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Paywalls’ Impact on Local News Websites’ Traffic and Their Civic and Business Implications
Journalism Studies
Abstract
In an attempt to manage a looming revenue crisis in their transition from print to digital, many local newspapers have implemented user payment (paywalls) in their online editions. This paper asks what the business and civic implications of such introduction of user payment are. Comparing audience metrics on a sample of eight local news websites (four Norwegian, four Danish) for 52 weeks before and after paywall introduction, this study finds that the numbers of both pageviews and unique visitors decrease upon the transition from free to fee-based access to the news. Hard paywalls have a more negative immediate effect on traffic than soft paywalls. This difference equalizes over time and the traffic mainly remains at a decreased level regardless of paywall type. Traffic development in Norway is somewhat better than in Denmark in a short-term perspective, but national differences also even out over time. We posit that while paywalls may constitute a new revenue stream for local news media under financial pressure, they also challenge the civic function of the local news media since fewer people consult them.
... High views can be easy to achieve with specific tricks; thus, the numbers tend to be worthless. Moreover, digital news media compete fiercely at local, national, and global levels to earn elevated news (Olsen, Kammer & Solvoll, 2020). ...
... The media adopt several solutions for this situation. The first is to increase the quality of the audience by expanding user participation, so even if the number of views is low, the media may become more valuable for advertisers (Olsen, Kammer & Solvoll, 2020). Currently, media companies treat users as consumers because they highly depend on advertisers and have no independence (Antonopoulos et al., 2020). ...
... Journalists and global news organisations limit user participation to news readers and are reluctant to view users as active participants in news production (Lewis, Holton & Coddington, 2014). Therefore, many media are trapped in the race to attract views, but ironically, it has no impact on increasing revenue (Olsen, Kammer & Solvoll, 2020). For established digital media, the loss is compensable by financing from the holding company, which has substantial capital (Krumsvik, 2012). ...
The global news media industry is still looking for a sustainable business model. The digitalisation of the media has forced the global press industry to seek compensation for lost revenue traditionally derived from advertising. A similar phenomenon is also occurring in a Global South country, Indonesia. With many social media users and thousands of startups, the opportunity to benefit comes from two channels: monetising user participation and content. What is the current position of conglomerate and digitally native news media on the two options? How are websites and social media used by both media to support these two sources of income? The research applied two methods, website content analysis and social media analysis, to see revenue channels, web functions, user participation on the web, and social media functions. In addition, we interviewed eight informants from eight media. This research finds that digital news media conglomerates and Indonesian startups earn profits through similar channels, such as monetising user participation and content and their expertise. However, slightly different from established digital media, digital native media companies expand their revenue stream by monetising their expertise, for example, by offering market research and data analysis. Digital news media with a niche market of readers will most likely offer their expertise.
... La prensa tradicional ha tenido que adaptarse al impacto generado por el advenimiento y la masificación de internet, que ha cambiado los antiguos patrones de financiamiento y difusión (Luo, 2020). A la necesidad de digitalizarse, siguió una caída en los ingresos por publicidad, dado que la mayor parte de las entradas por publicidad en línea se las lleva Google o Facebook (Collins, 2011;Luo, 2020;Olsen et al., 2020). Esto condujo a recortes presupuestarios y de personal, y a la desaparición de gran parte de la prensa local en beneficio de las grandes corporaciones (Bethea, 2020;Catalan-Matamoros y Elías, 2020;Collins, 2011;Olsen et al., 2020). ...
... A la necesidad de digitalizarse, siguió una caída en los ingresos por publicidad, dado que la mayor parte de las entradas por publicidad en línea se las lleva Google o Facebook (Collins, 2011;Luo, 2020;Olsen et al., 2020). Esto condujo a recortes presupuestarios y de personal, y a la desaparición de gran parte de la prensa local en beneficio de las grandes corporaciones (Bethea, 2020;Catalan-Matamoros y Elías, 2020;Collins, 2011;Olsen et al., 2020). Ante esto, algunos medios han optado por muros de pago, o sistemas de pago por contenido. ...
... Ante esto, algunos medios han optado por muros de pago, o sistemas de pago por contenido. Esto, a su vez, genera otras dificultades: se crean medios de élite, inasequibles para muchos, lo que atenta contra los principios democráticos del periodismo (Luo, 2020) y la conceptualización de la audiencia como ciudadanos deviene en consumidores o productos -para obtener datos- (Olsen et al., 2020). ...
Este artículo aborda el problema del falso balance en la prensa, en el contexto de la toma de decisiones técnicas —aquellas en que la ciencia se interseca con el dominio político porque los temas en cuestión son relevantes para toda la población—. El objetivo es enmarcar el problema en un contexto amplio, la sociología de las ciencias, que satisfaga la necesidad de reconocer los compromisos democráticos del periodismo y la importancia de comunicar los avances tecnológicos eficazmente y enfrentar la desinformación. La metodología consiste en un análisis conceptual, anclado en casos recientes de falso balance: cambio climático y vacunas. Se concluye que las categorías conceptuales propuestas por la teoría ayudan al periodismo a reconquistar un espacio de credibilidad en que se legitimen tanto la experticia como la participación ciudadana en la toma de decisiones técnicas, sin por ello difuminar la distinción entre la persona lega y la experta.
... Reaching audiences is important for both journalistic and commercial logic. For the former, it is crucial to fullling their democratic mission of public service [6], whereas the latter needs audiences to generate advertising and subscription revenues in a later stage [18,21]. ...
