Jumping into the "blocked web", how fake news sites hurt audience trust, and Commission's review of the AVMS Directive

Friday, May 27, 2016      Future Media Lab.       0

 Continuing with our bi-weekly news roundup, Anna Capraro with Karin Fleming share the news that caught their eyes over the last two weeks. The news round-up is a way for the Future Media Lab. team and members of the Future Media Lab. network to share articles about innovations and developments in the media sector, including references to relevant media policy debates.

Here are Anna and Karin's choices for this week:

Getting to know the “blocked web”. As the use of ad blockers has continued to rise publishers are finding it necessary to get to know the “blocked web” – i.e. the Internet that ad block users see when browsing. With some predicting that ad blockers could cause publishers (in the US) to lose up to a third of their potential advertising revenues by 2020, the threat that ad blockers pose to publishers’ business models is very real. Last month, a meeting took place in New York between publishers, industry groups and platform representatives (though no providers of Ad Block technology) to discuss this threat. While the meeting was private, some of the take-aways have been made public, including the need to create new ways of engaging with users in order to off-set the inability to track users or agreeing to standardized page load times and number of premium ads per webpage.

Commission proposal for reviewing the AVMS Directive. Earlier this week, the European Commission presented a legislative proposal reviewing the current Audiovisual Media Services (AVMS) directive. The need to revise the directive is apparent with just this one tweet by Ryan Heath, Senior Correspondent of Politico, but newspaper and magazine publishers reacted to the announcement with strong concerns about the proposal to replace the current quantitative limitation of 12 minutes per hour of TV advertising, saying that this could negatively impact the financing of newspapers and magazines.

Putting video in the forefront. Online video is increasingly in-demand, with over 330 billion videos viewed across four main social platforms just in the month of March. From Buzzfeed’s “Tasty” videos to news analysis by NowThis, it’s clear that audiences want videos that are not just an add-on or second thought. It should be central to the news process, which would involve large shifts in the culture and structure of news production. If done well, this could particularly benefit local or regional news outlets.

Automated content: the future of news? A recent BBC report estimates that within 10 years over 90 per cent of all news will be automated, since data can be processed, analyzed and translated faster by machines than humans. Algorithms will increasingly play a role in collecting and sorting data, which means that it will be necessary to also explore the hidden biases they bring with them.

Publishers struggling in digital age. The spread of smart phones, social media, blogs, and the Internet in general has touched every aspect of the news gathering, reporting and distributing process. In an essay for Medium, freelance journalist Julien Sueres looks at the impact the digital era has had on two UK newspapers, The Guardian and The Sun.

Fake news sites impact audience trust in journalism. From stories that Yelp will be suing the creators of South Park and the UN will be recommending the decriminalization of weed to Nancy Reagan’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president, bogus stories can spread like wildfire online. Some websites post fabricated news pieces in a way that mimics actual news sites, which then cause them to be picked up by journalists, under pressure to deliver multiple news stories a day, who publish them on legitimate sites. The rise of social platforms also enables faux news to travel quickly.

Free tickets to press freedom conference in Wroclaw. In cooperation with various other journalist and publisher associations, the Future Media Lab. is organising a conference in Wroclaw, Poland on 1 July. The event, titled "(R)EVOLUTION OF EUROPE'S PRESS" will bring together top press freedom advocates across Europe in order to discuss the political, economic and technological challenges that impact a free and independent press in Europe.Free tickets are accessible until 31 May, so act now to reserve your seat!

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