Lecture in the "IKMZ Speaker Series", 25.03.2019, University of Zurich

1. Jan-Hinrik
Schmidt
@janschmidt
25.03.2019
IKMZ Zurich
HOW DO INTERMEDIARIES
SHAPE INFORMATION
MANAGEMENT AND OPINION
FORMATION ONLINE?

2. INTERMEDIARIES | JAN-HINRIK SCHMIDT | 2 / 12
WHO SAID IT?
„In just a few years the Internet has enabled us to realize the dreams of
Enlightenment philosophers, making our store of knowledge accessible to the
widest possible audience. Democracy and human rights have been reinforced,
States have been incited to greater transparency and, in some countries,
oppressed peoples have been empowered to make their voices heard and to act
collectively in the name of freedom.“ (Nicolas Sarkozy, welcome note, e-G8 summit, 05/2011)

3. 1
Media & Opinion Formation
(in a Nutshell)
The Media Logic of Online
Intermediaries
The Participation Paradox3
2

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MEDIA & OPINION FORMATION (IN A NUTSHELL) (*)
Forming, confirming or changing your
stance on issues of collective relevance
Gaining knowledge about events,
issues and alternatives
Assessing agenda and
framing of topics
Perceiving distribution of
opinions around you
How do online intermediaries affect
these aspects of opinion formation?
(*) See, for example, Scheufele/Tewksbury 2006; Schenk 2007

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MEDIA LOGIC OF INTERMEDIARIES
 Social Media act as intermediaries online: They
do not create the content they host, but
provide affordances for others to distribute /
find content
 Intermediaries prefer to be seen as „plat-
forms“, suggesting that they are mere facilita-
tors of communication and interaction (*)
 Intermediaries, however, have their own media
logic which is far from neutral, but rather has a
strong influence on information flow
(*) Gillespie 2010

6. INTERMEDIARIES | JAN-HINRIK SCHMIDT | 6 / 12
MEDIA LOGIC 1: DE-/RE-BUNDLING
 Social media platforms provide information
from different sources: professional
journalism, political parties and politicians,
corporate and brand communication,
celebrities, personal contacts,…
 They present them not as discrete packages
of content (i.e. „edition“; „news show“), but as
constantly updated flow of microcontent
(„streams“; „feeds“; „autoplay“)
 Selection and filtering is moving from editors
to users and to algorithms (with largely
unknown & intransparent parameters)

7. INTERMEDIARIES | JAN-HINRIK SCHMIDT | 7 / 12
MEDIA LOGIC 2: PERSONALIZATION
 Social media platforms personalize
information repertoires:
a) Users‘s individual network of
contacts is unique;
b) Filter and recommendation
algorithms draw on previous
activities and metadata to suggest
further content and contacts
 Promise of personalization: „better“ and
„more relevant“ content (including
advertisement)
 But: personalization requires extensive data
collection and might lead to filter bubbles

8. INTERMEDIARIES | JAN-HINRIK SCHMIDT | 8 / 12
MEDIA LOGIC 3: CONVERGENCE OF MODES
• Social media platforms support both „publication“ and
„conversation“ – two modes of communication which
previously have been confined to separate media
a) Publishers increasingly rely on social media to distribute
their content and gain audiences
b) Active users comment, share, retweet, like, etc. these
stories

9. INTERMEDIARIES | JAN-HINRIK SCHMIDT | 9 / 12
DYSFUNCTIONAL SCENARIOS
 Filter Bubble Scenario: Social Media provides people
only with information in line with previous interests
 Echo Chamber Scenario: Social Media allows people
to remain in (or retrench to) groups which constantly
affirm their established opinions and world views
 Hate Speech Scenario: Social Media fosters spread
of harmful, racist, hostile, sexist, … communication
impeding constructive debates
 Learnings from empirical studies(*): Scenarios…
 …need particular combination(s) of
psychological, sociological and technological
factors
 …apply for certain groups and contexts, but not
as a general pattern for all users
Retweet Networks; ~ Q1 2017
http://digitalpresent.tagesspiegel.de/afd
(*) e.g. Dubois/Blank 2018; Ernst et al 2017; Flaxman et al. 2016; Fletcher/Nielsen 2017;
Heatherly et al. 2017; Mocanu et al. 2015; Schmidt et al. 2019

