Tech Giants, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of Journalism
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Tech Giants, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of Journalism This book examines the impact of the “Big Five” technology companies – Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft – on journalism and the media industries. It looks at the current role of algorithms and artifi- cial intelligence in curating how we consume media and their increasing influence on the production of the news. Exploring the changes that the technology industry and automation have made in the past decade to the production, distribution, and con- sumption of news globally, the book considers what happens to journal- ism once it is produced and enters the media ecosystems of the Internet tech giants – and the impact of social media and AI on such things as fake news in the post-truth age. The audience for this book are students and researchers working in the field of digital media, and journalism studies or media studies more generally. It will also be useful to those who are looking for ex- tended case studies of the role taken by tech giants such as Facebook and Google in the fake news scandal, or the role of Jeff Bezos in transforming The Washington Post. Jason Whittaker is the Head of the School of English and Journalism at the University of Lincoln. He worked for 15 years as a tech journalist and has written extensively on magazine journalism and digital media, most recently as the co-editor of the collection Online Journalism in Africa (2013) and as the author of Magazine Production (2016). Routledge Research in Journalism 19 News of Baltimore Race, Rage and the City Edited by Linda Steiner and Silvio Waisbord 20 The Trump Presidency, Journalism, and Democracy Edited by Robert E. Gutsche, Jr. 21 Russia’s Liberal Media Handcuffed but Free Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova 22 Critical Perspectives on Journalistic Beliefs and Actions Global Experiences Edited by Eric Freedman, Robyn S. Goodman, and Elanie Steyn 23 Economic News Informing the Inattentive Audience Arjen van Dalen, Helle Svensson, Anotinus Kalogeropoulos, Erik Albæk, Claes H. de Vreese 24 Reporting Humanitarian Disasters in a Social Media Age Glenda Cooper 25 The Rise of Nonprofit Investigative Journalism in the United States Bill Birnbauer 26 Tech Giants, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of Journalism Jason Whittaker For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge .com Tech Giants, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of Journalism Jason Whittaker NEW YORK AND LONDON First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Jason Whittaker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data CIP data has been applied for. ISBN: 978-1-138-49997-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-01375-8 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra To Sam for her patience and support Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction: Automatic for the People 1 1 The New Ecology 11 2 Distribute and Be Damned 39 3 Zombie Media: Alt-Journalism, Fake News, and Robot Editors 71 4 Turing’s Test: Automated Journalism and the Rise of the Post-Human Writer 99 5 Citizens: The Voice of the People in the Age of Machines 126 Conclusion: The Future of Journalism 163 Bibliography 173 Index 183 Acknowledgements This book has developed over a series of discussions with a num- ber of colleagues, students, and friends who have had the patience to sit through presentations and debates on various aspects covered in this book over the years. I would particularly like to thank Deborah Wilson-David, John Cafferkey, Ola Ogunyemi, Hayes Mabweazara, John Cafferkey, Gary Stevens, Rob Brown, and Julia Kennedy, as well as Eleanor Simmons and Felisa Salvago-Keyes at Routledge who helped to develop this book from initial idea through to final publication. Introduction Automatic for the People In August 2018, financial reporters around the globe became extremely excited at news that the tech company Apple had passed the $1 trillion mark in terms of its market capitalisation, the value of all its shares at that time. The BBC announced that it was “the first public company worth $1 trillion”, remarking that its shares had risen by more than 50,000 per cent since it had first been listed in 1980. Likewise, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Fortune, and many others remarked its status as the most highly valued company, at that time the most ex- clusive club in the world with one member, although on 4 September, Amazon briefly joined before dropping down to a mere $995 billion.1 The more carefully written of these stories tended to mention that this trillion-dollar record referred to a “publicly-owned” or “US” company, as Apple would at best be the second trillion-dollar company in history. As Forbes writer Lucinda Shen pointed out the previous November, the state-owned oil and gas producer, PetroChina, had briefly topped the magical mark on the Shanghai stock exchange in 2007.2 PetroChina also saw the biggest-ever stock market losses, with some $800 billion – or approximately the size of Italy’s stock market in 2017 – being wiped off its shareholder value. Incredible drops in oil prices, combined with plans to move towards alternative sources of power in China and a clampdown on excessive swings in Chinese stocks in the aftermath of the 2007 global financial crisis demonstrated the fragile nature of such high-risk speculation. It is no accident that a book on tech giants, artificial intelligence and journalism begins not with innovation and ideas but with the effect of share prices. In the business world, the value of the major technology companies is extremely significant news and, in many quarters, report- ing about technology is synonymous with financial journalism. In March 2017, Fortune ran a piece that is typical of the speculative opinion pieces familiar to anyone interested in such stories, betting on whether it would be Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, or Tesla that would hit the trillion-dollar mark first.3 With the exception of Tesla (whose name is only featured here because its char- ismatic but sometimes erratic founder, Elon Musk, suggested it), these 2 Introduction five companies will be returned to again and again throughout this title. Their value is a reflection of their power in a number of areas – including the ways in which we consume and perceive the media in the twenty-first century. For anyone sceptical about how important these companies are to contemporary society, it is worth reflecting on an article written by Ryan Derousseau at the time that Apple hit the magic target, and which noted five historical companies that would have been worth more. Leav- ing aside PetroChina, companies such as the Dutch East India Co., the British South Sea Co., and Standard Oil all had immense impacts upon the societies of their day – often enriching the countries in which they were based or bankrupting them as with the South Sea bubble.4 Apple has shown nothing remotely akin to the volatility the South Sea Co., nor even that of PetroChina and its trillion-dollar mark is unlikely to be its highest point. Since the second quarter of 2013 (when it briefly traded the top spot with Exxon Mobil), Apple has been the most highly valued company in the world according to its market capitalisation, rising from a value of nearly $416 billion at the beginning of 2013 to $921 billion by the end of 2017 according to the Fortune 500. Indeed, the value of the top ten companies worldwide at the end of 2017 was equally revealing as shown in Table I.1. Although Walmart dominated the Fortune 500 in terms of revenue (alongside petrochemical companies, energy conglomerates, and even car manufacturers), it was tech firms that held the top spots in terms of their overall market value. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the highest valued companies were energy giants such as Exxon Mobil, PetroChina, Gazprom, Royal Dutch Shell, and BP. The relative decline of oil prices in the second decade means that, Exxon aside, such companies have almost never made the top ten in recent years and that since 2011, a very noticeable change has occurred: the Fortune 500 in terms of market capitalisation has largely been dominated by Apple, alongside Microsoft Table I.1 Top ten valued companies in 2017 Company Market cap (2017, Fortune 500, billions) Apple 921 Amazon 765 Alphabet 750 Microsoft 746 Facebook 531 Berkshire Hathaway 492 JPMorgan Chase & Co. 388 Exxon Mobil 349 Johnson & Johnson 332 Bank of America Corp 315 Source: Fortune 500. Introduction 3 (the one consistent technology company to appear in this company since the 1990s), and regularly the top positions are held by Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon as these organisations jostle for the top spot of most highly valued company.