(Left) Veronika Jermanova, Communications Intern at EMMA/the Future Media Lab..

In the most recent edition of our bi-weekly news roundup, Veronika Jermanova shares the news that caught her eye in the past 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 Veronika’s choices for this week:

1) Last week the heads of state and government in the European Council adopted conclusions that emphasized the importance of all the dimensions of the Commission’s Digital Single Market strategy, including “ensuring a high level of protection of intellectual property rights and taking into account cultural diversity, and help creative industries to thrive in a digital context”. The debate about copyright reform has become increasingly intense ahead of the European Parliament’s plenary vote on the own-initiative report by MEP Julia Reda, on 9 July. MEPs in the JURI Committee – who made major changes to Ms Reda’s original draft report - have noted the need to balance users’ and rightsholders’ interests. The #copyrightforfreedom campaign, which is generating support from a wide range of stakeholders - including authors, publishers, writers, artists, photographers, translators, booksellers, news agents, readers and consumers - stresses that copyright is more important than ever in a digitized world and underlines in particular the importance of copyright for freedom of expression.

2) Publishers have been trying a number of trends in order to maximize the experience of their readers and a new article from the European Journalism Observation highlights eight digital features that they think are increasingly important in the digital age, from homepage customisation that acknowledges the increasing demand for personalisation online to a new method for text-streaming that adapts content for a more comfortable reading experience on mobile device. In a combination of the two, Spritz introduced a technique where consumers can choose the speed at which words are shown on their screen. This allows consumers to read content without touching the screen or moving their eyes while reading an article. Test it yourself here.

3) A recent study by José Moreno, Multimedia Director at Motorpress Lisboa, titled ‘The economic and social value of information in the network society’, finds that the move from analogue to digital content has caused a decrease in the economic value of information. This is due to the fact that information can be digitally shared by any device and as presented in digital format, it also loses its’ marginal cost. This may explain why publishers have always struggled with getting people to pay for online content, especially when it seems to be a given that printed content (even the same content!) should be purchased. Lars Rose, chairman of Klambt Media Group, calls this conflict the digital dilemma of the magazine sector in the 2014-2015 EMMA Magazine (summarized here).

4) Online platforms are increasing their versatility by experimenting with different offerings in order to keep their users happy and engaged with new, atypical services. For instance, soon you might be able to read your favourite book through Instagram. Apple has also expanded its repertoire by launching its own streaming service Apple music which will rely on the gamble that consumers will pay for streamed music. Initially, Apple was planning on launching this new service without paying artists for the 3-month consumer trial, but quickly changed its tune (haha) after Taylor Swift wrote a blog post decrying the plan.

5) Algorithms are increasingly determining what content is consumed by users, resulting in the heightened importance of platforms when it comes to sharing content. Last week, Facebook announced that it has changed its algorithm so that they are able to change not only the way people view videos in their newsfeed, but also what videos they get to see. Facebook explained the change by saying that it wants to provide videos related to users’ interests (i.e. customization) and that this new algorithm serves to limit clickbait. Facebook predicted that users should not be able to see a difference in amount of videos in their News Feeds, but it remains to be seen whether this will change.

6) If you haven’t already read the 2015 Reuters Digital News Report, which highlights some of the major trends in digital news you should. In addition to our summary of the main findings, highlights can be found here and here.

7) The Nieman Lab has put together a collection of videos from the most recent Newsgeist conference, which took place in Helsinki. The Google-hosted event brought together some of Europe’s top media minds to look at everything from wearable technology to digital security for journalists.

Read something that you think needs to be shared? Please send me an e-mail: [email protected]