News outlets block web scrapers, affecting creators and collectives

Part II of Truth, Story, and Power is now live on Cardigan Collective. Based on a book chapter by Ida Manton, originally published in Macedonian in Mediumska pismenost, the series examines how storytelling, authority, and power intersect across different historical periods. While Part I traced the relationship between myth, sacred authority, and the evolution of journalism, Part II turns to the digital transformation of the information environment. The emergence of the internet promised openness and democratisation; it also reshaped how narratives circulate, how information is monetised, and how influence operates at scale. Algorithms, data extraction, and platform architecture now shape what people see, what travels furthest, and how communities form around particular narratives. The result is a fragmented informational landscape in which misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation move rapidly through networks, often blurring the boundary between interpretation and manipulation. Grateful to Ida Manton for allowing Cardigan Collective to edit and publish this work. Read Part II: When the Network Became the Battlefield. https://lnkd.in/gMweQBsV

Part II of Truth, Story and Power. I suggest you read these in sequence, but Rachele Gilman did a great job creating separate, individual units that can be enjoyed even without the link to the other two parts, so consume as your time and energy allows (-: And please share if this resonated with you, your work or field of study. A few takeaways to inspire you to click below and read the full text: 🕰The early web resembled mythological chaos before order: a dark, unbounded global web. Regulation lagged behind expansion. And by the time governments and institutions recognised the risks, enormous damage had already been done. 📢As information becomes commodified, its value is increasingly measured by reach and engagement, placing truth in tension with the mechanisms that govern visibility. 🔍Misinformation, Disinformation, and Mal-Information are divided by blurry boundaries and many grey zones. An unintentional falsehood can be amplified by actors with strategic motives. 📺When journalism becomes underfunded and undervalued, and when algorithms reward spectacle over substance, the public sphere shifts. Authority becomes performative. Visibility substitutes for expertise. In this environment, storytelling once again becomes a primary instrument of power.

After a very successful session at #CEPSlab2026, we at CEPS (Centre for European Policy Studies) decided to support the new Apply AI strategy of the European Commission by launching a brand-new Task Force.. a very ambitious effort to bring together all relevant stakeholders to discuss ways to boost AI adoption in industry "verticals" and in government. We plan to start with three verticals, health, mobility/automotive and public services, and explore for each domain the relevant use cases, hardware/software requirements, data spaces governance and uptake, compliance with relevant legislation, strategies to promote world-class skills and much more. Check our prospectus here https://lnkd.in/eY2psauM and join us to discuss a topical strategy and make an impact on Europe's AI future. Read our first thoughts on the Apply AI strategy here on Substack https://lnkd.in/eAP6FeYq And contact us if you need more information. We plan to launch in a few weeks, once a balanced and relevant group of experts and stakeholders will be ready to move on. #applyai #taskforce Read more on the Apply AI strategy

AI-assisted stories accounted for nearly 20% of Fortune’s web traffic in the second half of 2025. Most of the stories were written by one guy: Nick Lichtenberg. Our new world, via Isabella Simonetti https://lnkd.in/eHDKhhvE

Important read. Also see Alyson Shontell's context here: "Last summer, I wrote to my team that we intended to “surf the AI wave, not get pummeled by it.” https://lnkd.in/e-uX4HgQ #CEO #Csuite #board #leadership #tmt #media #strategy #journalism

Pleased to share my new piece "From algorithmic value to journalistic practice: How Swedish public radio made algorithmic distinctiveness socially actionable", out in Journalism today: https://lnkd.in/dvjqn5ZJ In it, I explore how an algorithmic system intended to exhibit values associated with public service media reshaped journalistic work at the Swedish public broadcaster Sveriges Radio. It thus contributes empirical insights into the elusive question of how algorithmic media contributes to structuring quotidian journalistic work, as well as to debates over what a "public service algorithm" might mean in practice.

"As social-media algorithms fuel extreme opinions and the Internet is flooded with low-quality information, increasingly generated with the aid of artificial-intelligence technologies, the world needs Wikipedia just as much — if not more — as it did at the time of the platform’s creation." Read more in this Nature editorial ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/eSMEaame

Some news! This weekend I launched openjournalism.news — a site and newsletter featuring biweekly roundups of new public GitHub repositories from news organizations. Every two weeks, I highlight what newsrooms have shared: new tools, data notebooks, AI experiments, helpful libraries, and so on. The raw material comes from the Open Journalism Bot, a BlueSky bot that Claude and I built that monitors ~350 news org GitHub accounts and posts whenever one creates a new public repo. The bot catches everything. The website and newsletter are where I highlight the projects I find particularly interesting. Why bother? Last year, Ben Welsh and I published research showing that open-source culture in newsrooms has collapsed — new public repos dropped more than 80% from their peak. But some newsrooms are still working in the open, and they deserve to be celebrated. Follow along at https://lnkd.in/ekS6muYt, or follow @openjournalism.bsky.social on BlueSky for real-time updates.

Open-source journalism. Both optimistic and timid (given the prevalence of Polymarket/Kalshi bots) But totally support more of journalism using git/github.

My #openeducation colleagues - check this out. I've mused with a few of you about possible connections with civic-minded journalism. Might you see opportunities to empower and inspire your learners and faculty with these open data + tools that get to the heart of what's happening in the world?