... The role of the recommender is indirect, as it can "help drop users o at the paywall, but there are so many other factors that are going to determine whether that person crosses that line[converts]" (R2). The paywall strategy is driven by commercial logic, which appears to conict with journalistic logic, which holds itself responsible for an informed society [18]. Journalists want their articles to be widely read and not restricted by a paywall. ...
Recommender systems are increasingly used by news media organizations. Existing literature examines various aspects of news recommender systems (NRS) from a computational, user-centric, or normative perspective. Yet research advocates studying the complexities of real-world applications around NRS. Recently, a multi-stakeholder approach to NRS has been adopted, allowing to understand different stakeholder perspectives on NRS development and evaluation within the news organization. However, little research has been done on the different key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics considered valuable by different stakeholders. Based on 11 interviews with professionals from two commercial news publishers, this paper demonstrates that stakeholders prioritize distinct KPIs and metrics related to the reach-engagement-conversion-retention funnel. The evaluation of NRS performance is often limited to short-term metrics like CTR, overlooking the multiplicity of stakeholders involved. Our findings reveal how different purposes, KPIs, and metrics are valued from the journalistic, commercial, and tech logic. In doing so, this paper contributes to the multi-stakeholder approach to NRS, advancing our understanding of the real-world complexity of NRS development and evaluation.
... Losing digital traffic can be a significant issue for newspapers unless digital subscription revenue outstrips advertising revenue (Olsen et al., 2020). As a rule, advertisers want their product seen by as many people as possible and paywalls defeat this purposeespecially in an environment where competition such as Google provides granular and targeted advertisement at relatively cheap prices. ...
... News ought not to feel as easy and accessible as Facebook and Netflix (Flamingo & Reuters Institute, 2019). The formats should be native to mobile platforms (portrait video) and most socially conscious (Olsen et al., 2020). Because audiences are placing greater emphasis on the value and quality of content (Berger et al., 2015), the way media covers and presents stories needs to change. ...
Digital Media in Uganda is experimenting with subscription-based models as an alternative to the traditional advertising model and as a recovery plan from the effects of COVID-19. The objectives for this study were: to identify critical success factors for subscription-based models in digital media platforms, to analyse audience consumption habits vis-a-vis payment for digital content on ChimpsReports, to establish the effect of paywalls on the financial bottom-line of ChimpReports, and to establish the barriers to subscription uptake among digital media in Uganda. The theoretical framework adopted the political economy of the media and the disruption of innovations theories to investigate the viability of digital subscription. The researcher used a mixed-methods approach. The study employed key informant interviews and survey as methods for data collection. The methods were aided by a questionnaire and an interview guide as data generation tools. The researcher sampled 218 respondents. The sample size was achieved through the purposive sampling technique and simple random sampling technique. Qualitative data was analysed thematically and presented in the form of themes. On the other hand, quantitative data was analysed using Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets and data was presented in the form of tables, pie charts, and graphs. The findings show that the increase in internet penetration in Uganda and the increase in smartphone usage are the biggest enablers of paid-content consumption in Uganda. The quality of content, poor packaging, and unfair prices by publishers were the biggest barriers to uptake of paid news content. The study concluded that digital subscriptions can be the leading revenue source for digital media and recommended the use of freemium and metered paywalls over hard paywalls. The researcher further suggests a further investigation into the monetization of instant messaging apps as this is a new phenomenon that this study did not capture.
... In line with these findings, Goyanes (2015) shows that US adults' willingness to pay for online local news increases with age. Therefore, delivering the value that customers require and thereby increasing their willingness to pay becomes a crucial factor that according to Olsen, Kammer, et al. (2020) has to compensate for a decrease in online traffic due to hard or soft paywalls. ...
... Regarding local media, we argue that public support instruments are potential external un-lock mechanisms. Two types of public support are differentiated: direct and indirect instruments (Nielsen and Linnebank 2011;K€ unzler et al. 2013;Ali 2017;Harte, Howells, and Abingdon 2019;Olsen, Kammer, et al. 2020;Murschetz 2020). While direct instruments support specific news organizations, indirect instruments support journalistic ecosystems. ...
Media practitioners and policy makers are calling for more public support to facilitate the digital transformation of local journalism. However, newer academic literature focuses on explaining why public support for local media has become a necessity from a market failure and societal point of view. Almost no attention is dedicated to the question which known public support instruments might be considered as helpful from the perspective of local media and their digital transformation strategies. Therefore, this study draws on strategic path dependence theory and investigates how local media’s perceptions of innovation constraints (i.e., lock-in mechanisms), their innovation status (i.e., lock-ins) and their preferences for public support instruments to enable innovation (i.e., public un-lock mechanisms) differ depending on the type of strategy. Four strategies are compared: two content strategies (multimedia formats and artificial intelligence applications) as well as two commercial strategies (revenue diversification and digital payment models). Data about the four strategies are collected with an online survey of local media, which operate in the Swiss canton of St. Gallen. The findings show significant differences between the investigated strategies and suggest a differentiated approach to public support of local media in the digital age.
... They found a modest time effect (2.2% in one year); however, their first scraping snapshot was taken one year after the user visited the web pages and used it as a baseline for their measurement. Third, in their analysis, there is an implicit assumption that individuals are not similarly affected by such restrictions, which is certainly not the case (Olsen et al., 2020). Fourth, while Dahlke et al. (2023) shed light on the evolution of restricted content (such as login pages or paywalls and server errors, e.g., 404 errors), there are other sources of variation, such as advertising, personalized or time-sensitive recommendations, and direct text modifications (e.g., error corrections) that have not been accounted for. ...
