Kategorie: EN

The structure of our media system means that people also come into contact with news – and that’s a good thing. However, the move away from linear media consumption is shaking up this basic contact with news.

When it was still possible, before the pandemic, I spent a two-week holiday in Florida with my family. We drove a few hundred kilometres along highways, exploring towns, watching out for alligators and shells. On one of those long drives, the minute hand on the dashboard clock approached twelve. And I began searching for a station on our rental car’s FM radio that broadcast news on the hour. I searched and searched, the minutes passed. When it was already a minute or two past the hour, I gave up: I couldn’t find a station among the multitude of pop, country and talk radios around Miami that would reliably provide me with news on the hour. The music just kept playing. This irritated me.

Obviously, linear media are far less regulated in the USA than here in Germany: In this country, I’m used to hearing news on the hour – and finding it when searching the frequency scale. Almost all stations offer news, not only the public broadcasters. State media authorities tie their frequency allocations for commercial stations to programme standards. This also means that terrestrial or cable stations are expected to offer news if they want to get hold of a frequency.

News avoidance requires deliberate action

And so, conversely, it is also damn hard not to listen to the news in Germany: If you listen to linear radio in the car on the way to work or in the bathroom in the morning while taking a shower, you are bound to stumble across news. Like the dead bear’s head in the New Year’s Eve hit „Dinner for One“ (funnily only popular in Germany whereas it´s presented by British comedian Freddie Frinton): the news is always in the way, every hour on the hour, and if you don’t take a diversion, you stumble.

This also means that if you don’t want to listen to the news, you have to consciously switch off. The choice is between the few stations that broadcast their news five minutes before the hour. But even these stations broadcast news. If you don’t want to hear information, you have to consciously avoid it, otherwise it will trickle into your ears like music, sweepstakes and advertising before and after. News avoidance requires deliberate, active action. The passive media user is trapped in the linear course of the day.

This is no coincidence, it is by design: When politicians drafted our broadcasting regulations, they deliberately opted for the coexistence of information and entertainment. In the State Media Treaty (which is is sadly lagging behind current developments such as digitalization), the term „full programme service“ is used. And even in private complete or “full programmes”, according to §25, „the significant political, ideological and social forces and groups (…) must have an appropriate say.“ The goal is diversity of opinion, and that cannot be achieved with only music.

Dream ratings thanks to football

The coexistence of entertainment and information works. Because when „Tagesthemen“ and „heute journal“ broadcast shortened editions during the half-time break for the European Football Championship or the World Cup, this is no coincidence: the heads of the newsrooms look forward to these ratings boosters. And the editorial departments adjust their planning and try to have the particularly large and heterogeneous audience in mind when selecting news topics. After all, the millions of football fans who have gathered in front of their televisions stay tuned – despite the pee break – even during half-time.

News reaches dream ratings in this way, up to 24 million people watch such half-time news. Maybe some get a beer, maybe others chat – but in essence, these football fans also „stumble“ across news en masse. And that’s a good thing, because it contributes to information and opinion-forming. Only in this way can news become a small-talk topic on the garden fence or party talk at football night – especially if it is produced well, i.e. in a way that is suitable for the target group.

From my point of view, we have done the right thing in Germany (and in other European countries): our media regulation (also) leads to news being part of the daily media menu, unlike in the USA, where National Public Radio (NPR) with its allied regional stations tends to broadcast at the fringes of society, while the middle is often not or only insufficiently reached by news. However, linear media use is also steadily declining in Germany. And with it, the chance that people in Germany will stumble across news is also decreasing. The ability to form informed opinions is in danger – and with it our democratic system.

„Binge Watching“ as a Business Model

The long-term study „Massenkommunikation“ (Mass Communication) by ARD and ZDF, which has been examining media use in Germany since the 1960s, already shows that in the age group of 14 to 29-year-olds, 80 percent listen to their music via streaming platforms such as YouTube and Spotify. Only 68 percent also use radio – and this trend line shows downward. There are many such observations and studies – media use is shifting to non-linear channels at the expense of linear broadcasting.

