Facebook & Co. draw criticism: Social platforms at MCB18

Bertram Gugel (photo: Annette Koroll), Aniko Hannak

Bertram Gugel (Foto: Annette Koroll), Aniko Hannak

“The blue giant is staggering”, a big German newspaper titled as data misuse by British data analysis company Cambridge Analytica surfaced recently. Facebook shares have dropped dramatically in value, and the political discussion about consequences, regulation and sanctions is in swing. Then again, nobody can imagine day-to-day life without social media like Facebook. At MEDIA CONVENTION BERLIN we will use a series of sessions to discuss with you the approaches for regulation and oversight, the state of affairs on platforms (or are they media companies after all?) and how they can be influenced.

Media scientist Bertram Gugel will yet again commence the programme of the second congress day this year with his analysis “Platform failure – when YouTube, Facebook & Co. spin out of control”. He demonstrates how social media platforms form their content through algorithms, create feedback loops and thus wield decisive influence over the flow of information.

Aniko Hannak (Center for Network Science at Central European University) will discuss the importance of questioning the programming of algorithms in her session „From Bias to Best Practice – How to build the algorithms we want?“.

In the session “Only the loudest opinion is valid!? Attention as a currency” Bernhard Pörksen, professor of media sciences at Tübingen University and Marcus Engert, political editor at BuzzFeed will talk about the struggle for user attention on one hand and the societal imperative of well-researched stories and a well-grounded discourse on the other hand.

Other media companies compete with the nearly unlimited resources and technological expertise of Facebook & Co. Katharina Köth, Creative Director/User Experience Jvm Next and Robert Richter, EMEA Partnership Solutions Broadcast, Media & Entertainment at Google will discuss digital strategies in the face of overpowering platforms in their session “Proprietary services in the age of Amazon, YouTube and Netflix – is it too late for competition?”.