which give an opportunity to make a clickbait implicit include manipulation with word meanings, stylistic and grammatical manipulations, provoking logical mistakes, reticence, overstatement, neglecting the time factor, taking a statement out of context, substitution of concepts, assimilation of headlines to typical associations.

Effective News Text Summarization Techniques

n proposed work, we successfully implemented a news text summarization system using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques and the Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) algorithm. The purpose of our project was to extract important information from a large volume of news articles and present it in a concise and easily understandable manner. To achieve this, we utilized the LSA algorithm, which is known for its ability to capture the underlying semantic structure of text. LSA employs a mathematical model to analyse relationships between words in a document, creating a semantic representation where words with similar contexts are grouped together in a vector space. The LSA-based summarization process involved several steps. First, we pre-processed the news articles by removing stop words, punctuation, and other non-relevant elements. Then, we constructed a term-document matrix, where rows represented words and columns represented documents, with matrix values representing word frequencies. Next, we applied Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) to the term-document matrix. SVD helped reduce the matrix's dimensionality by identifying the most important latent semantic concepts. This resulted in a lower-dimensional representation that captured the essential information. Finally, we identified the most important sentences in the news articles by measuring the cosine similarity between each sentence and the summary. Sentences with the highest cosine similarity scores were selected as summary sentences. The proposed system demonstrated the effectiveness of the LSA algorithm for news text summarization. By capturing the semantic structure of the text, it generated summaries that allowed users to understand the key points of a news article quickly and easily. Our implementation had practical applications for content recommendation systems, news aggregation platforms, and personalized news feeds. However, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of the LSA algorithm. It may struggle with handling idiomatic expressions and can be sensitive to the quality of the input data. These considerations highlight the need for ongoing research and development to enhance the performance and robustness of news text summarization systems.

Algorithms patrolling content: where’s the harm?

ABSTRACT At the heart of this paper is an examination of the colloquial concept of a ‘shadow ban’. It reveals ways in which algorithms on the Facebook platform have the effect of suppressing content distribution without specifically targeting it for removal, and examines the consequential stifling of users’ speech. It reveals how the Facebook shadow ban is implemented by blocking dissemination of content in News Feed. The decision-making criteria are based on ‘behaviour’, a term that relates to activity of the page that is identifiable through patterns in the data. It’s a technique that is rooted in computer security, and raises questions about the balance between security and freedom of expression. The paper is situated in the field of responsibility of online platforms for content moderation. It studies the experience of the shadow ban on 20 UK-based Facebook Pages over the period from November 2019 to January 2021. The potential harm was evaluated using human rights standards and a comparative metric produced from Facebook Insights data. The empirical research is connected to recent legislative developments: the EU’s Digital Services Act and the UK’s Online Safety Bill. Its most salient contribution may be around ‘behaviour’ monitoring and its interpretation by legislators.

The Politics of Personalized News Aggregation

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Politics of Personalized News AggregationLin Hu, Anqi Li, and Ilya SegalLin Hu Search for more articles by this author , Anqi Li Search for more articles by this author , and Ilya Segal Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Just Accepted Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/724326 Views: 7Total views on this site HistoryAccepted January 20, 2023 © 2023 The University of Chicago. All Rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Strengthening the European Union by Regulating the Digital Single Market

Polarization of the society is nowadays easier than ever due to the strong influence of social media. Opaque algorithms personalize news feed of users through massive data processing and thus creating effects that are fueling extremization of opinions. Negative effects of social media can be used by third parties to influence society to achieve their goals, however antidemocratic. Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act aim to regulate Digital Single Market through fair competition and consumer protection regulation. This regulation can have significant impact on the democratic deficit of the European Union as it has potential to eradicate analyzed negative effects of social media on the polarization of society.

How Can Publishers Collaborate and Compete with News Aggregators?