In my view, this development poses many challenges that media policy and society should address. One has to do with people „stumbling“ over news in yesterday’s media world: Because streaming services like Spotify, YouTube, Netflix or Amazon Prime do everything they can to ensure that exactly that does not happen.

„Binge watching“ is the business model of the new media giants, users are supposed to stay tuned for as long as possible. It’s not for nothing that the countdown at the end of a series episode is rarely enough to press „stop“ on the remote control or mobile phone in time: „The next episode starts in 15 seconds.“ Streaming services are doing everything they can to make media use as uninterrupted as possible, longer and longer and longer.

The goal: no one should stumble. With Netflix, Spotify & Co. it takes an active user to stop streaming the same series over and over again. And it takes the active user to go in search of news.

This is the decisive paradigm shift in media use: in the linear media world, those who wanted to avoid news had to take action: Act to not consume news. In the non-linear world, the active user is needed to consume news.

Diversity of opinion and freedom of information at risk

If we approach this change through the eyes of those who created our media order to ensure diversity of opinion, then regulation must urgently follow suit at this point. At the time, media policy deliberately focused on full (complete) programmes in order to reach as many people as possible with information and diverse opinions. And no one will disagree with the statement that diversity of opinion and freedom of information are more in danger today than ever before.

Incidentally, those who broadcast on linear channels in a strictly regulated framework, whether public or commercial, have a serious strategic disadvantage: they have to meet the requirements of a full programme, whereas Netflix can deliver individual media content to German households that is, in case of doubt, completely free of information. RTL and ZDF must regularly broadcast news (and finance its production), while Amazon Prime does not have to fulfil this obligation.

Some may object that Netflix also produces high-quality documentaries and Spotify sophisticated podcasts. That is true. But if you want to watch them, you have to actively search for them. This is the subtle but decisive difference.

The activists of the „Humane Technology“ movement demand that the autoplay of the next episode be switched off when streaming series. Against media addiction and „binge watching“: Humane technology means not providing for every possible temptation in the design, but avoiding it as much as possible.

The activists of an opinion-diverse society should accordingly demand that non-linear media actively offer news and information – a kind of autoplay for the daily news. Users must also be able to stumble upon non-linear platforms. They have to actively decide and retrieve their remote control from the sofa cushions, take their mobile phones off the charger and press „I don’t want to watch news“ to avoid information. Just as they have to actively switch on linear channels if they don’t want news.

It would be conceivable in my opinion that news content financed by a licence fees would be available to all providers. Then Netflix, Spotify & Co. – even if they undoubtedly could in view of their commercial success – would not have to get involved in the expensive production of news and information. But these are details. What is important is the obligatory, regular offer: „Here’s your information.“ Or: „Here comes the news!“ In a figurative sense, the bear skins of „Dinner for One“ have to be rolled out on the floors of the non-linear world, along with their heads: so that we users, in the role of the butler, keep stumbling across journalistic news and information in the best sense.

In essence, media regulation must ensure that news continues to find its users. In this direction. And that users don’t have to actively search for their news.

Time is pressing. Because already today we have social networks like Facebook and Twitter operating worldwide, following exclusively commercial decisions. How they influence elections and other democratic processes has become clear at the latest since the riot at the US Capitol. If linear media, in which information still has its place, simultaneously lose importance and regulation does not give them a place in non-linear media, our democracy will have a hard time.

This article was written in cooperation with Vocer and journalist. The article will appear in the book „How we make journalism more resilient“. The editors are Vocer co-founder Stephan Weichert and journalist editor-in-chief Matthias Daniel.

It’s a paradox: Never before has it been so easy to express one’s opinion thanks to countless platforms and channels. But never before have so few people decided on the rules of these platforms. Never before has the free formation of opinion, which is so crucial for our democracies, been in such danger. And never before have the signs of recognising this been so obvious. And yet we do nothing. How can this be? It is time for an angry outcry. We must act!

Yet what I write is banal, not very original or surprising. But still we do nothing. Moreover, what I write is superficial and pointed here and there – but differentiation no longer helps.

What is the problem?

