The Tech-Media Hybrid - by Qun Wang

About the Book

"Founded in 1998 as a site to organize the Web, the founders of Google did not conceive of news as a core part of their search engine or business model. This all changed on September 11, 2001. Google quickly recognized that traditional news media was not suited to the new digital environment, nor could it respond to the desire for online news. For both economic and brand-building reasons, news, Google realized, would be crucial to the site's growth. Google soon created Google News, imbuing it with new values and technologies such as automation, algorithms, aggregation, and the de-bundling of content. The result has been that Google News has become a primary gateway and aggregator for news and has played a major role in shaping the news and information ecosystem of the twenty-first century. In The Media-Tech Hybrid: Google's News Ambition, Qun Wang examines a series of related questions including how Google developed its news-related business and its relationship with the news industry over the past two decades; How Google exercised power in the news landscape in the digital age; and what are the implications for policymaking and the future of the news industry. In describing Google's relationship to news, Wang analyzes changes in Google News's homepage, patent law, the global governance of the Internet. She argues that Google normalizes and differentiates from established journalistic practices in ways that ignore, push against, and solidify traditional news values relating to objectivity, fairness, and providing a public service"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Google is typically thought of as a tech giant and the world's largest search engine, but it was also among the first tech companies to invest in news. After 9/11, the company recognized the economic and social value of up-to-the-minute information and began to incorporate news into its business. Google News--built on automation, algorithms, aggregation, and the unbundling and rebundling of news--and Google's other news-related initiatives went on to play a major role in shaping the information ecosystem of the twenty-first century.

In The Tech-Media Hybrid, Qun Wang examines Google's engagement with news across more than two decades, tracing the company's complicated relationship with the news industry. She shows how Google developed a push-and-pull relationship with the media sector, boosting its visibility while also competing against it and establishing new norms. What the company calls the "Google way" of experiencing news has exerted a profound influence on traditional media; Google's news ambitions, in turn, have been shaped by the global news industry's actions and reactions at every step. Shedding new light on the vast transformations of the past quarter century, this multimethod interdisciplinary book also offers insight into how the news environment might evolve in the era of AI.

About the Author

Qun Wang, a former TV anchor, journalist, and news director, is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University.