The Power of Platforms: Shaping Media and Society
平台的权力：塑造媒体与社会
Authors: Rasmus Kleis Nielsen（拉斯穆斯·克莱斯·尼尔森）、 Sarah Anne Ganter（莎拉·安妮·甘特）
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication Year: 2022
Pages: 272
About Book:
More people today get news via Facebook and Google than from any news organization in history, and smaller platforms like Twitter serve news to more users than all but the biggest media companies. In The Power of Platforms, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Sarah Anne Ganter draw on original interviews and other qualitative evidence to analyze the "platform power" that a few technology companies have come to exercise in public life, the reservations publishers have about platforms, as well as the reasons why publishers often embrace them nonetheless.
Nielsen and Ganter trace how relations between publishers and platforms have evolved across the United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. They identify the new, distinct relational and generative forms of power that platforms exercise as people increasingly rely on them to find and access news. Most of the news content we rely on is still produced by journalists working for news organizations, but Nielsen and Ganter chronicle rapid change in the ways in which we discover news, how it is distributed, where decisions are made on what to display (and what not), and in who profits from these flows of information. By examining the different ways publishers have responded to these changes and how various platform companies have in turn handled the increasingly important and controversial role they play in society, The Power of Platforms draws out the implications of a fundamental feature of the contemporary world that we all need to understand: previously powerful and relatively independent institutions like the news media are increasingly in a position similar to that of ordinary individual users, simultaneously empowered by and dependent upon a small number of centrally placed and powerful platforms.
如今，通过 Facebook 和 Google 获取新闻的人数，超过了历史上任何一家新闻机构的受众；即便是 Twitter 这样规模较小的平台，其服务的新闻用户数量也超过了除最大型媒体公司以外的所有机构。在《平台的权力》一书中，拉斯穆斯·克莱斯·尼尔森和莎拉·安妮·甘特利用一手访谈及其他质性证据，分析了少数科技公司在公共生活中所行使的“平台权力”（platform power），探讨了出版商对平台的顾虑，以及尽管如此他们往往仍拥抱平台的原因。
尼尔森和甘特追溯了美国、法国、德国和英国的出版商与平台之间关系的演变过程。他们识别出了随着人们日益依赖平台来发现和获取新闻，平台所行使的新的、独特的关系型权力（relational power）和生成型权力（generative power）形式。尽管我们所依赖的大部分新闻内容仍由供职于新闻机构的记者生产，但尼尔森和甘特记录了以下方面发生的剧变：我们发现新闻的方式、新闻的分发方式、关于展示（或不展示）内容的决策制定地，以及谁从这些信息流中获利。
通过考察出版商应对这些变革的不同方式，以及各类平台公司反过来如何处理其在社会中日益重要且充满争议的角色，《平台的权力》揭示了当代世界一个我们需要理解的根本特征的意涵：即像新闻媒体这样以往强大且相对独立的机构，正日益处于一种类似于普通个人用户的位置：它们同时被少数占据中心地位的强大平台所赋权，又不得不依赖于它们。
About Author：
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and Professor of Political Communication at the University of Oxford. His research is focused on the changing role of news and media in our societies. He has written extensively about journalism, digital media, the business of news, political communication, and related topics in dozens of scholarly articles, edited volumes, and books, including Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns. He is also the co-author of the annual Reuters Institute Digital News Report, and has provided expert advice to both governments and news media companies in several countries. His work has been covered by a wide variety of media all over the world, and he has written for El País, The Indian Express, The Washington Post, and several other publications.
Sarah Anne Ganter is Assistant Professor of Communication and Cultural Policy in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. She has published widely on media governance, digital policy and regulation, and journalism, and analyzes media and digital policy transformations from a theoretical perspective that focuses on the dynamics and interactions shaping institutional fields. Her work is published in scholarly journals, international book projects, and featured in various media outlets such as ABC Radio Australia, Rappler.com, The Hill Times, The National Post, The Seattle Times, and Tilt- UOL. Her co-edited book, Media Governance: A Cosmopolitan Critique, is forthcoming with Palgrave MacMillan.
编译：任艳林、刘鑫
