Jan Kreft

The main aim of the article is identification of the attitudes towards the processes of identification and verification of fake news in the environment of digital media. The subject of the research refers to the users’ attitudes towards fake news. As indicated by the research, the attitudes towards fake news are not unambiguous. About 2/3 of the respondents claim that they are not able to distinguish fake news from true information; only every twelfth respondent declares that they know tools for verification of information, although the research survey has been carried out among students of media management, journalism and marketing – students who deal with information in social media.

The consequences of co-creation of the value in media by the users

The usage of activities and emotions in the so-called background, the renaissance of pictography, crowdsourcing, gamification, geolocation, life-streaming and evolution of contactless technology – all of these terms are connected with the mass mobility of the media users and bring about the decline of the world of traditional mass media. Such are the consequences of progress in convergence and advancement of computing and telecommunication technologies. They may also be seen as signs of users’ activity, the result of co-creation of value for stakeholders and by stakeholders of media companies. Co-creation, which not only could, but should be administered.

The decline of traditional newspaper journalism and a new logic of media

The article is dedicated to the decline of traditional newspaper journalism analyzed from the perspective of media management and economics of the media. Journalism done in media organizations safely seated behind the entry barriers (to the individual media sectors). Journalism practiced in the context of stable jobs in the traditional paper media. The author presents the declining value of the work done by journalists in such organizations as well as internal and external factors of change, presented from the perspective of a new logic embedded in neoinstitutional media theory. Generalizations about the end of journalism “as we know it” are identified as the decline of existing business models of publications, the crisis of profitability of the traditional media organization, whereas technological development in the media, especially the one concerning distribution, is recognized as a new perspective and a chance for better and more independent journalism.
 

The power of media algorithms—between reification and the market

The aim of the article is to identify the power of algorithms interpreted as mythologized and reified culture machines which establish relations in the new media cyberspace of the algorithm culture.From the humanistic point of view, algorithms are understood as a relation between a code, project assumptions, the institutional and cultural context, and a user.

In digital media ecosystems, we consider the presence of algorithms to be indispensable, and we attribute them with the redemptive potential of compensating for human limitations—they are supposed to restrict the bias of media, to perform browsing tasks, to recognise patterns, and to provide data compression and automatic correction. All of this is done better, faster, and more accurately than if performed by people. 

The analysis of the significance of media algorithms, and of the digital media technologies in general, scarcely goes beyond the simple schemes according to which they come across as ultra-modern, neutral (although not easy to be recognised) elements of IT infrastructure and management in the eco-systems of new media. Usually, the role of algorithms in media is perceived in the way the management of Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other organisations would like to perceive it. Such organisations call themselves technological companies (not media organisations) without any influence on social attitudes and hence without any responsibility for them.

When viewed in the context of the discussion about responsibility of new media (technological) organisations in the post-truth environment, the interpretation of algorithmic solutions in the category of power becomes not only legitimized but also indispensable.