64 Distribute and Be Damned
country. At the time of writing, Google at least has been attempting to
make inroads, although its censored search engine, “Project Dragonfly”,
has also come under intense pressure from the Trump administration.
89
The current digital duopoly is very much a USA-centric story, just as
previous media monopolies focussed on Europe and America, and it is
by no means impossible that a future media monopoly platform could
be Chinese in origin.
Leaving to one side such speculation, in terms of the immediate circumstances for media production, it is clear that the aggressive tactics
of Facebook and Google over the past decade are forcing a re-evaluation
of how content providers operate. This chapter has spent a great deal of
time discussing advertising because that has been the primary means of
commercialising activities such as journalism for a period of a century
or more: beginning in the late nineteenth century and exploding in the
twentieth century, especially via broadcast media, advertising became
the magical model by means of which to provide content to an audience
for (virtually) free. While print publishers bemoan – rightly – the effect that the Internet has had upon their business models, it was broadcast which first educated its audience that it was possible for the news
to be given away. In the digital era, Facebook and Google have simply
been more effective at implementing the advertising model, providing
a wider reach to advertisers at greatly reduced costs. The relationship
between media and advertising had, for Habermas, been instrumental
in the transformation of the public sphere away from its liberal role of
providing a voice for wider audiences: citing Bücher, he remarked sourly
that “the paper assumes the character of an enterprise which produces
advertising space as a commodity that is made marketable by means of
an editorial section”.
90
Such cynical manipulation had already weakened the open discourse that Habermas believed characterised the early
stages of the public sphere well before the rise of digital technologies, but
these have even presented difficulties for the continuation of an attenuated form precisely because platforms have grown into such significant
monopolies. Boeder’s observation that the public sphere might be close
to complete collapse is probably, as he himself admits, something of an
exaggeration;
91
yet, trust in mediated communications – as frequently
expressed as a hatred of the mainstream media – has never seemed so
prevalent.
It is far too simplistic to place the blame for such distrust entirely at
the feet of the digital duopoly discussed here, but one reason for it stems
from the frenetic pace at which media producers have left behind many
previous norms of “objective” reporting in the struggle to gain readers
who can be monetised. It is becoming clear that advertising – at least as
a sole source of revenue – is failing such companies as a business model.
Victor Pickard predicted in 2009 that advertising-supported journalism
would soon be dead.
92
One reaction, entirely understandably, has been
country. At the time of writing, Google at least has been attempting to
make inroads, although its censored search engine, “Project Dragonfly”,
has also come under intense pressure from the Trump administration.
89
The current digital duopoly is very much a USA-centric story, just as
previous media monopolies focussed on Europe and America, and it is
by no means impossible that a future media monopoly platform could
be Chinese in origin.
Leaving to one side such speculation, in terms of the immediate circumstances for media production, it is clear that the aggressive tactics
of Facebook and Google over the past decade are forcing a re-evaluation
of how content providers operate. This chapter has spent a great deal of
time discussing advertising because that has been the primary means of
commercialising activities such as journalism for a period of a century
or more: beginning in the late nineteenth century and exploding in the
twentieth century, especially via broadcast media, advertising became
the magical model by means of which to provide content to an audience
for (virtually) free. While print publishers bemoan – rightly – the effect that the Internet has had upon their business models, it was broadcast which first educated its audience that it was possible for the news
to be given away. In the digital era, Facebook and Google have simply
been more effective at implementing the advertising model, providing
a wider reach to advertisers at greatly reduced costs. The relationship
between media and advertising had, for Habermas, been instrumental
in the transformation of the public sphere away from its liberal role of
providing a voice for wider audiences: citing Bücher, he remarked sourly
that “the paper assumes the character of an enterprise which produces
advertising space as a commodity that is made marketable by means of
an editorial section”.
90
Such cynical manipulation had already weakened the open discourse that Habermas believed characterised the early
stages of the public sphere well before the rise of digital technologies, but
these have even presented difficulties for the continuation of an attenuated form precisely because platforms have grown into such significant
monopolies. Boeder’s observation that the public sphere might be close
to complete collapse is probably, as he himself admits, something of an
exaggeration;
91
yet, trust in mediated communications – as frequently
expressed as a hatred of the mainstream media – has never seemed so
prevalent.
It is far too simplistic to place the blame for such distrust entirely at
the feet of the digital duopoly discussed here, but one reason for it stems
from the frenetic pace at which media producers have left behind many
previous norms of “objective” reporting in the struggle to gain readers
who can be monetised. It is becoming clear that advertising – at least as
a sole source of revenue – is failing such companies as a business model.
Victor Pickard predicted in 2009 that advertising-supported journalism
would soon be dead.
92
One reaction, entirely understandably, has been