Book talk: 'The Power of Platforms: Shaping Media and Society' with Prof Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Past Event

Date
 21 November 2023, 12:30pm - 1:30pm

Location
 Oxford Martin School & Online
34 Broad Street (corner of Holywell and Catte Streets), Oxford, OX1 3BD

Event Recording:

More people today get news via Facebook and Google than from any news organisation in history, and smaller platforms like X serve news to more users than all but the biggest media companies.

Large technology companies such as Facebook and Google – in competition with a few others including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and a handful of other companies elsewhere – increasingly define the way the internet works and thereby influence the structure of the entire digital media environment. But how do they exercise this power, how have news organisations responded, and what does this development mean for the production and circulation of news? What can relations between platform companies and news media tell us about the dynamics shaping current developments around artificial intelligence?

In this talk Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Misinformation, Science and Media, will explore the impact of big technology companies on journalism and our societies more broadly.

Nielsen Rasmus

Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Misinformation, Science and Media

Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

He is also Professor of Political Communication at the University of Oxford. He was previously Director of Research at the Reuters Institute and Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Press/Politics.

His work focuses on changes in the news media, on political communication, and the role of digital technologies in both. He has done extensive research on journalism, American politics, and various forms of activism, and a significant amount of comparative work in Western Europe and beyond.

Recent books include The Power of Platforms: Shaping Media and Society (2022, with Sarah Anne Ganter); The Changing Business of Journalism and its Implications for Democracy (2010, edited with David Levy), Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns (2012), and Political Journalism in Transition: Western Europe in a Comparative Perspective (2014, edited with Raymond Kuhn).

In 2014, he won the Doris Graber Award for best book on political communication published in the last ten years, awarded by the American Political Science Association, for Ground Wars. He is also recipient of the 2014 Tietgen Prize for his work on current changes in the news media.

He serves as a member of the editorial boards of Digital Journalism, the Journal of Information Technology & Politics and Social Media + Society. Nielsen is also a member of the RISJ's Steering Committee and the Chair of the RISJ Editorial Committee.