Publishers face an existential threat from a variety of news aggregators, such as free aggregators (e.g., Google News, Yahoo News), micropayment-facilitating aggregators (e.g., Blendle), and subscription-charging aggregators (e.g., Apple News+). The authors seek to theoretically examine whether publishers can collaborate and compete with the different types of news aggregators and, if so, what pricing and content-sharing strategies publishers should pursue. In the absence of a news aggregator, publishers sell their content as a composite publication; this intensifies interpublisher price competition and hurts publishers’ profits. A free aggregator, however, could help unbundle the articles of a publisher. Moreover, if publishers share articles on the same topic with a free aggregator, they can completely eliminate interpublisher competition and replace it with competition between the aggregator and the publishers, but they only partially eliminate interpublisher competition if they share articles on different topics with it. Yet, the free aggregator needs to bring sufficient additional traffic to the publishers to motivate them to share content and collaborate with it. Conversely, publishers will be willing to collaborate with a micropayment-facilitating aggregator even if it does not bring additional traffic to the publishers. This is because a micropayment-facilitating aggregator helps publishers unbundle their content and price discriminate. Lastly, publishers can be motivated to collaborate even with a subscription-charging aggregator that is powerful enough to dictate the terms of the revenue-sharing arrangement with the publishers. This is because the subscription-charging aggregator improves its profits without hurting the publishers’ surplus.

Indonesia's Economic Diplomacy in Facing Red (Renewable Energy Directive) and European Union Palm Oil Policy

This study aims to examine Indonesia's economic diplomacy efforts in dealing with the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) and palm oil policies in the European Union. This economic diplomacy effort is a step to deal with the impact caused by policies implemented by the European Union. The method used is descriptive qualitative with data collection techniques in the form of literature review related to the problem under study. This literature includes books, journals, written reports, articles, news collections on the internet, and documents related to the object of research. Furthermore, the data analysis technique used is qualitative. The results found that in dealing with the policy, Indonesia used commercial diplomacy by cooperating with stakeholders to form FoKSBI, as well as making ISPO policies and suing the European Union regarding its claims

CONSTRUING THE NUCLEAR THREAT: The Relevance of Deterrence Theory in the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine was heating up. Russian military attacks succeeded in taking control of Zaporizhzhia, the major Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant. This mastery drew world criticism, especially from the West with its NATO, and was responded to by Russia by threatening to use nuclear weapons if another country intervened in the conflict. Threat imposed by Russia is relevant to be assessed by employing the Deterrence Theory. The aim of this study is to analyze and describe the relevance of the Deterrence Theory amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict. More specifically, this study is to conceive the possibility of the outbreak of nuclear war amidst the Russian threat. Qualitative methods are used in this research. The interpretation of the data becomes the basis for the analysis that comes from a series of interviews and based on literature studies. Collection of previous reference journals, books, and news from internet sources, all of which are used as secondary data. Conclusion of this study, bearing in mind mass destruction possibly caused by nuclear war, the outbreak of nuclear war between Russia and the NATO alliance is unlikely. The threats and bluffs paid off, at least for a time.

Civil-Military Collaborative Governance Model in Natural Disaster Management in National Defense Policy

By understanding that disasters are everyone's business, disasters are not only a civil matter, but the involvement of the military is necessary. Civil-military collaboration has proven capable of speeding up disaster management so that the number of victims and damage can be minimized. MOOTW (Military Operations Other Than War) can be carried out in harmony with social, technological and knowledge changes in society and provide cooperative assistance in disaster management. The aim of this study is to conduct an analysis and elaborate on the importance of Collaborative Governance in strengthening defense policies in disaster management. Qualitative methods are used in this research. The interpretation of the data becomes the basis for the analysis that comes from a series of interviews and based on literature studies. Collection of previous reference journals, books, and news from internet sources, all of which are used as secondary data. Conclusion of this study, Collaborative Governance in efforts to deal with natural disasters has been relatively good. However, several obstacles were found and it is hoped that this can be used as evaluation material for the future.

Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy: On the Ethical Dimension of Recommender Systems

Feasting on a plethora of social media platforms, news aggregators, and online marketplaces, recommender systems (RSs) are spreading pervasively throughout our daily online activities. Over the years, a host of ethical issues have been associated with the diffusion of RSs and the tracking and monitoring of users’ data. Here, we focus on the impact RSs may have on personal autonomy as the most elusive among the often-cited sources of grievance and public outcry. On the grounds of a philosophically nuanced notion of autonomy, we illustrate three specific reasons why RSs may limit or compromise it: the threat of manipulation and deception associated with RSs; the RSs’ power to reshape users’ personal identity; the impact of RSs on knowledge and critical thinking. In our view, however, notwithstanding these legitimate concerns, RSs may effectively help users to navigate an otherwise overwhelming landscape. Our perspective, therefore, is not to be intended as a bulwark to protect the status quo but as an invitation to carefully weigh these aspects in the design of ethically oriented RSs.

Blame the Internet, Not Online News Aggregators

“Facebook is not compatible with democracy,” declared Representative David Cicilline (D-R.I.) on Twitter. One might think that the Congressman was announcing the results of an investigation into the 2016 election when making that claim. Not so—the Congressman’s tweet was a reaction to Facebook’s decision to halt the sharing of news on its platform in Australia. According to Representative Cicilline, Facebook’s decision to forego carrying news links on its website to avoid paying a new tax to publishers was the equivalent of “bring[ing] an entire country to its knees.” Really?
 Australia’s link tax is one of many recent policy proposals that places online news aggregators such as Facebook in their crosshairs. In the quest to take on “Big Tech,” legislators and regulators have armed themselves with privacy law, antitrust law, copyright law, and, in a few states, even the Constitution. Moves to reduce the influence of technology platforms on the news require us to take a step back and consider whether we have accurately identified the causes of the challenges faced by the news media. Absent a clear-eyed understanding of the forces at play, any so-called solutions will surely miss the mark.
 This essay argues that is exactly what is happening. The real problem for news publishers is the internet itself, not online news aggregation. If anything, online news aggregation is a force that works in favor of news publishers by driving traffic to them that they can monetize through advertising, subscriptions, or both. Once that is understood, it becomes clear that current policy proposals that intend to force online aggregators to pay publishers to link to their content fail to grasp the economic relationship between news aggregators and news platforms and are ultimately counterproductive.

Abundance, range and movements of a feeding aggregation of gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) from California to southeastern Alaska in 1998

This study documents the range, abundance and movements of a feeding aggregation of gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) in the Pacific northwest. Identification photographs were collected by eight collaborating organisations between March and November 1998. Surveys extended between northern California and southeastern Alaska. Effort was variable by region and was concentrated off the northern Washington coast and Vancouver Island. Of 1,242 occasions when suitable photographs of gray whales were obtained in 1998, 155 unique whales were identified. Each individual was photographed an average of 8.0 times (SD = 8.4, range 1-42) and the average tenure of whales seen multiple times was 56 days (SD = 41, range 1-170). Whales seen longer than three months generally were seen in multiple regions. Movements among regions in 1998 were documented for 57 whales with the most frequent interchange among three adjacent areas from northern Washington to central Vancouver Island. The overall pattern of movements among regions was complex; whales were not always moving in the same direction at the same time of year. Movements within 1998 among more distant locations did occur but were less frequently observed. Total distances between resighting positions for individual whales ranged from < 1 to 526 n.miles. Most whales photographed in 1998 had been identified in previous years when compared to photographs collected by some of the collaborators. At least 86 (55%) of the whales identified had been seen previously. The rate of inter-year resightings was highest for whales identified off northern Washington and three areas off British Columbia (from southern Vancouver Island to north of Vancouver Island). In these areas, from 70-100% of the whales seen in each region had been photographed previously. Mark-recapture abundance estimates based on comparisons to samples in 1996 and 1997 were 181 and 179, respectively. The management implication for these whales has become controversial due to the resumption of whaling by the Makah tribe in northern Washington, an area used by both migrating and feeding whales. This research shows that there are a few hundred gray whales that range in summer months from at least northern California to southeastern Alaska. The mechanism by which these animals are recruited into this group and the degree to which they should be managed as a separate unit from the overall population is not resolved.