PLATFORM OR PUBLISHER?

摘要

The fundamental problem is that social media platforms that are playing an increasingly central role in the production, dissemination, and consumption of news and information are - if we accept the technology company identity - essentially independent and distinct from the news and information ecosystem that they mediate. Accepting this argument means that these important platforms for news and information will exist outside of the bounds of regulatory authority that have, since the dawn of the age of electronic media, been able to exert at least some influence over the structure and behaviour of the key participants in the news and information ecosystem. In which case, we have a "discourse [that] serves to shape an institution that it fails to describe".