Stress tested by news: do empty platforms make the least sound?

So-called legacy media still informs a great deal of debate on platforms 

by Rob Corbidge

Published: 16:59, 05 December 2024

Moments of media sobriety seem few and far between currently, and it's understandable in disputed times. South Korea's coup-not-coup blip brought one such moment for me this week, as seeing tumult reported in Seoul, I checked the website of Yonhap, the pretty reliable South Korean state news agency.

The brevity of its report revealed the seriousness of the situation. Like a short radio broadcast, giving the facts only as known and indicating where uncertainty was. Straight away, the magnitude of what was occurring was utterly apparent. In a world with what sometimes feels like an excess of information, less in this case was more.

Testing X's claim that "You are the media" didn't prove that fruitful in this example when attempting to drill down for further information. Some South Korean accounts had posted video of masked troops wrestling with protesters or troops smashing windows, and that video quickly spread. South Korea's opposition leader posted a video of himself climbing the walls of their parliament to get in, which is pretty memorable stuff. Yet there was little context for what was occurring, until after about 30 minutes of my initial news alert, it was a subscription source, The Wall Street Journal, that posted a readable report, with some background.

It was tempting to see how North Korea's KCNA news agency was covering events. Would we see a smile flit around the lips of Ri Chun-hee, the infamously furious newsreader?

It was equally the case this week with the news that Syrian rebels had taken Aleppo, seemingly out of nowhere. Again, the same contextless videos, impactful in that they were depicting some seismic events, but with the who and how missing. It was a specialist website, Middle East Eye who provided me with the first report about what was known, what was unknown and what seemed likely.

As a former foreign news editor, I realise there's little money in foreign coverage, even if those who do consume it are an important group. The fact is, it's still not an area where the platforms' user-produced content can provide much in the way of wider understanding, even if impactful videos get millions of views. That is changing, but quite slowly. Some of the news efforts on TikTok are certainly gaining traction. Yet to understand the high note, you need to understand the song.

This train of thought was actually prompted by some new data around Bluesky, indicating an increase in publisher engagement on the platform. This is unsurprising news of course, given the developing era of platform partisanship. If "you are the media" then you're looking a lot like the awful legacy media did - politically opinionated. It's not the medium that matters, it's the humans. No actual audience figures are given in the report, and all such audience platform data must be treated like a plutonium blancmange, with great caution, yet it's clear that something of a factional migration has occurred. 

I fail to see the downside of another X emerging. Like Mao, I say "Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend." Except for schools of thought, I'd say platforms. More competition means more demand for content, and content providers will benefit. In my wildest moments I can think of a world in which the platforms have to crawl to publishers to fill their endless space, and how satisfying a "no" might be.

It's the old idea of "in a gold rush, manufacture shovels", even if your coverage favours one side of a debate over another, hate reads or watches are still traffic. Without good source materials, platforms are often still hyper-charged comment sections.