Public Interest

Facebook, a platform created by undergraduates in a Harvard dorm room, has transformed the ways millions of people consume news, understand the world, and participate in the political process. Despite taking on many of journalism's traditional roles, Facebook and other platforms, such as Twitter and Google, have presented themselves as tech companies—and therefore not subject to the same regulations and ethical codes as conventional media organizations. In contrast to tech companies' boasts of disruptive innovation, Philip M. Napoli offers a timely and persuasive case for seeing social media as news media, with a fundamental obligation to serve the public interest.