Do Facebook and Google Care about Journalism? Mapping the Relationship between Affordances of GNI and FJP Tools and Journalistic Norms

Abstract

This study engages in a sociotechnical analysis of Facebook and Google to understand the material means by which these corporations strive to engage journalists vis-à-vis their business models. Through affordance theory, we argue that interfaces of technological artifacts are manifestations of their implicit politics and ideology, given that affordances entail normative claims about what users should do. Our study draws from Google News Initiative and Facebook Journalism Project to explore: how the affordances of FJP and GNI tools allow particular behaviors and encourage certain journalistic norms to emerge? We analyzed nine journalist-oriented tools from FJP and GNI, by performing a discursive interface analysis. Findings indicate that FJP and GNI tools affordances can encourage four distinct journalistic norms: (1) successful journalism should circulate widely on platforms, (2) successful journalism should be aware of the ways competition is measured in FJP and GNI, (3) successful journalism should attract loyal readership as defined by platforms and (4) successful journalism should make money through platforms. We argue that FJP and GNI tools affordances can facilitate a form of platform schooling which, in addition to journalism schools and work environments, can might dictate what is and what is not “successful journalism.”

Keywords:

• Affordances
• platformization
• measurable journalism
• norm-making
• Facebook
• Google

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In GNI and FJP, the term “news publisher” is used interchangeably with the term “journalist.” The platforms and their tools are directed to both publishers and journalists, especially given the increasingly blurring boundaries that separate them in the digital journalism environment. Journalists nowadays cannot ignore audience data as journalists did in the past (Moller Hartley 2013). This points to a boundary blurring process between roles within newsrooms.

2 A tool is considered as a type of platform instance developed by engineers to help news organizations create platform-specific content (Nechustai 2018). “Platforms instances serve as stand-alone derivatives that each provide a distinct ‘view’ of the platform as a whole and offer different functionalities tailored to distinct user groups” (Nieborg and Helmond 2019, 199). Tools contribute to platforms’ overall data work while engaging in its own (ibid). FJP and GNI are powered by platforms and encourage journalists – as end users- to craft and distribute news stories and optimize performance while engaging with their audience (Nechustai 2018).

3 The information’s available in this table were retrieved from the FJP and GNI official webpages.

4 CrowdTangle granted access to our research team (2 members) in June 2021. Since 2019, CrowdTangle has partnered with academics to study public content on Facebook and Instagram.

5 Meta has recently announced that it will be retiring Instant Articles in April 2023. This stems from the declining interest of Facebook users in news content.

6 For journalists to utilize monetization tools on Facebook, they must pass and remain compliant with a set of rules called “Partner Monetization Policies and Content Monetization Policies”. The general policies are to create content on eligible surface, reside in an eligible country, follow Facebook community standards, follow Facebook monetisation policies, share authentic content, monetise authentic engagement, follow Facebook Payment Terms, develop an established presence. Information retrieved from Facebook Journalism Project official site.