As the exploration of digital behavioral data revolutionizes communication research, understanding the nuances of data collection methodologies becomes increasingly pertinent. This study focuses on one prominent data collection approach, web scraping, and more specifically, its application in the growing field of research relying on web browsing data. We investigate discrepancies between content obtained directly during user interaction with a website (in-situ) and content scraped using the URLs of participants' logged visits (ex-situ) with various time delays (0, 30, 60, and 90 days). We find substantial disparities between the methodologies, uncovering that errors are not uniformly distributed across news categories regardless of classification method (domain, URL, or content analysis). These biases compromise the precision of measurements used in existing literature. The ex-situ collection environment is the primary source of the discrepancies (~33.8%), while the time delays in the scraping process play a smaller role (adding ~6.5 percentage points in 90 days). Our research emphasizes the need for data collection methods that capture web content directly in the user's environment. However, acknowledging its complexities, we further explore strategies to mitigate biases in web-scraped browsing histories, offering recommendations for researchers who rely on this method and laying the groundwork for developing error-correction frameworks.
... Less than 50% of experts agreed that lack of education and lack of access to reliable news were reasons why people believe and share misinformation. This is particularly noteworthy considering prior work highlighting the importance of education (van Prooijen, 2017) and an increase in paywalls limiting access to reliable news (Olsen et al., 2020). Finding 3: Opinions about misinformation and digital media. ...
We surveyed 150 academic experts on misinformation and identified areas of expert consensus. Experts defined misinformation as false and misleading information, though views diverged on the importance of intentionality and what exactly constitutes misinformation. The most popular reason why people believe and share misinformation was partisanship, while lack of education was one of the least popular reasons. Experts were optimistic about the effectiveness of interventions against misinformation and supported system-level actions against misinformation, such as platform design changes and algorithmic changes. The most agreed-upon future direction for the field of misinformation was to collect more data outside of the United States.
... The study, however, failed to disclose information on the nature of content accessed by the men and women who subscribed to the various newspapers' websites, pointing to another gap in knowledge that this current study seeks to fill. As seen in the SG, the decline in webpage visits and views in most media organizations from the time they introduce paywalls is evident, as noted by Olsen, Kammer, and Solvoll (2019); Sunday Standard, 2021). ...
The provision of content on the internet has shifted media consumption habits from traditional to digital platforms, causing advertising spending to shift. Legacy Media faces challenges in maintaining operations and workforce due to diminishing revenue. Kenyan media companies Standard Group, Nation Media Group, and Radio Africa Group, have implemented paywalls to monetise content. Despite paywalls, these companies struggle to generate income despite growing online followers. This research examined the news beats of content locked by the Standard Group's digital paywall, the scheduling practices of news editors for paywalled content, and the most subscribed news beat content on the SG website. The study used the Diffusion of Innovations theory and a descriptive research design and gathered both quantitative and qualitative data using content analysis code sheets and semi-structured interview guides respectively. The study analysed premium content placed behind the SG paywall in May, June, and July 2022, three months before the general election. Findings show that the website's political news beat was the most subscribed content, with news editors scheduling premium content based on exclusivity, quality, and virality. Consumption of paywalled content increased in May, June, and July. Males were the highest subscribers (70%), with the highest consumers aged 24 to 35. The daily plan was the most popular subscription package, while the yearly plan had the highest number of subscribers and generated the most revenue. The study established that high-income news consumers are willing to pay for paywall models on digital platforms to access unique, high-quality journalism. To gain and retain more subscribers, the researcher recommends that publishers create distinctive content that meets audience demands and expectations. This can be achieved through expert interviews and industry leaders, requiring media companies to invest in technology and time. The researcher recommends that news media create a paid-for community for subscribers to engage with high-quality, expert-driven content, encouraging them to pay for online content behind the paywall.
... With their advertising and audience revenues in decline, local news organizations have been experiencing comparatively high degrees of disruption in recent years (Gulyas and Hess 2023). Therefore, a major challenge facing societies today lies in the decline of local news provision (Wahl-Jorgensen 2019), which threatens to create news deserts (Abernathy 2023;Blagojev et al. 2023;Olsen and Mathisen 2023), with consequences for local communities and, more broadly, for democratic societies (Ali 2016;Olsen, Kammer, and Solvoll 2020). ...
With their advertising and audience revenues in decline, local news organizations have been experiencing comparatively high degrees of disruption in recent years. Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers opportunities for local news organizations to better cope with the economic challenges they face. However, local news organizations need to carefully prioritize where AI will create the most value. After all, they serve customers in the audience and advertising markets, with external effects on society. At the same time, they are limited by scarce resources, which constrains the implementation of AI. Therefore, based on Porter's value chain, this article pursues two goals. First, drawing on previous research, we provide a systematic overview of activities for which local news organizations see the biggest potential of AI to create value. Moreover, we highlight promising AI use cases based on benchmarking with national news organizations. Second, we discuss local news organizations’ challenges in implementing AI and how they might overcome such obstacles.