Three things are happening in parallel these days:

First, Elon Musk demonstrates what happens when a person with a lot of money (or other instruments of power) intends to change a debate platform to his liking. Whether he buys (or has bought) Twitter, whether he joins its supervisory board (or – as he has – rejects it) is almost irrelevant: what Musk is up to these days shows us how susceptible the organisational structures of these platforms are to outside influence. According to the motto: What I don’t like, I will change. What contradicts my understanding of free debate, I will change – regardless of whether a social consensus would see it quite differently.

It’s not just about Twitter. The same goes for Meta (with Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and significant market shares in VR platforms), for Google, Amazon, Spotify, LinkedIn, Snapchat and TikTok: International corporations committed exclusively to one purpose – making as much profit as possible – are increasingly determining the formation of opinion, at least in our „Western“ democracies.

Secondly, we are learning these days what dependence means: Germany knew that it was dependent on Russian oil and gas supplies. Now it is trying to free itself from this one-sided dependence. And the public discourse clearly marks: dependence on one supplier for vital goods is dangerous, limits a state’s ability to act.

But what about the intangible good of independent information? Are we not also here aware of our dependence on a few actors – in this case not states, but platforms? Nevertheless, we accept it for the time being. Yet free information is the crude oil of a living democracy.

Thirdly, the war in Ukraine shows us exactly that: how decisive, how vital independent information is. In this context, however, the Meta group even manages to gain ground in the public perception: Russia banned Facebook and Instagram as „extremist organisations“. The free world cheered and patted Marc Zuckerberg on the back for taking the „right“ side (for example, here). Meta even decided to allow calls for violence against Vladimir Putin and Russian soldiers, even death threats, in some countries. If this decision had gone the other way, Meta would have allowed death threats against the Ukrainian president – the worldwide outcry would have been huge. Yes, Meta acted morally right in this case, in my view.

The striking thing is that Meta alone decides which „side“ it will take. In this case, „alone“ means without any public oversight. Without any serious consultation with the public (the Facebook Oversight Board is just window dressing with no binding effect).

„Alone“ means that socially conspicuous ex-teens like Elon Musk or Marc Zuckerberg decide how opinions are formed in the Western world. Or Chinese oligarchs (at TikTok), who pretend to be independent at the beck and call of the regime in Beijing, but cower as soon as the state and party apparatus flinches.

There are so many clear signs of what is happening: besides Ukraine or what happened on Twitter, the Cambridge Analytica scandal with its massive influence on the US election campaign or Brexit. Most recently, Russia’s massive campaign to track down TikTok creators and expose millions of users to Moscow’s propaganda.

What does that mean?

We are only a few steps away from alternative media, alongside the big platforms, no longer reaching their audience, from Facebook, TikTok & Co. dominating our opinion formation. We are only a few steps away from individuals deciding in a non-transparent way what we are allowed to read and thus know, supported by algorithms, the majority of which are programmed by white, well-off men (the bias of algorithms is another complex issue that will not be discussed in detail here).

But do we really want to leave it up to white, socially conspicuous men, Chinese dictators and biased algorithms to decide what we think? Who duplicate millions of times over what polarises and divides society? Who do everything they can to dominate global opinion because it makes their coffers ring?

„Digital dictatorship“ seems a bit far-fetched as the devil on the wall. But if a „dictatorship“ is understood as a form of rule characterised by a single ruling person, the dictator, or a ruling group of people (e.g. party, military junta, family or a group or person running a monopolistic platform) with far-reaching to unlimited political power, then we are not that far off. What if Meta had sided with Putin? What if a megalomaniac American president equalised the corporations in his country and thus opinion? I can think of at least one candidate I would trust to do that.

What was that again about diversity of opinion?

Why have we in Germany afforded ourselves a complicated media system with numerous checks and balances? Public broadcasting with overseeing councils, decidedly non-governmental, federally organised and financed by a „contribution“ – not a tax? With media boards that supervise private broadcasting? A system that has found models in many of our neighbouring countries after World War II? Why, for example, are publishing houses organised on an externally plural basis („außenplural“), why is the Federal Cartel Office responsible for merger control in the media sector with special competence and stricter rules than for purely commercial enterprises?

