Day: March 12, 2017

Fox attempts to knock back the argument that the Murdochs, or more correctly the Murdoch Family Trust, will have under their control several of the leading news providers in the UK after the deal. It notes the separation between broadcast and print businesses, while pointing out that both companies have their own boards and independent shareholders.

Source

The UK is currently looking at the division of labor in news production and circulation being even tighter. This apparently concerns a lot of people, including the UK Government.

Gillespie says that the production of information can only be handled by proxies in the division of labour. To do so otherwise would be too mammoth a task given the size of our country

“some produce and select information, and the rest of us, at least in that moment, can only take it for what it’s worth”.  (Gillespie, 2012 p 25)

And yet, when considering the fundamental importance of a single search engine’s algorithm in putting news and content in front of the information consumer, Google’s market share is not prominent in the headlines, despite it account for 88% of UK search engine activity in January 2017 according to Statista.com

(source)

This comes down to a number of reasons, but one which I’d be interested in exploring is that the technology is not understood by law makers. Unlike traditional media who have actively sought to lobby and influence and gain power in the UK political arena, tech companies give the appearance at least, of enjoying staying out of the limelight and just getting on with what they do. I suspect the latter part of that is naive, I’m sure they do plenty lobbying too, but I don’t see a google doodle appearing any time soon stating “It was google what won it” in reference to a general election result.