... Regarding audience-based news funding models, changes in the experienced customer value have forced news media to rethink their business models (Picard, 2010(Picard, , 2011Edge, 2014;Goyanes, 2014Goyanes, , 2015Ciobanu, 2015aCiobanu, , 2015b. Although some firms have adapted their business models successfully to the new environment (Kaye and Quinn, 2010;Vukanovic, 2011;Cozzolino, Verona and Rothaermel, 2018), attempts to find a financially sustainable model for the press have mainly relied on re-establishing lost exclusivity (Kaye and Quinn, 2010;Chyi, 2012;Chiou and Tucker, 2013;Cook and Sirkkunen, 2013;Arrese, 2016;Oh, Animesh and Pinsonneault, 2016;Westergaard and Jørgensen, 2018;Olsen, Kammer and Solvoll, 2020;Vara-Miguel et al., 2021). After intensified competition in the digital advertising market, business model innovation in news media has focussed on models based on user payments (Tchivzhel, 2015). ...
https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-335-979-6
This dissertation explores business model opportunities for news when information is freely accessible. It asks: How have news agencies responded to the declining commercial value of news in their strategies and business models? What, if any, are the critical elements of sustainable business models to produce news that has become a public good? The root causes of the European news agency industry transformation are first analysed through the changes new technologies have brought to competitive forces. Successful new business models in European national news agencies are then examined through case studies of selected agencies. Finally, survey-based statistical methods combined with interviews and qualitative analyses are used to test empirically whether the news is a so-called anti-rival good, meaning that news is a good that increases in value when used by others. Three emerging opportunities for new business model innovations are analysed in depth: resource-based diversification, platform business models, and user contributions.
The findings show that incumbent firms’ resources or capabilities have been used successfully for related business diversification, either into new services to media customers or into new, more profitable markets, such as corporations and institutions. A specific diversification category is innovating platform business models using resources built for news operations as “incumbent advantages” in platform strategies, including platform launches. Multisided platforms enable the development of profitable business models that employ the same resources as general news services. Using the news to subsidize a platform may allow news services to be produced sustainably, even at a loss. The findings also suggest that incumbent firms benefit from, for example, existing owner and client relationships and an established trusted brand. The analyses of user contributions show that, on average, the news may even lose value due to contributions by other users. However, intercorrelations reveal interesting opportunities for value creation, as value perceptions vary, and value shifts depend on the types of value the news story creates for the user. A deep understanding of what values news creates and how they are interlinked is called for in digital news service design
... Concerning the actual payment process, both technical (accessibility) and temporal transaction barriers (time required) are known to play an important role in willingness to pay (Chen and Thorson 2019). In addition, the introduction of payment barriers can lead to a decrease in page views and unique visitors (e.g., Olsen, Kammer, and Solvoll 2020) and prompts users to switch to free alternatives, such as blogs, social networks, or YouTube channels, which offer the audience (supposedly) substitutable content, but incur much lower or no costs (Chyi 2005;Kammer et al. 2015;Myllylahti 2014). ...
Online news providers struggle to pull audiences behind their paywalls in order to complement (insufficient) advertising revenue with sales income. But what do consumers think about paying for—once freely available—online news content and how does it affect their payment behavior? The present study complements the existing research by developing a typology of attitudes and behavior toward paying for online news content based on qualitative interviews (n = 64) conducted in Germany. Five types of mindsets were identified: paying subscribers, free riders, promisers (users who do not pay but announce to do so in the future), occasional buyers, and convinced deniers. The typology organizes the diversity in positions toward paid news content, thus enabling a more powerful explanatory research on consumer valuation and monetization in journalism. In addition, it can assist online news providers in developing targeted strategies for converting online readers into purchasing customers.
... La preferencia por el periodismo de proximidad se relaciona con lo que la audiencia percibe como periodismo de valor o de calidad en el ámbito local -historias contadas desde la comunidad local, integración y reciprocidad con la audiencia, entre otros (Costera Meijer, 2020a)-. Esto es clave para construir una oferta de contenidos por la que los usuarios estén dispuestos a pagar (Newman et al., 2021) y para que los medios locales puedan establecer modelos de pago (Olsen et al., 2020). ...
Esta investigación pretende identificar las preferencias de consumo informativo de la ciudadanía española, atendiendo a la elección de canales y marcas periodísticas, y a las razones que las justifican. Se analizan también las condiciones de suscripción a los medios y se evalúa el uso de canales digitales y dispositivos móviles para el acceso. Se trata de una investigación cuantitativa fundamentada en una encuesta dirigida al universo de los ciudadanos españoles mayores de edad (n=700). Los resultados revelan que los españoles prefieren los medios y marcas tradicionales y sus ediciones digitales para informarse, aunque los nativos digitales ocupan un lugar relevante. Internet y los dispositivos móviles se normalizan como vías de acceso a las noticias y su consumo a través de las redes sociales es mayoritario entre los jóvenes. La confianza y la proximidad son los principales motivos para la elección de medios y canales.
... Internet bloggers act like journalists, disseminating noteworthy content and adhering to journalistic standards such as a dedication to the facts and the government's right to know. e daily media influences society's dominant cultural, sociological, and geopolitical image through presenting news, economics, climate, games, amusement, and major events [2]. Even though the shift to digital media has posed challenges for newspapers and broadcasters throughout the globe, the print and television news industries in China have continued to develop-albeit at a slower pace. ...