Because we were convinced that freedom of expression must be protected. Because we were convinced that not too much power of opinion should be concentrated in the hands of a few. Does that only apply in the analogue and linear world, to printed newspapers and broadcasting via antenna? How can it be that we prohibit takeovers in the publishing sector while international corporations are blithely carving out monopolies of opinion? Meta would presumably have been broken up in Germany if it had had to obey the rules of linear media corporations.

Is digital diversity of opinion less valuable than linear diversity? Is it not just as worthy of protection? Why are we throwing away in the digital world the values we defend in the linear media world?

And what do we do?

We shrug our shoulders, continue to use the family, kindergarten and school WhatsApp groups („Signal is missing three members“), share holiday pictures with grandpa and grandma on Facebook and sun ourselves on Instagram. Our children use TikTok, the most underestimated platform (because it is largely unknown to parents), where they mainly see Corona criticism, war propaganda and false ideals of beauty.

„Burying our heads in the sand“ in the digital world means hiding our heads lowered behind our mobile phone screens. Instead of laughing with our children, we spend hours beaming our usage data to Silicon Valley. Instead of standing up and taking action, we are the worst possible role model for reflective media use behaviour, individually and socially.

Because those who shape policy and media conveniently refer to the „Too Big To Fail“ nonsense. Does anyone remember Myspace? It no longer exists. Neither does the Roman Empire, for that matter. Platforms can also go out of business if their users run away. But we are hardly doing anything to weaken the big platforms today, on the contrary.

We deal with „redirection strategies“, i.e. first publishers and broadcasters publish their precious content on Facebook, Youtube, TikTok & Co. and then try to guide users back to media libraries and their own offerings. The child is so deep in the well that we would not reach some users any other way.

But what we are actually doing: With our content we continue to strengthen those who despise our values. With explanatory videos, balanced discussion and constructive journalism, we strengthen those corporations that confuse, polarise and destroy society. As long as people find our offerings on polarising, anti-democratic platforms, they will continue to use them.

We media are pocketing the funding that Google’s „Digital News Initiative“ and the „Facebook Journalism Programme“ are luring us with. Money that the platforms have also earned because they continually weaken the traditional media. These alleged support programmes are unsurpassable in terms of cynicism: Those who destroy classical media generously grant life-extending financial injections. And those who point to quotes from people like Nick Clegg, the „President for Global Affairs“ at Meta, who sympathetically and differentiatedly tries to make his company seem friendlier, be told: this is all pretence, at most good-will, but without any resilient basis for his company not taking the „other“ side when push comes to shove. Marc Zuckerberg has taken every precaution to ensure that his descendants also call the shots in the company – and not a „President Of Global Affairs“ or an „Oversight Board“. They all act only at Zuckerberg’s mercy.

What do we have to do?

We – every single one of us – need to opt out of WhatsApp today and use alternatives.

We need to log off Facebook and Instagram and convince our children to turn their backs on TikTok.

We need to challenge the silent power of Spotify over the music we love and the word in podcasts and strengthen alternatives.

We have to start now, before it is too late.

We have to weaken the existing platforms by gradually not publishing our content there.

We need to strengthen alternative platforms: they do exist! For example, the public service media libraries, or those of the private broadcasters who are finally talking about cooperation! Or internet niches like piqed, DuckDuckGo, Qwant (owned by Springer) – or the products of the Mozilla Foundation.

This also means: We have to develop alternative financing models – payment and advertising – for media and the creator economy. Because only if an alternative ecosystem also secures income will it be strong enough to exist.

If we don’t start building an alternative platform system, there will be no digital places where we can meet instead of Facebook, Youtube and TikTok. But we need these places, at the latest when media policy restricts the big platforms.

This text is not the right place to design the structure of these alternative platforms (that’s what initiatives like beyondplatforms are dealing with.) But we need to start with it, get into the conversation, and quickly build up, try out, gain experience.

We need to act together – public and private broadcasters, newspaper and magazine publishers as well as those who produce digital quality content (whether we call them content creators or journalists). While public broadcasters and publishers fight their perpetual feud over online content and weaken each other, platforms are passing them by as laughing third parties.

