[AISWorld] MISQ Call for Papers: Special Issue - The Institutional Press in the Digital Age

[Brad Greenwood]

Hello All:

This is a general reminder that the deadline for the MISQ Special Issue on
the Institutional Press is December 1, 2024 at 11:59pm EST. Due to
constraints, no extensions can be granted. Details of the special issue can
be found below.
-Greenwood

Call Location: https://misq.umn.edu/call_for_papers/institutional-press

Motivation for the Special Issue
“The influence of the liberty of the press does not affect political
opinions alone, but it extends to all the opinions of men, and it modifies
customs as well as laws.” (De Tocqueville, 1864, p. 230)

Over the last 20 years, ongoing waves of digitalization have decimated the
traditional business model of the news and fundamentally changed how the
news, or more formally, the ‘institutional press’, works. Indeed, ever
since reserved frequencies were gifted to television broadcasters in the
1950s, on the condition that they inform the public of current events, the
subsidy underpinning newspapers and other forms of institutional media has
slowly eroded. Like many other industries, the internet has accelerated
this phenomenon. Not only has the hyper-targeted advertising facilitated by
social media and other platforms functionally eroded the subsidy model to
its breaking point (Anderson et al., 2015; Angelucci & Cagé, 2019;
Gentzkow, 2014; Seamans & Zhu, 2013); but the costless transmission of data
facilitated by the internet has increased geographic scope of dominant
players (e.g. The New York Times), permitting them to reach beyond their
original markets and squeeze content producers across the globe (Brock,
2013; George & Waldfogel, 2006). Against this backdrop, it is hard to
overstate the importance of this “crisis of the institutional press”
(Reese, 2020). The news provides our primary means for understanding the
world around us. Societies desperately need a well-functioning
institutional press to tackle the many societal, economic, and
environmental challenges we all face.

The first day of core MIS undergraduate or MS/MBA classes usually begins
with one of four motivating examples: the decline of incumbent sellers
(e.g. Blockbuster Video, malls, taxis) in favor of digital platforms (e.g.
Netflix, Amazon, Uber), the increasing irrelevance of diseconomies of scale
and the rise of digital monopolies (e.g. Google, Microsoft), the rise of
social media and user generated content (viz. Web 2.0 and 3.0), or the
decline of the newspaper industry. Yet, as these classes continue to
discuss the opportunities firms have in the digital age (seamlessly
changing prices, directly engaging with consumers via social media), and
teach students to implement advanced analytics to more effectively mine
business value from data, the decline of institutional media often fades
into the background.

This phenomenon-driven special issue is motivated by the view that our
students, colleagues, and society urgently need a better understanding of
the causes and consequences of the changing nature of news in the digital
era and potential solutions going forward. The special issue takes an
interdisciplinary perspective, bringing together insights from across the
broader information, managerial, and organizational sciences.

This failure to discuss the implications of the decline of institutional
news media is troubling. Not only has the Fourth Estate historically served
to counterbalance institutions with a monopoly on force and morality (e.g.,
the state and church), it has been a cornerstone of democratic republics
for centuries. In 17th Century England, the philosopher John Locke railed
against the Licensing and Press Act of 1662, claiming that “gagging a man,
for fear he should talk heresy or sedition, has no other ground than such
as will make chains necessary.” In the United States, James Madison
declared the free press as “the only effectual guardian of every other
right.” In the balance, Western Marxists criticized the singular power of
institutional media, seeing it as an instrument for ideological control
(Marcuse, 1964).

These claims are not idle musings. News media outlets have been shown to
influence many societal outcomes, from government agendas (Edwards & Wood,
1999; Walgrave et al., 2008), to public opinion (Gamson & Modigliani,
1989), to voting behavior (Druckman, 2005). The Fourth Estate mediates the
attention granted to social movements (Andrews & Caren, 2010) and can
influence the strategic management of organizations (Bednar, 2012; Bednar
et al., 2013). Institutional media can also prompt changes in corporate
governance (Dyck et al., 2008): it can shape the valuation of firms at IPO
(Pollock et al., 2008), influence firm founding (Greenwood & Gopal, 2015),
confer legitimacy on industries (Zilber, 2006), and even elevate de novo
technological innovations in the public consciousness (Miranda et al.,
2022; Wang & Swanson, 2008).

