Readers have a way of coming up with questions that you did not think of. They asked some interesting ones: will I stop exploring the problems posed by digital conglomerates of Silicon Valley if Indian mainstream newspapers were to witness a huge spurt in their circulation figures, a ‘Modi bump’ akin to the ‘Trump bump’ in the U.S.? Are my primary concerns about these ‘platform’ companies siphoning the monies that would otherwise have come into the newspaper industry? Why do I lay emphasis on the processes that put out information in the public sphere, rather than the information itself?
It is important for the readers to know that no newspaper worth its salt, or its cover price, merely lists facts, statements, data, and policy proclamations. Editorial judgment decides what constitutes news. One of the central elements in this process is the act of verification, a theme that has been explored at length in these columns, an act which distinguishes news from all other forms of information. It is evident that to carry out this task in an independent manner, newspapers need to be financially sustainable. The lopsided distribution of advertising revenue between newspapers that deploy people to produce news and ‘platform’ companies that merely display news produced by others but garner the lion’s share of the revenue should worry concerned citizens. I would be as pleased as Punch if India were to witness a ‘Modi bump’ in the sales of newspapers. However, as long as technology conglomerates retain power to determine the flow of information, my worries about them will not disappear.
Problem with the term ‘platform’
The Platform Press, a study by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, has established that Google, Apple, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube are now publishers. The study flags four crucial questions: how do we report on a system of power, if journalism is embedded within it? How do we fix incentives for journalism on the social Web? How do we resolve the difficulty of editing at scale? And what is the role of public policy and regulation in this news ecology? There has been no real answer from technology conglomerates to the fundamental question posed by the study: with most technology companies expanding their business into areas such as aerospace, automotive, telecom, and national security, “can journalism hold the new nodes of power accountable when they are dependent on them for distribution, audience, and money?”
I am not comfortable with the term ‘platform press’. This renders them a neutral carrier, which they are not. Tarleton Gillespie, an academic with Cornell University and whose work on algorithms’s role in organising information leads us to hitherto unexamined assumptions about popularity, relevance, and value, has nailed the problem of using the term platform to describe Silicon Valley giants. His argument is that ‘platform’, a metaphorical term, is inadequate to describe these companies because “metaphors don’t just highlight a comparison — they also downplay the aspects they don’t capture.”
Mr. Gillespie’s basic assertion is this: “Platforms are not flat open spaces where people speak or exchange; they are intricate and multi-layered landscapes, with complex features above and dense warrens below. Information moves in and around them, shaped both by the contours provided by the platform and by the accretions of users and their activity — all of which can change at the whim of the designers.”
His crucial argument is that the term platform helps these companies avoid questions about their responsibility for their public footprint. He feels that the suggestion of an impartial between-ness of the term platform is a false notion to preserve. He thinks that European policymakers are at least trying to push responsibility onto platforms, even though in untested ways. His most startling observation is that platform hides all of the labour necessary to produce and maintain these services. He expands the metaphor to bring out its limitation: “Are platforms also shopping malls, or bazaars? Amusement parks, or vending machines? Nests, or hives? Pyramids, or human pyramids?” On behalf of our readers, I have to keep asking questions till we find convincing answers.
readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
