News Distribution in the Digital Environment: The Growing Dependence on Platforms

This article argues that in an era of digital media marked by increased demands on journalists’ competencies, adaptation to digital platforms plays a crucial role in the creation and distribution of news. Drawing on 45 interviews with news workers at 15 leading publishing houses in Belarus conducted between 2023 and 2024, as well as secondary materials, the authors conclude that digital platforms create new dependencies in news production. The results reveal a number of interrelated challenges: lack of resources to produce content for a newspaper, website, and 4-5 digital platforms simultaneously; increased government control; outdated methods of communicating with audiences; the need to adapt to algorithmic demands; a significant increase in the popularity of clickbait; the need to counter fake news; and regulation of how media use artificial intelligence (AI). Using Belarus as a case study, we map the actors involved in the search for new content distribution strategies. The results show that the growing dependence on platforms is increasingly limiting publishers’ autonomy every year. We suggest that the era of digitalization requires more significant structural changes in journalism than those that have been implemented so far.