Public progress and people’s well-being need free and honest news media effective for educating the public, holding experienced authors accountable, and recording public debate of public officials on current events. News media’s evolution might be influenced by a variety of variables. Political understanding, economics, education, development corporation, and information technology are vital variables that will offer effective news. Due to the enactment of web and mobile technologies, the media world is now preparing for the next explorations with the Internet of Things (IoT). Because of IoT-based devices, this mix of technologies has already begun to spread. One of the industries most influenced by this next technological revolution will be news media. Internet of Things devices is enabling new methods of creating, disseminating, and consuming journalistic material, ushering the news business into a new paradigm: ubiquitous journalism. In this paper, we collected data from Chinese news organizations to improve security, team collaboration, high-speed network access, and public accessibility. We have used Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) encryption to contextualize IoT adoption inside the framework of technological advancements absorbed by media, and the process can be optimized by using Hybridized Fruitfly Bumblebee Optimization Algorithm (HFBOA). The suggested technique is compared to other existing methods, and its performance is assessed. The proposed method helps in increasing the security of the contents related to news media. The estimated results for our proposed technique are implementation cost (45), latency (40), security level (95), reliability (87), accuracy (89), throughput (6.7), execution time (1.05), and energy consumption (45).
... As Scandinavian news markets are considered digitally innovative (c.f. Newman et al., 2019), developments here should inform further analyses of corporate news markets beyond Democratic Corporatist media systems (Syvertsen et al., 2014), particularly as newspaper chains in the Scandinavian countries have been comparatively successful in digitizing their operations through proactive paywall strategies (Olsen et al., 2019). Moreover, Scandinavian business and innovation strategies in the news industries have been found to be highly comparable to other contexts, including the U.S. (Lehtisaari et al., 2018) and Europe (Larrondo et al., 2016). ...
This article presents an analysis of risk perception among chain newspaper CEOs in Scandinavia. Based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews, the analysis finds that risk is perceived in relation to public trust, corporate expansion and contentious government regulation. We discuss these themes in relation to their uncertainty, and the potential gains and losses that accompany them. The aim of the study is to sharpen the distinction between risks, uncertainties and threats as they are mobilized in research on the news industries, contributing to the research on strategic media management at the firm level. The contribution of the study is furthermore to demonstrate how CEOs' risk perception can be seen as boundary work performed at the corporate level.
... The introduction of paid content allows local newspapers to capitalize on niche content in local markets, differentiate high-and low-value content, and identify valuable readers in key segments without significant drops in reach (Olsen and Solvoll 2018b). Restricting access can also lead to "thinner" consumption of local news, less attachment to local newspapers, and readers seeking alternative news sources, particularly younger, less affluent readers with lower interest in news (Olsen and Solvoll 2018a), as well as decreased pageviews and unique visitors over time (Olsen, Kammer, and Solvoll 2020). Park, Fisher, and Lee (2021) found that interest in supporting local news was tied to consumers' sense of community belonging and trust in local news, while a willingness to pay for news was tied to content quality, unique content, and interactive features. ...
Local news organizations are adapting their newsroom routines to better respond to a digital readership. These models feature different levels of online integration, but all aim to restructure newsroom responsibilities to ensure editorial and economic sustainability. This study uses a cross-national approach to assess how roles and structures in local and regional newsrooms are changing in the digital environment. In-depth interviews with managers, editors, and journalists in five countries (Finland, France, Germany, Portugal, and the U.K.) reveal how their newsroom structures have adapted for the production of digital content; how they have changed their newsroom cultures to better reflect a digital-first mind-set and changing audience preferences; the role of newsroom leaders in implementing these changes and equipping staff members to respond to digital disruption; and changes to journalists’ roles and responsibilities, including new beat assignments, the use of new digital tools, and the creation of entirely new positions. The findings shed light on ways local and regional news organizations are defying their institutional nature and innovating by restructuring their internal and external practices and rethinking their news products to appeal to digital audiences.
... On the other hand, while national newspapers suffered heavy circulation losses in the move to digital platforms (Medienorge, 2019), their aggressive online-first strategies have positioned them well for paywall adaptation and digital subscription uptake (Olsen et al., 2020). Hence, they are now well placed to mobilise audience metrics, thus attracting programmatic advertising. ...
This article addresses the challenges facing local newspapers as the digital economy transitions to artificial intelligence (AI). We interview five CEOs of Scandinavian newspaper corporations, representing small, mid-sized, and large newspaper chains. The analysis focuses on three main factors emerging from the interviews – technological transformations, digital advertising markets, and corporate enrolment – and how they relate to business model disruption and the non-substitutability of local news. The analysis is set within the framework of the digital transformation, which, for the purpose of this study, we argue consists of two phases: getting online (until about 2014), and algorithmic adaptation (the introduction of programmatic advertising and audience metrics from about 2014). The analysis concludes that as non-substitutability is lost on the advertising side of the market, this challenges the umbrella model of newspaper publishing.
... What is less explored, is the characteristics of such patterns of convergence in information abundant local media environments where the transition from offline to online news consumption (e.g. Pew Research Center 2019) as well as the implementation of paywalls in local news sites (Olsen, Kammer, and Solvoll 2019) are likely to affect how people congregate around and combine different media types. Shifts in social media platforms' strategies, such as Facebook's decreasing provision of referral traffic to general news publishers (Ekstr€ om and Westlund 2019) and increasing emphasis on promoting local publishers' content (Hardiman and Brown 2018) may also affect user overlap between social media and local legacy media. ...
