My research agenda considers the ways in which news audience consume information online and the role of legacy media and digital-born outlets in a platform dominated news ecosystem.
The fragmentation hypothesis
There are two main streams of research in which I am working at the moment. Digital technologies have reconfigured the public domain and according to some accounts, might have threatened how we converge around common interests. The idea that media use is driving people apart or the fragmentation hypothesis is behind the major project in which I am working, with professors Sandra González-Bailón (Annenberg, UPenn) and Rasmus K. Nielsen (University of Oxford).
News consumption and provision within social media platforms
I am leading on a second project at the Reuters Institute focused on understanding the role of digital-born and legacy media online during major political events in Europe and on social media platforms.
Twitter and Facebook, and now we should also add Whatsapp, represent one of the main access to news for an increasing portion of the population. In this second project, I analyse the structures of interdependence that producers and users of information create on these platforms. My goal is measuring changes in media influence in the online domain comparing digital-born and legacy media outlets’ performance.