Commercial media platforms and the challenges to public expression and scrutiny

Abstract

This chapter argues that media platforms are productively understood as media engineering companies. Corporations like Facebook and Google build platforms that structure the expressions, rituals and logistics of public life. It contributes to critical theories of public interest communication by considering how the engineering projects undertaken by media platforms like Google and Facebook challenge how we understand the public interest role of media organisations. The chapter focuses on Google and Facebook and argues that they are the two transformative media corporations whose engineering projects are reconstructing what media are and how they intervene in public life. It also argues for a critical account of media platforms and the public interest that follows the strategic investments and directions of the platforms themselves. The chapter considers the implications of ‘mood’ and ‘voting’ experiments for how we understand the relationship between media platforms’ data-driven engineering and the public interest.