The media is reeling from insurgents almost as much as the politicians. During last year’s US elections, podcasters like right-wing American polemicist and interviewer Joe Rogan (20 million subscribers on YouTube) emerged as just as important – if not more so – than America’s traditional broadcasters and newspapers. Other journalists are striking out on their own, leaving the well-funded embrace of media magnates and public broadcasters.
Meanwhile, a clash is coming across the western world between the old and the new, between politicians who want to regulate social media the way they’ve regulated the broadcasters, and the social media giants who’ve discovered a new appetite for free speech.
With digital media representing the future and legacy broadcasters the past, what does all this mean for public knowledge? Has the public confidence in the rigour and usefulness of the news media declined in a permanently damaging way? Has the technological and economic disruption of the media business affected journalism’s ability to hold institutions accountable? Will the business of serious reporting vanish? Or will it take new forms and adapt, with newspapers merely growing their audiences online even as sources of their revenue change?
Who determines what information is considered important after the traditional bundle of news has been dismantled? What are the implications for social cohesion, the health of our democracies, and public policy making?
