{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title":"If...Then Algorithmic Power and Politics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2017054909","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","uuid":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title":"If...Then Algorithmic Power and Politics","normalized_title":"ifthenalgorithmicpowerandpolitics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2017054909","isbns":["2017054909","9780190493042","9780190493059"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":211,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/If...Then%20Algorithmic%20Power%20and%20Politics","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/search"},"page":{"printed_page":131,"pdf_page":141,"physical_index":141,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"edb1d72b93a09171249609a93294e1edbe9f49c26709b0827ae72dce3b1053d8"},"chapter":"IF...THEN","content":"Ingeborg Volan, then director of innovation and newsroom development at Norway’s oldest newspaper Adresseavisen, shares this sentiment, suggesting that the landscape of journalism has changed profoundly with regards to digital media. Traditional newspapers were constrained by their technological afordances: “You simply could not print personalized newspapers for every subscriber,” says Volan. These technological constraints are now largely gone, and with it, an obvious rationale for producing the same paper for everyone. After all, Volan says, “Not all of our readers are alike. People’s interests vary a lot, and they read diferent things” (Interview 4, August 2016). This does not mean, however, that Volan thinks journalism should simply cater to people’s tastes and likes. “I don’t think anyone would want that,” she says when I ask her to elaborate on the power of users and readers to shape the news. It is not that power has shifted from editors to users— or to algorithms and data analytics for that mater. Although algorithms and social media platforms certainly challenge the privileged position news media organizations have historically occupied, they also provide a renewed opportunity for reaching people. As Volan sees it, it’s not an either or, but rather a question of careful realignment.\n\nBETTER WORKFLOWS\n\nThe interviews also suggest that the potential of algorithms is strongly linked to their role in organizing news work, particularly with regard to being perceived as strategic change agents. From a managerial point of view, algorithms ofer an opportunity for speeding up the production cycle, making journalistic practices more eficient and news more consumer-oriented. It has, for example, become a fairly common practice for journalists to track their performance by monitoring how well their articles are doing in terms of readership and distribution. At the Danish newspaper Politiken, journalists and front desk editors are equipped with dashboards that help monitor and analyze how well specific articles and stories are doing. There are a few staple software systems that most organizations tend to use, including Chartbeat for tracking user behavior on site in real time, and Comscore or Google analytics for analyzing those data. Often elements from these “of-the-shelf” products are combined and adapted to the specific needs and interests of the organization in custom-made software solutions. As Anders Emil Møller, then director of digital development at Politiken, explains, dashboards and analytics software are important working tools that provide journalists with a beter understanding of their work processes. It may even give them a sense of success and agency, given that they are able to beter understand when an article is doing particularly well or what they may have to change to increase performance. A system like Chartbeat is used to monitor how much time a reader spends on a particular article and where he/she might move next. In this sense, software systems and dashboards become an epistemic tool, enabling an understanding of journalists’ own performance, or the behavior and interests of readers. In addition, they are used to realize the expectations that exist at the managerial level about what constitutes good news work. When asked whether the many diferent metrics and tracking mechanisms might possibly drain journalists in their work, Møller says these systems are merely there to help and support journalists to do the best they can (Interview 5, March 2014). Møller suggests that these systems may even support journalists in promoting their own work. For example, tracking systems are able to give journalists leverage to argue for a more prominent position on the front page, based on the metrics provided. In this sense, the dashboards and the metrics supplied by diferent analytic tools become imbued with discursive power used to negotiate with the front desk.\n\nProgramming the News\n\n131","previous_page":130,"next_page":132}