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This book brings together a diverse, international array of contributors to explore the topics of news “quality” in the online age and the relationships between news organizations and enormously influential digital platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Covering topics ranging from internet incivility, crowdsourcing, and YouTube politics to regulations, algorithms, and AI, this book draws the key distinction between the news that facilitates democracy and news that undermines it. For students and scholars as well as journalists, policymakers, and media commentators, this important work engages a wide range of methodological and theoretical perspectives to define the key concept of “quality” in the news media.

Facebook, a platform created by undergraduates in a Harvard dorm room, has transformed the ways millions of people consume news, understand the world, and participate in the political process. Despite taking on many of journalism's traditional roles, Facebook and other platforms, such as Twitter and Google, have presented themselves as tech companies—and therefore not subject to the same regulations and ethical codes as conventional media organizations. Challenging such superficial distinctions, Philip M. Napoli offers a timely and persuasive case for understanding and governing social media as news media, with a fundamental obligation to serve the public interest.Social Media and the Public Interest explores how and why social media platforms became so central to news consumption and distribution as they met many of the challenges of finding information—and audiences—online. Napoli illustrates the implications of a system in which coders and engineers drive out journalists and editors as the gatekeepers who determine media content. He argues that a social media–driven news ecosystem represents a case of market failure in what he calls the algorithmic marketplace of ideas. To respond, we need to rethink fundamental elements of media governance based on a revitalized concept of the public interest. A compelling examination of the intersection of social media and journalism, Social Media and the Public Interest offers valuable insights for the democratic governance of today's most influential shapers of news.

Media scholarship has responded to a rapidly evolving media environment that has challenged existing theories and methods while also giving rise to new theoretical and methodological approaches. This volume explores the state of contemporary media research. Focusing on Intellectual Foundations, Theoretical Perspectives, Methodological Approaches, Context, and Contemporary Issues, this volume is a valuable resource for media scholars and students.

Today's consumers have unprecedented choice in terms of the technologies and platforms that access, produce, and distribute media content. The development and overlap of television, the internet, and other media technologies is fragmenting and empowering media audiences more than ever. Building on his award-winning book, Audience Economics, Philip M. Napoli maps the landscape of our current media environment and describes its challenge to traditional conceptions of the audience. He examines the redefinition of the industry-audience relationship by technologies that have moved the audience marketplace beyond traditional metrics. Media providers, advertisers, and audience measurement firms now deploy more sophisticated tools to gather and analyze audience information, focusing on factors rarely considered before, such as appreciation, recall, engagement, and behavior. Napoli explores the interplay between political and economic interests in the audience marketplace and their effect on audience evolution. He recounts the battles waged between stakeholders over the assessment of media audiences and their efforts to restrict the functionality of new technologies. As Napoli makes clear, the very meaning of the media audience continues to evolve in response to changing technological, economic, and political conditions.

Questions concerning the quality of media performance and the effectiveness of media policymaking often revolve around the extent to which the media system fulfills the values inherent in diversity and localism principles. This edited volume addresses challenges and issues relating to diversity in local media markets from a media law and policy perspective. Editor Philip M. Napoli provides a conceptual and empirical framework for assessing the success/failure of media markets and media outlets in fulfilling diversity and localism objectives.Featuring well-known contributors from a variety of disciplines, including media, law, political science, and economics, Media Diversity and Localism explores the following topics:•media ownership and media diversity and localism;•conceptual and methodological issues in assessing media diversity and localism;•minorities, media, and diversity; and•contextualizing media diversity and localism: audience behavior and new technologies.This substantive and timely volume speaks to scholars and researchers in the areas of media law and policy, political science, and all others interested in media regulation. It can also be used in a graduate seminar on media policy topics.

Focusing on the electronic media—television, radio, and the Internet—Audience Economics bridges a substantial gap in the literature by providing an integrated framework for understanding the various businesses involved in generating and selling audiences to advertisers. Philip M. Napoli presents original research in order to answer several key questions: • How are audiences manufactured, valued, and sold? • How do advertisers and media firms predict the behavior of audiences?• How has the process of measuring audiences evolved over time?• How and why do advertisers assign different values to segments of the media audience?• How does audience economics shape media content?Examining the relationship between the four principal actors in the audience marketplace—advertisers, media firms, consumers, and audience measurement firms—Napoli explains the ways in which they interact with and mutually depend on each other. He also analyzes recent developments, such as the introduction of local people meters by Nielsen Media Research and the establishment and evolution of audience measurement systems for the Internet. A valuable resource for academics, students, policymakers, and media professionals, Audience Economics keeps pace with the rapid changes in media and audience-measurement technologies in order to provide a thorough understanding of the unique dynamics of the audience marketplace today.