Shannon Bond

More people are shifting to the digital world as life outside the home is put on hold. That's putting a lot of pressure on companies to keep connections up when all their employees are trying to telework at the same time. It's also posing challenges for Internet video conferencing services. Internet infrastructure and security company Cloudflare says US Internet traffic jumped 20% on March 13, after President Donald Trump declared the pandemic a national emergency. In hard-hit Seattle, Internet use was up 40% last week compared to Jan.

Trust in traditional media is at an all-time low, as many people prefer to get information from friends and social media contacts, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer. Pew Research Center surveys show that ideological divisions have widened between Democrats and Republicans, more and less educated people, and older and younger adults.

Since Donald Trump’s election, several news organisations have set out to bridge the rift between liberals and conservatives who inhabit distinct ideological bubbles that determine the media they consume and fuel an increasingly uncivil public discourse. Diversifying media diets is also the goal of apps such as Read Across the Aisle, which notifies users when their news reading skews too far to the left or right. A browser extension called Escape Your Bubble slips stories into your Facebook feed that contain political views challenging your own.

According to lobbyists and consumer advocates, the overturning of broadband privacy rules a forerunner to a pair of bigger fights that will shape the US internet and media industries for years to come: the network neutrality regime that sets the ground rules for access to digital communications and media, and approval of AT&T’s $109 billion bid for Time Warner.

The severe retrenchment of FCC power fits with the agenda of Ajit Pai, the Republican-appointed commissioner who took over as chairman of the agency after the election. Chairman Pai has been a vociferous opponent of net neutrality, and has already taken snips out of the regime put in place by the Obama-era FCC to limit the powers of cable and telecoms companies to exert more control over the data flowing through their networks. The shift in direction to unshackle the network companies threatens to reset the competitive landscape, and is shaping up to be a mixed blessing for internet giants like Google and Facebook.

Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox has offered $80bn for Time Warner – setting up the possibility of the world’s biggest merger in media since AOL bought Time Warner at the height of dotcom mania in 2000.

What would Murdoch get for his money?

Television clout, Sports prowess, A bigger bite of Hollywood, and International reach