Communication abundance in the digital sphere has raised concern over audience fragmentation and the declining capacity of general news media to shape common experiences and promote shared discourses required by a well-functioning local democracy. Based on the concept of mediated public connection this paper offers an analytical framework to investigate how people orient themselves to a local public world through media in high-choice, digitally advanced information environments. Two analytical dimensions of people’s media use – practice and perception – are tested on survey data from Norway (N = 1692) using a network analysis approach combined with media experience data. The study finds substantial convergence in use of different online and offline media with the largest audience overlap occurring between online local and regional newspapers and Facebook. These digital players represent the backbone of the local media environment under study. Overall, citizens’ experiences with different media as democratic resources for their local public life are not very strong and weaker for online media than for their offline editions.
This paper analyzes how young non-paying news users experience digital news subscriptions in Norway. As news organizations face declining advertising revenues, digital subscriptions are considered the sustainable financial strategy of the future, with young people a particularly challenging group to convert. We analyze the experiences of young adults who do not pay for news and identify three key dimensions to why they do not subscribe: lack of exclusivity, subscriptions as too time-consuming, and unattractive payment models. We also detail how the informants maneuver around paywalls, and we highlight “multi-perspectivism” as an overarching concern guiding the informants’ preferences. Empirically, the paper furthers our understanding of the challenges facing business models for journalism, especially problems with long-term, provider-specific subscriptions. Methodologically, we demonstrate how a combination of recurring interviews and a media diary matching a subscription test period yields a deeper analysis of motivations for, and experiences with, news use. Theoretically, the paper shows how approaching news through users’ experiences can provide insights not just into what users appreciate from news but also into where they consider there is a lack of value.
This study examines the question of asymmetry/symmetry regarding the use of language in partisan media outlets in the US. Some research has suggested that conservatives and conservative media are unique in how they present information to their audience, positing that conservatives use simpler, more uncivil language. Others have noted that some of these matters, such as use of uncivil language, applies to both conservative and liberal outlets. The current study adds to this literature by examining whether the ideological leanings of news sources correlate with reading ease, level of negativity (sentiment), and level of formality (tone). Specifically, we examine whether only conservative outlets use simpler, negative, and less formal language or if these trends appear for media outlets across the ideological spectrum. Our findings find support for the symmetry hypothesis. Indeed, our findings suggest that ideological extremity and partisanship strength correlate with use of easier-to-read language.
This study contributes with in-depth knowledge on how algorithmic news recommendation is adopted within the Scandinavian daily press and how notions of gatekeeping affect the use of these systems. News recommender systems provide news organisations with new opportunities to offer more relevant and personalised news experiences, but their increasing use has also raised several concerns about whether and how algorithms should undertake important editorial decisions. Current literature offers only limited empirical insight into the actual use of these technologies in journalism, and this study is the first to map the use of and perceptions on algorithmic news recommendation within the Scandinavian news market. Drawing on interviews with all 19 national newspapers within the Scandinavian daily press, the findings reveal that while most newspapers use news recommender systems in some form, the extent of their use is still limited due to concerns over the shared news sphere and a reluctance to transfer editorial control. Some newspapers address these concerns in the use of news recommendation by upholding traditional gatekeeping control on certain parts of the website, while others have built editorial control into the systems themselves, indicating that Scandinavian newspapers normalise algorithmic news recommendation by adopting a traditional gatekeeping role.
Political economy predicates suggest that media viability is about the influence and balance between politics and economics of media systems. It is about survival and control. This logic informs this study, which seeks to gain insights into the impact of Covid-19 on media viability in Southern Africa. For decades, the media industry in Southern Africa, and indeed globally, has been trapped in an existential struggle—experiencing, for instance, the steady demise of traditional business models amidst rapid technological developments and proliferation of digital communication, waning trust in legacy media, and an unconducive political and legislative environment. In this qualitative study, we learn from leading industry experts from eight countries about the wide-ranging impact and paradoxes of the pandemic on the media industry—a phenomenon some have referred to as ‘a Darwinian moment’ or ‘media extinction event’. In this study media-house size and ownership, trustworthiness and ability to fully switch to digital operations were key to survival, as was the need for newsroom and work-form restructuring. The study raises concerns over the Covid-19-exacerbated dangers regarding journalists’ welfare and cautions against the deepening threats to press freedom, the further marginalisation of minority groups and the relegation of the media’s public interest role.
Getting users to pay for news remains a key challenge in journalism. With advertising revenues dwindling, news organizations have become increasingly dependent on reader revenue. This paper explores reasons news users have for not paying for (print and digital) news. 68 participants tried a free three-week newspaper trial subscription and afterward were interviewed about their considerations for (not) getting a paid subscription. Participants had four main reasons not to pay for news: price, sufficient freely available news, not wanting to commit oneself, and delivery and technical issues. A key finding is that digital entertainment subscriptions like Netflix and Spotify seemed central to how younger participants thought about paying for news. Another finding that stands out is that when referencing price, participants had a full print subscription in mind, even when their preferred subscription type was a less costly weekend-only or digital subscription. Participants also discussed future scenarios in which they might consider paying for news: a lower price, a flexible service, a one-stop for reliable news, the added value of higher quality news, and payment as a commitment device disciplining participants into actually reading the news.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how upstream social marketing can benefit from using social media commentary to identify cognitive biases. Using reactions to leading media/news publications/articles related to climate and energy policy in Australia, this paper aims to understand underlying community cognitive biases and their reasonings.
