Mediated by the giants: Tracing practices, discourses, and mediators of platform isomorphism in a media organization

Abstract

News media are increasingly interwoven with social media platforms. Building on institutional theory, we trace the repercussions of the platform infrastructure inside a media organization by focusing on organizational discourses and practices in connection with the journalistic use of social media. The empirical material includes interviews, field notes, chat logs, and documents collected from a public service media organization during a 6-month on-site and virtual ethnography. The findings show how platform pressures intertwine with content production, audience representation, journalistic values, and organizational development, thus manifesting the infrastructuralization and institutionalization of platforms in the media industry. While the interviewees articulated tensions related to adopting social media, the fieldwork data revealed forms of mimetic and normative isomorphism, mediated by platform data and professional roles in the organization. Moreover, the platform infrastructure seems to cultivate both critical and aspirational talk in the organization, which implies a more complex relationship beyond coercive platform power.

“I love learning new things”: An institutional logics perspective on learning in professional journalism

“…Wu et al, 2019). This finding also speaks to previous research in the neo-institutional tradition that has directed attention to media organizations’ increased dependence on platform companies (e.g., Laaksonen et al, 2022). While on the macro-level media organizations seem to be showing isomorphic tendencies in their adaptation to the platform economy, analysis of the individual level shows that variance and even opposition to the institution of digital technology can still be found.…”

“…Later work by Lischka (2020) builds on this characterization by suggesting a technology logic in journalism: At its core, the same belief in digital technologies’ capacity to solve societal problems and thus, serve society. In newsrooms, this technology logic has been shown to be negotiated against a professional logic (Kosterich, 2019; Lischka, 2020; see also Laaksonen et al, 2022). Kosterich (2019) shows how journalism’s professional logic and the technology logic become fused in “news nerds,” a generation of media professionals who are driven by journalism’s democratic agenda and believe problems can be solved through technological applications.…”

“…In this study, we ask which institutional logics can be identified in professional journalists' descriptions of learning and how those logics manifest in their descriptions. Contrary to previous neo-institutional approaches that emphasize the relative stability of the institution of journalism (see e.g., Lowrey, 2011;Laaksonen et al, 2022), the institutional logics perspective highlights agency and accounts for change and diversity in the organizational field (Thornton et al, 2012). It is therefore a suitable framework for examining learning.…”

“…Learning as a process has received less attention from journalism scholars. Schunk (2014: 3) defines learning as “an enduring change in behavior, or in the capacity to behave in a given fashion, which results from practice or other forms of experience.” Apart from some studies that examine the process of learning in the newsroom (e.g., Stoker, 2020; Porcu, 2020; Laaksonen et al, 2022), surprisingly little is known about professional journalists’ learning amidst their daily work. This gap is partly explained by researchers’ focus on innovation as it is generally considered to be the source of competitive advantage for organizations as opposed to learning (e.g., Porcu, 2020).…”