This panel will explore the impact that beat journalism, "a new realm of watchdog journalism" (Phil Napoli) that has emerged in recent years, has on how tech platforms behave, communicate and interact. In the past decade, journalists all over the world have been reporting on the use and misuse of social media platforms and search engines. This panel will tackle the effects of this growing coverage on the tech ecosystem and its interaction with the media sector. It will feature: - Phil Napoli, James R. Shepley Distinguished Professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy, who has been studying and writing about the "platform beat" as part of his broad work on tech- and policy-related issues; - Two journalists from two different environments who have been following and covering tech platforms and their impact on media (Filip Struharik from DenniK N in Slovakia and Sonny Swe, founder of Frontier Myanmar have been invited); - Sarah Shirazyan, Content Policy Manager at Meta, who will talk about the platform's work on Misinformation & Algorithmic Ranking that affects or is affected by journalism, in a panel moderated by Marius Dragomir, the director of the Center for Media, Data & Society (CMDS), a global research center that is focusing, among other things, on researching journalism-related issues.