For approximately three years, I worked as an economics editor at one of Türkiye’s leading media organizations. During this period, I gained firsthand experience producing content for the digital platform of a well-established newspaper. This experience provided a valuable opportunity to directly observe some of the structural transformations shaping the digital media economy.
According to the traditional understanding of journalism, the primary function of media organizations is to produce news. However, within the contemporary digital media environment, news production alone is no longer sufficient. For news to generate economic and social value, it must also be visible—in other words, it must reach users. Consequently, competition within today’s media ecosystem is shaped not only by the production of news but also by its distribution and visibility.
The process of digital news production is no longer confined to journalists and editors. In order for news content to reach large audiences, software developers, SEO specialists, social media teams, data analysts, and mobile application managers have become integral parts of the production process. As a result, the success of a news story is measured not only by the quality of its content but also by its performance within digital distribution mechanisms.
WHO CAPTURES THE VALUE?
During my time as an editor, the internal performance data available to me indicated that a substantial portion of website traffic originated from search engines. Although detailed figures cannot be disclosed due to commercial confidentiality, this observation is consistent with trends reported in the international literature. From the perspective of media economics, these findings revealed a striking reality: while news organizations seek to expand their own digital platforms, a significant share of users do not access content directly. Instead, much of news consumption occurs through Google. In other words, although media organizations invest heavily in websites and mobile applications, user behavior remains largely dependent on the search and discovery mechanisms provided by digital platforms.
This situation creates a significant structural contradiction within the media economy. News organizations employ reporters, finance editorial processes, invest in technological infrastructure, and produce original content. Yet they rely on the visibility provided by platforms such as Google, Instagram, X, YouTube, and TikTok in order to reach audiences. Moreover, media organizations often depend on these same platforms to promote their own applications and digital services. As a result, content producers become dependent on user networks controlled by other companies in order to reach their own audiences.
This relationship can be analyzed through the framework of two-sided markets developed by Rochet and Tirole (2003). In two-sided markets, platforms generate economic value by bringing together different groups of users. Digital platforms such as Google connect users on one side with content producers on the other. News organizations require platforms to reach readers, while platforms benefit from news content in order to sustain user engagement. However, this relationship is not symmetrical. The conditions of visibility, the algorithms, and the rules of distribution are largely determined by the platforms themselves.
Within the digital economy literature, this phenomenon is commonly explained through the concepts of platform power and network effects. As user networks expand, they cease to function merely as distribution channels and increasingly become actors that determine the rules of market operation. In platform economies, growing user numbers make a platform more attractive to content producers, while greater content diversity increases its value for users. According to Rysman (2009), these indirect network effects provide significant competitive advantages to platforms that achieve early growth. The dominant positions of Google and Meta in digital markets can largely be explained through this mechanism.
FROM CONTENT TO AI SUMMARIES
Competition within newsrooms is not limited to journalism itself. There is also a competition for visibility. Updates to search engine algorithms, technical infrastructure failures, or changes in content-ranking systems can directly affect which news stories millions of people encounter. Increasingly, competition revolves less around news quality and more around access and visibility.
This transformation extends beyond changes in distribution channels; editorial processes themselves are increasingly influenced by algorithmic systems. The study conducted by Peukert, Sen, and Claussen (2024) on online news platforms demonstrates that the content users encounter is increasingly determined by algorithmic recommendation systems. While the study shows that algorithms can influence content visibility by analyzing user behavior, it also finds that human editors retain their importance, particularly in rapidly changing news environments and in contexts requiring the interpretation of news value. This finding suggests that competition in the digital media economy is shaped not only by news production itself but also by how, when, and with what degree of visibility news reaches users. These conclusions are also consistent with my own professional experience.
