Can a ‘Civil’ Social Media Site Produce Good Journalism?
At first glance—with its sky-blue trim, scrolling feed, and quirky community group pages—Spaces, a new Canadian social media platform, feels like a throwback to the early days of Facebook. But Jeff Elgie, who opened the site to the public last fall, says he isn’t looking to simply re-create the popular social network: he’s trying to revive social media as a home for local journalism.
Related Knowledge Center: Social media
Social media platforms are the source of news for millions of people — and they have a fraught and ever-shifting relationship with the enterprises that provide that news.
The TikTok ban | The Meta-FTC trial
Related Knowledge Center: State of the business model
The traditional journalism business model has long since collapsed, and news organizations have shrunk or disappeared entirely. While a number of promising experiments are under way, the public has not shown a willingness to buy what news organizations are selling.