Media / Publication
October 22, 2026

Negotiating Infrastructural Integration: Cloud Services and the Evolution of News Website Ecosystems in France and the Netherlands

Under what conditions do news media organisations negotiate their relation to their tech providers?

In this new peer-reviewed article, AlgoSoc researchers Agustin Ferrari Braun, Thomas Poell & Fernando van der Vlist show that, over the last decade, media organisations have engaged in a process of negotiation and demarcation through which they reclaimed control over key aspects of digital infrastructure (e.g. audience metrics) while adapting their offer to the demands of the market (e.g. presenting more audio/video content). However, this process was underpinned on a stable access to core infrastructure services (e.g. cloud computing) often provided by Big Tech. A paradox emerges: Big Tech provides the basic infrastructure through which the news contest and negotiate their reliance on Big Tech. This historical approach shows more nuance than traditional narratives decrying the dependency of news media to platforms, but also point towards a worrying level of infrastructural entanglement between the two.

To continue reading please visit: https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2026.2751081

This open access article was published in Digital Journalism on 22 October 2026.

Braun, A. F., van der Vlist, F., & Poell, T. (2026). Negotiating Infrastructural Integration: Cloud Services and the Evolution of News Website Ecosystems in France and the Netherlands. Digital Journalism, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/216708...

Keywords: News organizations, websites, digital infrastructure, platforms, infrastructural integration, cloud, spaces of negotiation