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Based on interviews with a strategic sample of 11 publishers in eight low- and middle-income countries, in this report we analyse how various digital publishers across a range of Global South countries approach digital platforms: both big platform companies such as Google and Meta; rapidly growing ones, including TikTok; and smaller ones such as Twitter and Telegram.
We highlight key shared aspects of their approaches that can serve as inspiration for journalists and news media elsewhere, in terms of how they see platforms (what we call ‘platform realism’), how they approach them in their day-to-day work (what we call ‘platform bricolage’), and key aspects of their overall approach (what we call ‘platform pragmatism’).
First, we show that our interviewees generally see platform companies through the lens of platform realism, based on five shared tenets, with platforms generally seen as:
- integral and inescapable parts of the digital media environment
- self-interested, powerful for-profit actors
- amorphous, ever-changing, and opaque in their operations
- in most cases not particularly interested in news (compared to other content)
- less engaged in smaller and/or poorer markets far from their corporate headquarters.
In terms of how they use platform companies for their own purposes, each of the publishers we interviewed has its own editorial mission and funding model and operates in a different context. These missions and models, as well as their contexts, inform different choices about how they engage with platform opportunities and manage the accompanying platform risks.
Beyond frequent use of search engines, social media, and other platforms in reporting, the main ways the digital publishers we interviewed use platforms include (a) distribution, (b) marketing, (c) monetisation, (d) back-end operations including analytics, and (e) audience engagement and community building.
It’s important to note here both the commonalities – all our interviewees used several platforms for several different purposes, and everyone engaged in at least some way with various parts of Google and Meta, even if sometimes reluctantly and in frustrating ways – and the differences.
We summarise the interviewees’ different approaches as platform bricolage, where digital publishers with necessarily limited resources – both in terms of money and access to developers – pick and choose which platform products and services it is worth integrating into the stack of other tools and technologies, whether off-the-shelf or bespoke, that they rely on to do their job. At the same time they remain keenly aware that platform products and services are tied to the strategic and commercial interests of the companies that provide them and are liable to change with little or no notice.
Platforms compete with publishers for attention, for advertising, and for consumer spending, and are often used in a wide range of ways both orthogonal and sometimes antithetical to the interests of journalists and news media (whether by individual creators or by political actors attacking independent reporters). But publishers can also use platforms for their own purposes.
The overall approaches the publishers in our strategic sample take to platforms have some commonalities that cut across different editorial priorities, funding models, and tactical choices in terms of which platforms are used for what – these commonalities can be summarised as platform pragmatism based on five broadly shared components:
- clarity about editorial mission, funding model, and target audience
- adaptability to a constantly changing environment and transient platforms
- selective and diverse investments in platforms to pursue key platform opportunities while hedging against platform risk
- proactive relations to identify useful contacts inside platform companies
- constant monitoring of the editorial and financial return on investment in platforms.
We hope these findings of how a strategic sample of digital publishers from the Global South with a demonstrable track record of success approach platform companies will be useful as an inspiration for publishers elsewhere.
Seguir leyendo: Reuters Institute
Imagen de Gerd Altmann en Pixabay
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Based on interviews with a strategic sample of 11 publishers in eight low- and middle-income countries, in this report we analyse how various digital publishers across a range of Global South countries approach digital platforms: both big platform companies such as Google and Meta; rapidly growing ones, including TikTok; and smaller ones such as Twitter and Telegram.
We highlight key shared aspects of their approaches that can serve as inspiration for journalists and news media elsewhere, in terms of how they see platforms (what we call ‘platform realism’), how they approach them in their day-to-day work (what we call ‘platform bricolage’), and key aspects of their overall approach (what we call ‘platform pragmatism’).
First, we show that our interviewees generally see platform companies through the lens of platform realism, based on five shared tenets, with platforms generally seen as:
- integral and inescapable parts of the digital media environment
- self-interested, powerful for-profit actors
- amorphous, ever-changing, and opaque in their operations
- in most cases not particularly interested in news (compared to other content)
- less engaged in smaller and/or poorer markets far from their corporate headquarters.
In terms of how they use platform companies for their own purposes, each of the publishers we interviewed has its own editorial mission and funding model and operates in a different context. These missions and models, as well as their contexts, inform different choices about how they engage with platform opportunities and manage the accompanying platform risks.
Beyond frequent use of search engines, social media, and other platforms in reporting, the main ways the digital publishers we interviewed use platforms include (a) distribution, (b) marketing, (c) monetisation, (d) back-end operations including analytics, and (e) audience engagement and community building.
It’s important to note here both the commonalities – all our interviewees used several platforms for several different purposes, and everyone engaged in at least some way with various parts of Google and Meta, even if sometimes reluctantly and in frustrating ways – and the differences.
We summarise the interviewees’ different approaches as platform bricolage, where digital publishers with necessarily limited resources – both in terms of money and access to developers – pick and choose which platform products and services it is worth integrating into the stack of other tools and technologies, whether off-the-shelf or bespoke, that they rely on to do their job. At the same time they remain keenly aware that platform products and services are tied to the strategic and commercial interests of the companies that provide them and are liable to change with little or no notice.
Platforms compete with publishers for attention, for advertising, and for consumer spending, and are often used in a wide range of ways both orthogonal and sometimes antithetical to the interests of journalists and news media (whether by individual creators or by political actors attacking independent reporters). But publishers can also use platforms for their own purposes.
The overall approaches the publishers in our strategic sample take to platforms have some commonalities that cut across different editorial priorities, funding models, and tactical choices in terms of which platforms are used for what – these commonalities can be summarised as platform pragmatism based on five broadly shared components:
- clarity about editorial mission, funding model, and target audience
- adaptability to a constantly changing environment and transient platforms
- selective and diverse investments in platforms to pursue key platform opportunities while hedging against platform risk
- proactive relations to identify useful contacts inside platform companies
- constant monitoring of the editorial and financial return on investment in platforms.
We hope these findings of how a strategic sample of digital publishers from the Global South with a demonstrable track record of success approach platform companies will be useful as an inspiration for publishers elsewhere.
Seguir leyendo: Reuters Institute
Imagen de Gerd Altmann en Pixabay
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