The rise of AI-powered search systems in recent years indicates that this relationship has entered a new phase. In the traditional model, users were directed to news websites through search engines. Today, however, an increasing number of users obtain summaries of the information they seek directly from artificial intelligence (AI) systems or from AI-generated answer boxes embedded within search engines. Consequently, the former model of “Google → News Website → User” is gradually being replaced by “Google → AI Summary → User.”
This transformation increases the distance between content producers and users while further strengthening the intermediary power of platforms. Nevertheless, AI systems continue to face challenges related to accuracy and timeliness, particularly in rapidly evolving news environments. They are also of limited usefulness for opinion columns, as they tend to generate perspectives reflecting the data and assumptions on which they were trained. However, the development of AI systems capable of more effectively modeling editorial judgment and journalistic values could significantly alter the existing balance of power.
PLATFORM DEPENDENCY
These developments have also revived broader debates surrounding digital capitalism within media economics. Through user data, advertising technologies, and network effects, digital platforms generate substantial economic value from the circulation of news content. Yet the extent to which this value is returned to content producers remains contested.
Türkiye’s Digital Copyright Bill, submitted to Parliament in 2026 and expected to become law in June of that year, represents one attempt to address this imbalance of power. While such regulations may strengthen the bargaining position of media organizations, they may not fundamentally alter the underlying dynamics of platform dependency. Through their design choices and control over large-scale data infrastructures, digital platforms have embedded certain patterns of consumer behavior within the attention economy. They have cultivated audiences accustomed to consuming short-form content. Platforms such as YouTube have also introduced premium ad-free subscription models, effectively encouraging independent digital news producers to rely on product placement and sponsorship arrangements.
Even if dependency on these platforms were reduced in the future, market participants would still confront consumption habits shaped by years of platform influence. New barriers may emerge on top of these established patterns, or existing behavioral norms may need to be dismantled before a new foundation can be constructed. Such transformations are often driven either by disruptive technological innovations or by major shifts in market strategy. From a Schumpeterian perspective, this process can be understood as one of creative destruction.
There is also a growing need for greater transparency regarding the algorithms employed by technology platforms. Several prominent examples illustrate the significance of this issue. Facebook temporarily blocked news content in Australia and Canada in response to legislative efforts requiring platforms to share revenue with news organizations when benefiting from their content. TikTok has been accused of reducing the visibility of content critical of the Chinese government. During the COVID-19 pandemic, YouTube removed videos featuring parliamentarians who challenged government quarantine policies. These examples highlight the considerable influence that platform governance can exert over the circulation of information.
The concrete consequences of these power relationships can also be observed in regulatory initiatives implemented across different countries. Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code (NMBC), enacted in 2021, became one of the most prominent regulatory responses to the power imbalance between news organizations and digital platforms. Facebook’s temporary restriction of news content in Australia demonstrated the extent to which relationships between news producers and users are mediated by platforms. The case revealed that the issue extends beyond revenue sharing and fundamentally concerns control over the infrastructure of distribution.
Today, the central struggle within media economics revolves less around the capacity to produce news and more around control over the point of contact between news and users. As AI-powered information systems continue to expand, this struggle is likely to become even more pronounced in the years ahead. Consequently, the fundamental challenge facing media organizations is not merely how to produce high-quality content, but also how to preserve the economic value of that content under evolving conditions of platform intermediation.
REFERENCES
- Seipp, T. J. (2021) News Media’s Dependency on Big Tech: Should We Be Worried? Internet Policy Review
- Peukert, C., Sen, A., & Claussen, J. (2024) The Editor and the Algorithm: Recommendation Technology in Online News, Management Science, 70(9), 5816–5831
- Rochet, J.-C., & Tirole, J. (2003) Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets, Journal of the European Economic Association, 1(4), 990–1029
- Rochet, J.-C., & Tirole, J. (2006) Two-Sided Markets: A Progress Report, RAND Journal of Economics, 37(3), 645–667
- Rysman, M. (2009) The Economics of Two-Sided Markets, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 23(3), 125–143
Leave a Reply