Che fine ha fatto il Quarto Potere? La relazione asimmetrica tra giornalismo e social media.

What’s happened to Fourth Estate? The asymmetrical relationship between journalism and social media. According to Reuters Institute, two trends dominated the online news ecosystem: the consumption of the news increasingly take place on mobile devices; on their smartphones people get in touch with news mostly through Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and other social media. That raises some important issues because traditional publishers are losing the control on the distribution of their online contents: already weakened from the collapse of the advertising market, the news industry doesn’t seem to beable to reach a very large audience on mobile devices without the help of social media. But on these platforms what the audience can read, how citizens are reached by the news, is a matter of algorithms owned by tech-companies whose aims don’t include to ensure a thorough, unbiased, correct information to the people.第四等级（Fourth Estate）遭遇了何种变局？新闻业与社交媒体间的非对称关系。据路透社研究所（Reuters Institute）统计，在线新闻生态系统呈现两大主导趋势：其一，新闻消费日益转向移动设备；其二，用户多通过Facebook、Twitter、Snapchat等社交媒体平台在智能手机上获取新闻。这引发了诸多关键议题：传统出版商正逐渐丧失其在线内容的分发控制权——本就因广告市场崩盘而元气大伤的新闻业，若脱离社交媒体的助力，似乎难以在移动设备端触达海量受众。但在这些平台上，受众所能阅读的内容、新闻触达民众的路径，均由科技公司掌控的算法决定，而这些企业的目标并不包含为大众提供全面、客观、准确的信息。