Design/methodology/approach
Social listening was used to gather community commentary about climate and energy policy in Australia. This allowed the coding of natural language data to determine underlying cognitive biases inherent in the community. In all, 2,700 Facebook comments were collected from 27 news articles dated between January 2018 and March 2020 using exportcomments.com. Team coding was used to ensure consistency in interpretation.
Findings
Nine key cognitive bias were noted, including, pessimism, just-world, confirmation, optimum, curse of knowledge, Dunning–Kruger, self-serving, concision and converge biases. Additionally, the authors report on the interactive nature of these biases. Right-leaning audiences are perceived to be willfully uninformed and motivated by self-interest; centric audiences want solutions based on common-sense for the common good; and left-leaning supporters of progressive climate change policy are typically pessimistic about the future of climate and energy policy in Australia. Impacts of powerful media organization shaping biases are also explored.
Research limitations/implications
Through a greater understanding of the types of cognitive biases, policy-makers are able to better design and execute influential upstream social marketing campaigns.
Originality/value
The study demonstrates that observing cognitive biases through social listening can assist upstream social marketing understand community biases and underlying reasonings towards climate and energy policy.
This article explores the relationship between the implementation of a paywall and the editorial content profile in a local newspaper. The premise of the article is that the content published behind the wall is the content the newspaper values the most, and the article aims to contribute to an understanding of the interplay between strategic and economic decisions regarding news production and the editorial content. The Norwegian newspaper Fædrelandsvennen and its online initiative fevennen.no serve as cases in the study, and the article asks two questions: What are the most prominent news values behind the paywall, and how do they relate to commercial strategies regarding the introduction of the wall?
Analytics are now embedded in newsroom practice. In a form of participative gatekeeping, the ability to track how the audience absorbs information is shaping editorial content. Although there is much discussion that engagement metrics, like time spent, are more important than pageviews, many advertisers are still more interested in clicks than counting time, some newsrooms still have pageview targets, and the pageviews metric is often used as a simplistic measure of reach. As such, digital editors sit cemented to monitors, working to decipher what stories have or are gaining traction. Using this information, they choose placement of content, enhance stories, and share stories via social media to build traffic, then repeat this frenetic cycle in a seemingly endless loop. But at what cost? How does the focus on metrics affect best practice in the newsroom and, potentially, information sharing in the public sphere? This article examines the impact of audience data on practice at The Hamilton Spectator, a local newsroom in Canada, to explore whether traffic-based metrics and the use of analytics impede the ability to meet journalistic standards, and/or build bigger, more informed and engaged audiences.
Why is news sometimes free? Although the commercial press’s history is, in part, the search for new forms of commodification, journalism sometimes distances itself from commerce and economically decommodifies its work. We investigate one such moment in the form of “paywall exceptions”: instances when online news organizations drop or temporarily reconfigure their paywalls to let news circulate unmetered among subscribers and nonsubscribers alike. We document 69 exceptions from 1999 to 2015, categorize publishers’ publicly stated rationales, and reflect on what they reveal about the networked press’s negotiations between democratic and commercial logics.
Media policy schemes around the world are seemingly shifting character. As budgets for direct subsidies are under increasing pressure, the role of indirect tools, such as tax reductions, are growing in relative importance. This article explores the political justifications of value-added tax (VAT) as a media policy tool, and how longitudinal shifts indicate broader changes in the media systems. Based on a document analysis of newspaper VAT development in three countries with similar historical policy models—Finland, Sweden and Norway—the article identifies and describes the dynamics between four major policy positions; transparency, pluralism, harmonisation and financial austerity.
The measurement of how people are “exposed” to media content, which is crucial for the understanding of media use and effects, has been a challenge for a long time. Today’s media landscape, in which individuals are exposed to a diversity of messages anytime, anywhere, and from a great variety of sources on an increasing number of different media platforms, has complicated the measurement of media exposure even more. However, today’s digital media landscape also offers new possibilities to map media exposure by means of passive measurement. In this Introduction article to the special issue, we give an overview of the different ways in which media exposure is measured and the various issues associated with their applications. We conclude with a research agenda for issues that need to be tackled in future research and also introduce a research tool for media exposure measurement.
One of the most distinctive characteristics of the media marketplace is the role and function of the audience. In the dual-product marketplace that characterizes media, in which content is sold (or given) to audiences and audiences are, in turn, sold to advertisers, audiences occupy the unique position of being the customer in one market and the product in the other market. This dynamic is further complicated by the ways that digital, interactive media are increasingly providing audiences with the opportunity to also serve as content producers, capable of producing content of significant value to other media consumers and to advertisers. This chapter will outline the key distinctive characteristics of audiences as product in the media marketplace and the implications of these distinctive characteristics for media management. This chapter will also examine audiences as both consumers and (increasingly) producers or creators of media products, with an emphasis on the unique management challenges and opportunities associated with the contemporary media audience.
This article analyses whether reading patterns differ between readers of a printed newspaper and readers of an online newspaper. Such a question is hardly new but has increased in importance as more readers switch from printed to digital news media. The analysis compares data collected from a readership study focused on the printed local Swedish newspaper VLT (Vestmanland Läns Tidning) and data collected by automatic registration of the number of unique page views on the news site vlt.se. Both data collections were made during the same two-week period in September 2013. The results show some obvious differences as online readers focus on the first page of the online edition, while print readers focus on the editorial sections inside the newspaper. Print readers also display a more diverse reading repertoire, while online readers concentrate on a limited number of subjects. However, when the time factor is taken into consideration—the amount of time spent on each article—the reading patterns of print readers and online readers become closer to each other. The article discusses the importance of focusing not only on “clicks” but also on the time factor when selecting what kind of news to publish online.