10. INTERMEDIARIES | JAN-HINRIK SCHMIDT | 10 / 12
THE PARTICIPATION PARADOX
 Participating in conversations,
sharing experiences and
opinions
 Standing up for community
standards by flagging offensive
content, reporting fake news
and profiles
 Deciding about rules and
structures of shared
communicative spaces
 Harvesting user-generated
content and data as essential
part of business models
 Exploiting work done by
users without adequate
compensation
 Hedging users in
commercialized and un-
democratic „golden cages“

11. INTERMEDIARIES | JAN-HINRIK SCHMIDT | 11 / 12
CONCLUSION
 Online intermediaries promise to broaden access to diverse
information, to gain insights into the distribution of opinions
within extended social networks, and to be able to express &
debate one‘s opinion on topics of broader relevance
 On the other hand, they afford the emergence of isolated and
fragmented clusters of users as well as the spread of harmful
and destructive speech
 Key challenges for media policy include:
 Enforcing transparent filtering & recommendation mechanisms
 supporting citizens in gaining „intermediary literacy“
 stimulating alternatives to data-&-ad-driven business models

12. Dr. Jan-Hinrik Schmidt
Rothenbaumchaussee 36, 20148 Hamburg
j.schmidt@leibniz-hbi.de
www.leibniz-hbi.de
www.schmidtmitdete.de
THANK YOU!

13. INTERMEDIARIES | JAN-HINRIK SCHMIDT | 13 / 12
REFERENCES
Slide 4
 [Billag] http://www.werbewoche.ch/medien/2018-03-06/tamedia-analyse-erklaert-wuchtiges-nein-zur-no-billag-initiative
 [Flüchtlinge] Christian Michelides - Eigenes Werk, CC-BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44805655
Slide 8:
 [Konversation]: CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0, Dominic Dada, http://www.flickr.com/photos/ogil/274628990/
Slide 10:
 [Sharing] CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, Stephen Desroches, http://www.flickr.com/photos/focusedonlight/2795746704/
 [Demonstration] CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, Dom Dada, http://www.flickr.com/photos/ogil/1842123447/
 [Barcamp] CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, Nathanael Boehm, http://www.flickr.com/photos/purecaffeine/1226101959/
Extended Bibliography
 Dubois, E., & Blank, G. (2018). The echo chamber is overstated: The moderating effect of political interest and diverse media. Information, Communication & Society, 21(5), 729–745.
doi:10.1080/1369118X.2018.1428656
 Ernst, N., Engesser, S., Büchel, F., Blassnig, S., & Esser, F. (2017). Extreme parties and populism: An analysis of Facebook and Twitter across six countries. Information, Communication & Society,
20(9), 1347–1364. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2017.1329333
 Flaxman, S., Goel, S., & Rao, J. M. (2016). Filter bubbles, echo chambers, and online news consumption. Public Opinion Quarterly, 80(S1), 298–320. doi:10.1093/poq/nfw006
 Fletcher, R., & Nielsen, R. K. (2017). Are news audiences increasingly fragmented? A cross-national comparative analysis of cross-platform news audience fragmentation and duplication. Journal
of Communication, 67(4), 476–498. doi:10.1111/jcom.12315
 Gillespie, Tarleton (2010): The politics of ‚platforms‘. In: New Media & Society, 12(3), 347-364
 Gillespie, Tarleton (2018): Custodians of the Internet. Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media. New Haven.
 Heatherly, K. A., Lu, Y., & Lee, J. K. (2017). Filtering out the other side? Cross-cutting and like-minded discussions on social networking sites. New Media & Society, 19(8), 1271–1289.
doi:10.1177/1461444816634677
 Mocanu, D., Rossi, L., Zhang, Q., Karsai, M., & Quattrociocchi, W. (2015). Collective attention in the age of (mis)information. Computers in Human Behavior, 51, 1198–1204.
doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.01.024
 Pariser, Eli (2011): The Filter Bubble. New York.
 Schmidt, Jan (2011): Das neue Netz. Merkmale, Praktiken und Konsequenzen des Web 2.0. Konstanz.
 Schmidt, Jan (2018): Social Media. 2. Auflage Wiesbaden.
 Sunstein, Cass (2009): Republic.com 2.0. Princeton.
 Schmidt, Jan-Hinrik / Lisa Merten / Uwe Hasebrink / Isabelle Peters / Amelie Rolfs (2019): How Do Intermediaries Shape News-Related Media Repertoires and Practices? Findings From a
Qualitative Study. In: International Journal of Communication, Vol. 13 (2019), S. 853-873.