Platform Configuration and Digital Materiality: How News Publishers Innovate Their Practices Amid Entanglements with the Evolving Technological Infrastructure of Platforms

Technology companies and their platforms are important digital intermediaries for news publishers. Platforms as technological infrastructures have digital materiality and how publishers organise their innovations have become entangled with the digital materiality of platforms. This six-year longitudinal study (2015–2021) examines this entanglement by analysing how and why a news publisher innovated its practices vis-à-vis the changing digital materiality of Facebook and Instagram. Employing practice theory and the platform configuration framework, this study assesses the publisher’s configuration of its editorial activities in relation to shifts in the digital materiality of Meta’s platforms and the reflexivity of newsroom staff. Using a mix of qualitative methods, this study finds that the publisher both embraced and resisted the platforms’ algorithmic changes. While it enhanced video production and distribution to align with the platforms’ preference for audio-visual content, the publisher also developed new practices to counterbalance its reliance on Facebook for news distribution and digital advertising revenue, especially after Meta’s downranking of publishers’ content on News Feeds and the introduction of restrictions for Instant Articles. This study concludes that while publishers are circumscribed by the changes in the platforms' digital materiality, they strategically innovate specific practices to both leverage platforms and reclaim or maintain independence from them.