Yet, seismic changes have assaulted the free press as we understand it. The
late 20th century witnessed an increasing concentration in ownership of
news outlets, leading to elevated reliance on advertising revenue that
biased content (Gilens & Hertzman, 2000; Herman & Chomsky, 1988; Lazarsfeld
& Merton, 2000). The recent history of the institutional press is
interwoven with the history of digital technology. Initially, the World
Wide Web served largely as a vehicle for the dissemination of news produced
by professional news organizations, extending their reach (George &
Waldfogel, 2006; Shoemaker & Reese, 1996). In time, the ensuing competition
for reader attention shifted the gatekeeping function previously served by
professional news organizations to portals – or online content curators
(Hargittai, 2000). Contemporary media coverage became more selective
(Oliver & Maney, 2000) and influenced by market actors (Ahern & Sosyura,
2014; Bail, 2012). With the advent of social media, user-generated content
further usurped the gatekeeping role of professional news organizations,
specifically that of their journalists whose work was governed by
professional norms and practices (Reese, 2020). Moreover, public subsidy
for the Fourth Estate was undermined by social media (Seamans & Zhu, 2014),
accelerating the control of dominant players like the New York Times and
the Wall Street Journal on public discourse (George & Waldfogel, 2006). In
turn, this hollowed the local publishing industry, subverting attention to
local political issues (i.e. nationalizing politics (Trussler, 2021)) and
increasing economic agents’ willingness to contravene state and federal law
(Matherly & Greenwood, 2022). At the same time, social media has afforded
citizen journalists the ability to counter-balance the biases of
professional news organizations. For example, the interests of the populace
were pitted against those of media organizations with the legislative
proposal of the Stop Online Piracy bill (Miranda et al., 2016).

Even more recently, society has witnessed a demonstrable shift towards the
“post-truth era,” in which populist, tribalist, and anti- “mainstream
media” rhetoric proliferates. Indeed, scholarship suggests that such
rhetoric serves to further undermine public confidence in the institutional
press, pushing large portions of the populace towards alternate media that
eschew journalistic norms and evidence-based reporting (Reese, 2020). While
the blockchain has been heralded as a way of remaking the institutional
press in the digital era (Ivancsics, 2019), we have little systematic
understanding of its efficacy. All the while, the process of news
construction and dissemination is being disrupted by algorithms, machine
learning, and artificial intelligence (Diakopoulos, 2019). The long-term
implications of these AI tools (e.g., Reuters’ Lynx Insights) on the
institutional press are unknown (Kobie, 2018). Indeed, we are witnessing
intersections of the evolutionary paths of technology and the institutional
press in ways that are  fundamentally changing the “freedom of the press”
and the complex network that includes journalists, software engineers,
relational databases, and social media platforms which form it; along with
prevailing norms, values, and institutional logics of a particular
sociotechnical moment (Ananny, 2018).

Research has only begun to address these changes. A cursory evaluation of
premiere information systems and management outlets reveals a dearth of
research which directly engages with the changing nature of the
institutional press (Aral & Dhillon, 2021; Clemons et al., 2002; Greenwood
& Gopal, 2015; Kitchens et al., 2020; Seamans & Zhu, 2014; Venkatesan et
al., 2021). The purpose of this Special Issue is to address this gap in
scholarship head on and to inform stakeholders such as media managers,
social planners, legislators, trade associations, regulators, and
journalists about how changes in institutional media are affecting society
at the intersection of business, technology, and public policy. To this
end, we invite scholarship that helps academia and society (1) comprehend
the major changes taking place within the institutional press, why those
changes are occurring, and what the consequences of those changes are; and
(2) work together toward a more positive future for the institutional
press.

Few problems of today epitomize the intersection of the technological and
the institutional (Barley & Orlikowski, 2023) as the modern day Fourth
Estate. To encourage the necessary scholarship on the challenges and
opportunities facing it, we have assembled an interdisciplinary research
team of scholars across diverse theoretical and methodological paradigms.

We encourage an equally diverse breadth of scholars to submit their work to
this special issue.

-- 
Brad Greenwood, PhD MBA LLM
George Mason University
*http://www.fixedeffects.com/ <http://www.fixedeffects.com/>*