Pivot to What? the Metajournalistic Discourse Surrounding Facebook‟S “Push to Video” Trevor Hook December 2020 Dr. Ryan Th
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PIVOT TO WHAT? THE METAJOURNALISTIC DISCOURSE SURROUNDING FACEBOOK‟S “PUSH TO VIDEO” TREVOR HOOK DECEMBER 2020 DR. RYAN THOMAS PIVOT TO WHAT? THE METAJOURNALISTIC DISCOURSE SURROUNDING FACEBOOK‟S “PUSH TO VIDEO” Dr. Ryan Thomas Prof. Ryan Famuliner Acknowledgements I would like to thank my chair Dr. Ryan Thomas and committee member Ryan Famuliner for their invaluable assistance in the completion of this master‟s project. Their help was vital in completing a project which has been undertaken in, as said many times elsewhere, an unprecendented time. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 Literature Review .......................................................................................................... 4 Facebook, Algorithms, and Journalism ......................................................................... 4 Facebook as an Irregular Gatekeeper ............................................................................ 6 The Philosophical Fault Lines between Facebook and Journalism ................................ 7 Facebook‟s Impact in the Practice of Journalism ........................................................ 11 Metajournalistic Discourse ......................................................................................... 13 Research Question...................................................................................................... 14 Method ......................................................................................................................... 15 Research Design......................................................................................................... 15 Textual Analysis ........................................................................................................ 16 Sampling and Data Collection ............................................................................ 16 Coding Procedures ............................................................................................. 17 Semi-structured Interviews ......................................................................................... 18 Sampling and Data Collection ............................................................................ 18 Coding Procedures ............................................................................................. 19 Trustworthiness .......................................................................................................... 20 Researcher‟s Role ...................................................................................................... 20 Findings ........................................................................................................................ 21 iii Publishers Made Important Decisions Directly Because of Facebook ......................... 21 The Pivot to Video Did Not Work.............................................................................. 24 Facebook Acted in Misleading, Opaque, or Dishonest Ways ...................................... 26 Online Video is Not Inherently Bad ........................................................................... 28 Discussion ..................................................................................................................... 31 Limitations ................................................................................................................. 32 Directions for Future Research ................................................................................... 33 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 33 References .................................................................................................................... 34 Appendix ...................................................................................................................... 38 iv PIVOT TO WHAT? THE METAJOURNALISTIC DISCOURSE SURROUNDING FACEBOOK‟S “PUSH TO VIDEO” Trevor Hook Dr. Ryan Thomas, University of Missouri-Columbia ABSTRACT This study combined textual analyses and qualitative interviews to explore the discourse among journalists regarding the industry‟s “pivot to video,” a trend which saw mass layoffs of non-video journalists in favor of hiring video producers to increase video production. Analysis of the texts and qualitative interviews uncovered four themes: the failure of the pivot, the influence of Facebook over publishers to follow the trend, journalists‟ perception of deceptive behavior by Facebook, and the acknowledgement that online video does have a place in modern media despite the failure of the trend. These findings provide insight into how journalists made sense of their industry‟s changing agency during the pivot, and how journalists ultimately made sense of the changing media landscape at the time. v Introduction Facebook has had a measurable and long-lasting impact on the practice of modern journalism. On June 23, 2014, Facebook announced that its News Feed algorithm would be changed to increase the visibility of video published to the platform (Bell et al., 2017). Two years later, Facebook made financial deals with 140 video creators like Buzzfeed and the New York Times to produce content for Facebook Live. Madrigal and Meyer (2018) argue that more than 350 journalists from national media companies were laid off from 2016 to 2018 due in part to Facebook‟s incentives to produce video content. In “The Facebook Rescue that Wasn‟t,” Bell (2017) shows an expectation that Facebook was going to play a role in the future of local journalism: The publishing tools and hosting services Facebook offers for free are compelling. But in sparse or poorer areas, they do not allow for the traditional civic bargain of the local press, wherein the businesses and individuals who can afford to advertise, in effect pay for the journalism that covers a community (p. 21). Bell‟s report looked at the online presence of four small, locally-focused newsrooms over a two-month period and determined that Facebook could only work as a platform for those publishers if the cost of advertising was to increase or if advertising revenue from social media could be more directly transferred to those organizations. Partially in response to pushback by journalists about the negative effects of the platform on local journalism, Facebook announced plans to invest $300 million to support news content, with an emphasis on local news (Brown, 2019). 1 There has been research about the measurable impacts of Facebook in news production, such as the research of Tandoc and Maitra (2018), which provides evidence that news organizations increased the number of videos uploaded directly to the platform following changes to the platform‟s algorithm promoting those videos. The authors wrote that “faced with a „threat of invisibility‟ on Facebook... news organizations have to play by Facebook‟s rules if they do not want to risk losing audiences” (p. 1691). This also forced the newsrooms to adjust their content to meet the specific demands of auto- playing native videos, which encourage brevity and the use of captions and subtitles. There has also been research on the metajournalistic discourse – that is, the discourse about journalism within journalism – surrounding Facebook‟s role in the news ecosystem. Carlson (2018) asserts that Facebook qualifies stories for its Trending Topics section not through editorial judgment, but user activity: In doing so, popularity becomes the key criterion for inclusion as a Trending Topic rather than an effort at identifying story importance or content diversity. To make this happen, Facebook leans heavily on algorithms not as powerful actors but as tools that actualize user preferences (p. 18). However, there has not been research investigating the metajournalistic discourse surrounding Facebook‟s efforts to promote the creation of video content on its platform, both through direct financial incentives and adjustments to the platform‟s algorithm to favor video content. This research sheds light onto the platform-related ethics surrounding Facebook, and the changing autonomy possessed by journalists and media organizations in the social media age. This research also explores the increasing role of platforms as gatekeepers of journalistic content, and the relative loss of autonomy to the 2 field as a whole as newsrooms change their news priorities and practices to align with that of Facebook and other platforms like it. The purpose of this research is to explore the metajournalistic discourse regarding Facebook by focusing on the evolving perspectives of journalistic “thought leaders” as Facebook altered its own algorithm to promote video content. This was done through the combination of textual analyses of articles written by identified thought leaders, which then informed semi-structured follow-up interviews with technology journalists who have also written about the pivot to video. The interviews sought to understand their thoughts on Facebook as it relates to journalism, including their opinions about the perceived power Facebook has as a platform over journalism, the perceived effects of Facebook‟s “push to video” in various newsrooms, and how their thoughts and attitudes have changed towards Facebook (if at all) and if so, why. 3 Literature Review This literature review will explore the ways that Facebook affects journalism, namely through