Ragnhild Kr. Olsen, Helle Sjøvaag
Amid concerns about legacy news media’s dependency on third-party platforms, recent research calls for a more nuanced understanding of the platform–publisher relationship. This study explores how news organizations can strategically counter platform power, including retracting from platforms to regain control over audiences, data, and revenues. Using a discursive institutionalism lens, we examine how public service media (PSM) and commercial news media in Norway have articulated and implemented social media platform strategies. Based on discourse analysis of annual reports and interviews with 20 media professionals from public service, commercial media, and industry associations, we propose a novel framework for understanding platform (dis)entanglement. The framework reveals isomorphic patterns—both between platforms and legacy media, and between public service and commercial media. Drawing on the concept of reverse isomorphism, the study shows how PSM organization NRK can absorb platform disengagement risks, unlike commercial outlets facing prohibitive costs. The commercial actors find themselves in a double bind, experiencing isomorphism in two distinct ways: first, in relation to platforms, which they cannot abandon due to their business models; and second, in relation to PSM, which they perceive as upholding journalistic values they aspire to but are unable to replicate.