The document discusses digital intermediation, which refers to the combination of data (online content producers) and algorithms (automated decision making within media systems) and how they create new forms of online communities and knowledge exchange. It examines digital influencers and micro-platformization, where digital agencies ensure advertisers receive the appropriate influencer. It proposes three potential applications of digital intermediation: applying it to public service media, policy recommendations on regulatory systems, and designing algorithmic transparency interfaces. The overall aim is to understand how this new media ecosystem works and provide recommendations to help media organizations engage audiences on important issues.

1. DIGITAL INTERMEDIATION
To w a r d s T r a n s p a r e n t P u b l i c A u t o m a t e d M e d i a
Dr Jonathon Hutchinson
The University of Sydney
@dhutchman
Activity is financed by the European Regional Development Fund through the institutional package measure for R&D institutions and higher education institutions (ASTRA project TL
Activity is financed by the European Regional Development Fund through
the institutional package measure for R&D institutions and higher education institutions
(ASTRA project TLU TEE of Tallinn University as a promoter of intelligent lifestyle).

2. Towards Transparent Public
Automated Media:
2. Digital First
Personalities
4. Digital
Intermediation
5. Algorithms
6. Public Media’s
Role
1. Cultural
Intermediation
3. Micro-
platformization

3. The aims of the project are:
i. to understand how digital influencers operate across social media, in both commercial and
non-commercial media environments;
ii. to document how digital media agencies enable digital influencers to create large consumer
based publics;
iii. to examine and understand how algorithms are operating within large-scale media content
production;
iv. to identify how global media is incorporating digital influencer roles and automation (if at all)
into their production methodologies; and
v. to provide a new theoretical framework, recommendations and a policy tool that enables
media organisations to manifest and engage with its audiences on critical public issues.

4. Cultural Intermediation
Audience Participation in Media Organisations
Jonathon Hutchinson
Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

5. – Cultural Intermediaries, 2017
“This book interrogates the existing theories of convergence culture
and audience engagement within the media and communication
disciplines by providing grounded examples of social media use as a
social mobilization tool within the media industries. As digital
influencers garner large audiences across platforms such as YouTube
and Instagram, they sway opinions and tastes towards often-
commercial interests. However, this everyday social media practice
also presents an opportunity for socially and morally motivated
intermediaries to impact on public issues.”

7. Digital intermediation is the combination of two agents within a new
media ecology:
• data: presenting as online content producers with new approaches
towards highly visible content (maybe shareable?) across platforms;
and
• algorithms: singularly and as the combination of algorithmic
decision making, predictive media decisions, machine learning and
possibly artificial intelligence within automated media systems.
Digital intermediation describes the process of and between the
infrastructure for information exchange processes of cultural
intermediation.
Digital intermediation creates new forms of online communities and
knowledge exchange, suggesting new power relations and production
methodologies also emerge within an entrepreneurial social media
ecosystem.
There is now an increased need for public affairs exposure.

8. data:
Digital First Personalities

9. “those individuals who produce digital content for maximum visibility by engaging social influencer publication
strategies that appease platform algorithms” (Hutchinson, forthcoming).

10. Ordinary to ‘everyday, bro’

12. Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash
algorithms:
MICROPLATFORMIZATION
Beyond Multichannel Networks and Digital Agencies

13. Micro-platformization suggests a new digital intermediary has emerged who acts as an agency for digital agencies, in many
ways ensuring advertisers receive the most appropriate influencer for their products or services. In a similar way that
platformization makes data platform ready, micro-platformization makes influencers brand ready. While the marketplace of
culture is still the process of providing audiences to advertisers across social media, the introduction of two significant
stakeholder groups have demonstrated the specialist focus of communicating across social media. To send messages
across social media effectively, one needs a unique vantage for their content production, but also requires the distribution
capacity of the digital intermediaries that bring cultural production audiences and producers together.

15. Algorithms

16. Algorithms
Photo by Jilbert Ebrahimi on Unsplash

17. –Ysabel Gerrard, 2018
‘Users who are conscious about content moderation—of which there
are many—must go beyond the hashtag to find new ways of being
visible to those who they wish to be seen by’

19. Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash

20. Digital
Intermediation
Increased
Visibility
Specialist Content
Production
Algorithmic
Media
Shifting media
ecosystem
requires new
visibility strategies
Social influencers
gaming the system
through content
production
Algorithmic calculations
recommender system
predictive media

22. Where to now?

23. THREE APPLICATIONS
P o t e n t i a l D i r e c t i o n s
DIGITAL INTERMEDIATION
IN PSM
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS USER TRANSPARENCY
INTERFACE
Apply digital intermediation
to public media as key
cultural institution
Report on current regulatory
systems and advise on
suitable future approaches
Design algorithmic
transparency mechanism
for increased user
application

25. –Vince Neilstein
‘Earache’s Metalizer app automatically generates custom metal
playlists that draw from all the metal available on Spotify, not just
Earache releases. Users can adjust four sliders — “Metal,” “Death,”
“Thrash” and “Grind,” — depending on how much of each sub-genre
they want in their playlist, and then a fifth slider determining the
number of tracks in the playlist. Press the “Metalize” button and a
playlist materializes before your very eyes.

26. Profitability Loyalty Trust
Social
Cohesion
it!!!!

27. Jonathon
Hutchinson
Lecturer Online Communication and Media
University of Sydney
jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au
@dhutchman
Activity is financed by the European Regional Development Fund through
the institutional package measure for R&D institutions and higher education institutions
(ASTRA project TLU TEE of Tallinn University as a promoter of intelligent lifestyle).