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This book examines the impact of the "Big Five" technology companies - Apple, Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft - on journalism and the media industries. It looks at the current role of algorithms and artificial intelligence in curating how we consume media and their increasing influence on the production of the news.
Exploring the changes that the technology industry and automation have made in the past decade to the production, distribution and consumption of news globally, the book considers what happens to journalism once it is produced and enters the media ecosystems of the internet tech giants - and the impact of social media and AI on such things as fake news in the post-truth age.
The audience for this book are students and researchers working in the field of digital media, and journalism studies or media studies more generally. It will also be useful to those who are looking for extended case studies of the role taken by tech giants such as Facebook and Google in the fake news scandal, or the role of Jeff Bezos in transforming The Washington Post.
The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351013758, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
List of contents
Introduction: Automatic for the People
Chapter 1: The New Ecology
Chapter 2: Distribute and Be Damned
Chapter 3: Zombie Media: Alt-Journalism, Fake News and Robot Editors
Chapter 4: Turing’s Test: Automated Journalism and the Rise of the Posthuman Writer
Chapter 5: Citizens: The Voice of the People in the Age of Machines
Conclusion: The Future of Journalism
Selected Bibliography
About the author
Jason Whittaker is Head of the School of English and Journalism at the University of Lincoln. He worked for fifteen years as a tech journalist and has written extensively on magazine journalism and digital media, most recently as co-editor of the collection Online Journalism in Africa (2013) and as the author of Magazine Production (2016).
Summary
This book examines the impact of the so-called Big Five technology companies – Apple, Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft – on the media landscape more generally and journalism in particular. It considers the impact of social media and AI on such things as fake news in the post-truth age.
