(Left) Karin Fleming, Communications Manager at EMMA/the Future Media Lab..

In the most recent edition of our bi-weekly news roundup, Karin Fleming 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 Karin’s choices for this week:

1) In the UK, the EU committee in the House of Lords launched an inquiry into the power of online platforms and how they impact consumers and businesses, with a particular focus on issues of transparency, competition, data protection laws and social effects. The inquiry is planned to feed into the European Commission’s probe into the role of platforms across Europe. Online platforms play an increasingly important role in finding, ranking, organising, sharing and accessing information online, with the potential to radically transform the way media is consumed. This issue will also be examined in more depth at the upcoming Future Media Lounge session, taking place on 29 September in the European Parliament.

2) The launch of Apple’s iOS9 earlier this week, leading to a surge in new apps that allow users to block ads on mobile websites, which is a feature of the new operating system. Following the launch, several of these paid-for ad-blocking apps have topped the charts in the App Store. While many consider this a ploy by Apple to attack Google’s ad revenues, this development could have disastrous consequences for small- or medium-sized publishers, many of which rely on advertising in order to create quality content.

3) As the internet slowly kills off TV, with online advertising expected to surpass TV adspend by 2017, media professionals at comScore’s industry summit on the future of audiences and advertising ask: is the future of TV programmatic?

4) AVG, the leading provider of antivirus software, changed its privacy policy to allow for the sale of (anonymised) search and browser history data to advertisers. While AVG argues that this move is necessary in order to continue to provide free antivirus software - and that this practice is done by other antivirus software providers who just aren’t as transparent about it - the implications it could have on consumer privacy is troubling, particularly in light of the fact that the expectations of privacy from consumers is split from what data is being collected in practice.

5) Consumer engagement has changed dramatically in the digital age. Consumers are now able to curate their own news feeds, create their own content, schedule when and where they will watch what, and distribute shared content on their own terms - often commenting or critiquing it at the same time. As Lindo Ong, CEO and Founder of TruthCo. put it: “Content is king, but consumers are king-ier.” This has had a huge impact not only on the editorial process - who should create what content when - but also on the business models of media.

6) Given that technology has advanced the power of consumers, curation is the future for trusted news sources. In the INMA blog series, “Satisfying Audiences”, Maria Terrell, director of content at PressReader, argues that gathering feedback is key to understanding audiences. After all, with new technology also comes new annoyances, such as the overuse of push notifications or concealing native advertising as editorial content, making it even more necessary to understand what news audiences want.

7) US media organisations have now joined the debate on last year’s “right to be forgotten” ruling following an order French regulators sent to Google in May instructing Google that delisted links must be removed from all of its domains worldwide. The struggle comes down to the right of audiences to information and the right to privacy in an increasingly interconnected world.

 

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