More people today get news via Facebook and Google than from any news organisation in history, and smaller platforms like X serve news to more users than all but the biggest media companies.

Large technology companies such as Facebook and Google – in competition with a few others including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft , and a handful of other companies elsewhere – increasingly define the way the internet works and thereby influence the structure of the entire digital media environment. But how do they exercise this power, how have news organisations responded, and what does this development mean for the production and circulation of news? What can relations between platform companies and news media tell us about the dynamics shaping current developments around artificial intelligence?

In this talk Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Misinformation, Science and Media, will explore the impact of big technology companies on journalism and our societies more broadly.

The Power of Platforms: Shaping Media and Society with Prof Rasmus Kleis Nielsen