When Worlds Collide: Journalistic, Market, and Tech Logics in the Adoption of News Recommender Systems

Abstract

An increasing number of media organisations are adopting news recommender systems (NRS). Such algorithmic technologies, which prioritise content based on, for example, previous user behaviour or popularity metrics, may have far-reaching repercussions for news work. Despite this, the implications of NRS implementation for intra-organisational practices as well as dynamics and tensions between involved actors remain understudied. Against this background, this study examines decision-making processes and relationships between actors participating in NRS projects from an institutional logics perspective and places a particular emphasis on resulting tensions between journalistic, market, and tech logics. Drawing on 32 in-depth qualitative interviews with news media professionals across ten news organisations in the Netherlands and Switzerland, we discover a wide range of strategies which aim to reconcile logic multiplicity in the specific case of NRS development. Such negotiation efforts can ultimately promote new work practices and forms of collaboration but may also have broader implications for the distribution of power and voice within news organisations.