What Happens When Platforms Mediate the Audience–Journalism Relationship?

Abstract

The research problem in this chapter is how the platform-mediated audience–journalism relationship is changing the understanding and the locus of journalism. The chapter introduces two key drivers, platformization and blurring of journalism’s boundaries, and applies the drivers to construct four explorative scenarios: New Gatekeeper Regime, Harmonic Platform Diversity, Balkanized Media System, and Tyranny of Attention. Explorative scenario building serves as a method to construct a wide scope of possible developments, in which the role of both journalism and its operational environment vary significantly. The four scenarios underline that the future of professional journalism, or its audience relationship, does not merely lie in the hands of journalists nor the traditional media institutions. Instead, it lies in people and technology and their interaction, which means judgments made by audience, legislators, corporations, and institutions will affect which of the characteristics introduced in these possible futures will dominate, and which will be submissive.