We need to reform our media policy and make it capable of action: Often, in media federalism, we are not even able to act nationally (see the dispute over the broadcasting fee or the anachronistic rules of media supervision). We limit ourselves to regulating one part of the opinion machine – namely the one that is tangible in Germany. In doing so, we put publishers and broadcasters in Germany at a disadvantage compared to international platforms that, on the other hand, distribute content quasi unregulated.

Media policy must ensure diversity of opinion – for example, by publishing algorithms and having democratically legitimised bodies oversee the content of the platforms. Media policy probably also has to unbundle (i.e. expropriate) if a platform concentrates too much opinion power on itself in an audience segment. It must block access if punishable content is not deleted (Telegram just got its act together).

We see day after day how influential and powerful the big platforms are. It is time to act, time to defend diversity of opinion and thus our democracies and to decisively push back the influence of the big platforms.

Looking back, history always asks: And what did you do? We cannot say that we did not know how great the danger to our democracies is. If the big platforms continue to grow stronger – and that is undoubtedly their goal! -then the path to digital dictatorship is not far away.

The term “cultural change” is treated by some executives only with keen fingers, and many employees don’t really know what this “cultural change” could actually be about. They sense: Something has to change in my company, but what exactly? Has this term – “culture change” – perhaps already been burned? And what could we use instead?

On the one hand, „cultural change“ describes a profound, ongoing process that requires resources and changes the DNA of a company like no other. „Cultural change“ is the one process in which the management level also has to play a role in transforming a company: a new understanding of leadership – asking questions instead of knowing everything, making teams more diverse and empowering them to make decisions themselves, delegate and trust – new structures, new organizational patterns. „Cultural change“ is the prerequisite for successful innovation. In his innovation zine, Johannes Klingebiel writes: „If an innovation is to be successful, it always needs a simultaneous structural change.“ In this context, he quotes from Dan Hill’s „Dark Matter and Trojan Horses“ book: „You can’t design a transformative service, without redesigning the organization.“

On the other hand, “culture change” is a soft term that can be interpreted at will and delegated away as an action, along the lines of: “Oh, and this culture change, you’re all doing it now, dear employees”. The phantom of „culture change“ that gives hope for change (or fear of it) but is not really tangible or measurable. The “cultural change” is tripping itself up because like a pudding it doesn’t want to stick to the wall.

Perhaps we should therefore describe the necessary process differently, by naming it after its goal. But what is the goal of culture change? This can certainly be discussed at length and academically. For me, a culture change ultimately aims at a corporate culture and structure that allows you to continue to operate successfully on the market. In the complex, volatile, insecure VUCA world, this means being able to react quickly and adequately to unknown challenges.

So: A cultural change takes place (not only, but above all) within a company – but only so that challenges from outside can be mastered. In this respect, from my point of view, cultural change is actually about achieving the state that is described as “cultural intelligence” with regard to individuals: “cultural intelligence” is the (apparently natural) ability to react appropriately to the unknown and ambivalent (see Harvard Business Review).

While the „cultural intelligence“ of the individual comes into play above all in contact with „unknown cultures“, for me the cultural intelligence of a company or an organisation describes the ability to adapt the corporate culture to the unknown, ambivalent and changeable nature of the disruptive society „out there“ in a wy that helps innovation and transformation to succeed. Not once, but over and over again. To avoid any misunderstanding: „Cultural intelligence of an organization“ needs a broad concept of culture in order to be understood, because it is also about the ability to adapt to social, economic and technological changes.

„Culture change“ is aimless. “Cultural Intelligence of an organization” describes this goal. A clarification that I believe is important in order to get the necessary change going. Let’s not talk about culture change.

Why does Innovation get stuck? Because media companies often only innovate where it is easy to do. Possibly banal – but widespread:

🟢 Developing new products often works very well: with a development budget (limited additional money) or commitment, with wild ideas, laboratories and „somehow“ – or even structured processes (🟡), for example, the new Instagram-channel or the data bot about the corona situation.

