Abstract
In his new book, Matthew Hindman argues that there are currently two internets in existence. The first is the imagined Internet: a cultural representation of the Internet as a level playing field of digital distribution, where big and small online companies have equal access to audiences. The other Internet is the real one we interact with on a daily basis. An Internet where small start-ups have no chance of challenging established giants, such as Facebook, Google and Amazon. It is this Internet and the current digital economy that is the subject of the book.
Throughout the book, Hindman presents statistical data that clearly suggest that media diversity is not expanding on the Internet, even though many economic and political actors think it is. Because of the massive economic resources of especially Google and Facebook, the giants of the digital economy are able to make their contents and services stickier. Stickiness refers to a site’s ability to attract and keep audiences, and rests primarily on one thing: speed. Internet giants spend billions on hard- and software infrastructures that solidify their superiority over competitors with slower loading times and little to no resources dedicated to infrastructure.
The second half of the book is dedicated to presenting the implications of this digital inequality by focusing on the current state of online local news outlets in the United States. While local news outlets have been previously able to support themselves on local advertising, online advertising rests on an outlet’s ability to reach a large audience. Thus, a key part of an online local news outlet’s revenue is diminished and their ability to contribute to public discourse is weakened. This, Hindman argues, presents a severe democratic problem, if all public discourse takes place in the heavily surveilled infrastructures of Google and Facebook – infrastructures that are very susceptible to attacks from troll farms around the world.
In the penultimate chapter, Hindman presents strategies to make news outlets stickier. His key point is that news outlets need to invest in infrastructure and staff that can properly analyse the flow of web traffic. The stickiness of news sites is improved by focusing on two things: making webpages load faster, and by updating sites more frequently with new content. Every online news outlet needs to have audience growth as their top priority. As Hindman explicates throughout the book, the only sites with stable traffic are the giants. If a small site is not continually growing its audience, Google and Facebook will eventually consume it.