🟡 What we do less often is change workflows and try out new methods. Some consequences:
– Products are unsuccessful, for example because we haven’t spoken to the # users… again! (methods)
– Even good products die because there are no resources for continuation in the „regular business“ – because we do not change the regular business (workflows), for example we do not stop doing less succesful things. (Unless we condense work until people groan or get sick.)

🔴 In my perception, the reason for this is often that companies do not address the structural innovation (transformation) of the organization: cultural change, a new understanding of leadership, changed supervisory bodies.
Why? Because this process is the most demanding, possibly difficult. And because bosses have to change themselves and their work when it comes to this topic. Cultural change needs resources, processes, and the commitment of the management level.

🟡 and 🟢 will only work in the long term if companies also address this issue 🔴. If not, working at the company will be exhausting, especially for employees who are expected to „innovate“ – but who wear themselves out in innovation-averse structures.

In the course of a supposed cultural change, some companies become „wannabe companies„: They pretend to be something different from what they are. The consequences are felt primarily by the employees. How does this (and what exactly) happen?

Hardly any process is more underestimated in companies than a sustainable cultural change: It needs resources, it needs time and the commitment (also) of the top management level. Uff. Some people wish (rightly so): If only we were further along!

If this desire reflects in a changing communication in the company, a problem might arise: Although the company is not (yet) seriously pursuing cultural transformation, some buzzwords can be heard through meetings and read in strategy papers. It is said that the company is already „agile„, one works in flat hierarchies. The error culture has already changed – everyone can try things out and make mistakes. And so forth.

Only: The company is still on the starting block when it comes to these issues. The words are no more than an announcement. If they were marked as such, if they described a path, that would be great from my point of view. Often enough, however, the process itself is perceived as too high a hurdle, whether consciously or unconsciously. Some executives then choose the proclamation of „agility“ and „flat hierarchies“ as a way out, as both the beginning and the end. The company subliminally becomes a „wannabe company“ because it pretends to live a different corporate culture than the one that actually exists. This probably often happens unconsciously, with good intentions. But „well intentioned“ is sometimes not the same as „well done“.

An example: Recently, I was able to listen a company-wide conference in which the management presented the impressive new process for strategy-driven product innovation. The CEO said in passing: „This is a real culture change“. In my view, this is a misunderstanding: Because the process of product innovation can at best be an element of cultural change. Its success presumably depends on the cultural change also sustainably transforming the organizational structure, understanding of leadership and workflows.

What are the consequences? From my point of view employees (including management) are losing an important orientation framework: When the company was still managed strictly hierarchically according to the waterfall and nobody said anything else, everyone knew where they stood . Now they hear that everything is already different – but they feel that this is not the case. The expectation that they work „differently“, modernly and agilely, without being supported by changed processes and structures – by a transformation of the company – weighs on the shoulders of the employees.

The joint change process is missing, in which concerns and ideas are discussed, in which goals are explained and filled with life. Because the „process“ is (subconsciously) already considered „completed“ – somewhat inadmissibly exaggerated, this would be „agility by decree“.

That confuses and unsettles. It is tiring because employees invest a lot of energy and hope in a new attitude that has no equivalent in the company. And the company management is also making it difficult because the expectations towards corporate culture are increasing – and with that the disappointment may also be growing in view of the real circumstances.

Between 2017 and 2021 I led and designed a major change process. The challenge: We created a new home for a regional, public media brand, including new, redesigned newsrooms, new workflows, and with around 350 colleagues involved. We moved our information and news departments from two locations and from three buildings in order to work in crossmedia processes in the future. Our goal: to continue to reach people with news and background information despite the foreseeable decline in linear distribution – in the language, with the products, on the channels they use.

We started the process – and ideally we never want to end it. Nevertheless, looking back today, we learned a lot: We made good mistakes and some things we did right in the first place. Many colleagues have been involved in this process, and many have been available to offer advice and support – from outside as well as within the company.

Which tools, ideas and tricks – and which attitude helped us on this way? Some details are certainly specific to this change process. Others translate well to other companies or even industries. I have summarized my most important ones in the following paragraphs.

(The following headlines expand to short paragraphs.)