This article examines one response to the financial ‘crisis’ of print newspapers addressing the rise of digital paywall systems to monetise journalism. It analyses selected daily mastheads’ paywalls in the United States, Britain and Australia, comparing the type, pricing and audience uptake. This article reviews scholarly and industry literature to identify international newspaper paywall trends and considers these in the Australian context. The article finds paywalls are becoming the norm, with metered paywalls favoured over hard paywalls; paywall prices are increasing, after initial reductions, to offset digital subscriptions cannibalising print subscription revenues. As audiences and advertising migrate from print to our screens, a broader view is required. The argument here is that, in the short term, revenues generated from Australian digital subscriptions and digital advertising alone cannot sustain newsrooms, but the cost of print together with falling hardcopy circulations suggest digital paywalls must not be overlooked. In the immediate, Australia’s major newspapers are stuck in a purgatorial space between paywalls and print.
The exploration of new business models based on paid content strategies in the digital environment has generated an important discussion regarding the willingness to pay for online news. Previous studies have neglected local newspapers, although several analyses have clearly identified the local (news) as a fundamental asset to convince readers to pay for information. Based on a national survey of 1,637 U.S. adults, the research presented here systematically evaluates factors that influence the willingness to pay for online local news. Results of the logistic regression analysis reveals relationships between paying intent and predictor variables such as demographics (age and gender), media use (print and online newspapers), news interest, and traditional newspaper subscription. Finally, managerial and theoretical implications are discussed.
To make readers pay for news content has always been a fundamental way to generate revenues for the press and an essential part of its business model. However, the arrival of the internet in the mid-1990s changed this business logic for many newspapers, as they delivered their content on the internet for free, waiting for a return based almost exclusively on advertising revenues. For more than a decade, most publishers adopted the new logic of gratis online news for readers. But this started to change, especially after the 2008 financial crisis. This article analyses the history of this change in the business strategy of the press, reflecting the introduction of different payment systems, and finally paywalls, to generate revenues for online newspapers. The study distinguishes four stages in the evolution of journalistic paywalls and points out the interest in considering the process of paywall adoption as a retro-innovation. This brief history of paywalls also shows how some prestigious brands, certain business leaders and a few specialized fields of journalistic activity—such as the economic and business press—have made a considerable contribution to the growing popularity of new payment systems among media companies.
This paper addresses the contemporary issue of newspaper paywalls. The paper aims to analyse different paywall models and how they impact on media corporations’ revenues in the United States, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Slovenia and Poland (Piano Media), Australia, New Zealand and Finland. The paper finds that newspaper paywalls provide roughly 10 per cent of media companies’ publishing/circulation revenues. The paper also finds that paywalls are softening and prices in some cases are decreasing as news corporations fight for new digital subscribers and revenues. The argument here is that the revenue generated by paid online news content is not substantial enough to make paywalls a viable business model in the short term. Media corporations do not disclose information about their digital subscription revenues and this lack of transparency might impact on research findings.
The article presents a longitudinal and comparative quantitative content analysis of the paywall strategies of three Norwegian online newspapers. The article analyses the open and closed content profiles of Aftenposten, Bergens Tidende and Stavanger Aftenblad before and after the walls were erected, and the content put behind the wall with the content open to the public free of charge, by comparing one week of data from each paper from 2012, 2013 and 2014 (N = 4018). The analysis compares two models for digital subscription–—the metered model and the premium model. The research is operationalized as a question of monetization: what kind of content do online newspapers charge for, and what kind of content remains free? As the analysis demonstrates, the answers to these questions are not only linked to online-related conceptions of news values, they are also closely tied to the market position of the newspaper as a whole. Results show that the premium model primarily reserves content with local affiliation for subscription readers, while wire copy, syndicated content and immediacy news remain open to non-subscribers. As such, open online news content is highly traffic-generating, while paywalled content protects the most valued and resource-demanding journalistic production of the newsroom.
This article chronicles the recent history of the debate in the United States over digital paywalls, a model often hailed as newspapers’ savior. We show how this debate has evolved from emphasizing industry-wide adoption to focusing on individual experiments. While highlighting potential legal, economic, and democratic concerns with paywalls, we examine the empirical record of three prominent newspaper paywall models: the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Dallas Morning News, and the New York Times. While each has enjoyed varying levels of success, our analysis suggests that paywalls are unable to offset steep losses in advertising revenue. We conclude by briefly discussing non-commercial alternatives.
READ FREE ON THE WEB: dx.doi.org/10.3998/nmw.12367206.0001.001
The Media Welfare State: Nordic Media in the Digital Era comprehensively addresses the central dynamics of the digitalization of the media industry in the Nordic countries—Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland—and the ways media organizations there are transforming to address the new digital environment. Taking a comparative approach, the authors provide an overview of media institutions, content, use, and policy throughout the region, focusing on the impact of information and communication technology/internet and digitalization on the Nordic media sector. Illustrating the shifting media landscape the authors draw on a wide range of cases, including developments in the press, television, the public service media institutions, and telecommunication.
The analysis of media systems has become a cornerstone in the field of comparative communication research. Ten years after its publication, we revisit the landmark study in the field, Hallin and Mancini's “Comparing Media Systems”, and operationalize its framework for standardized measurement. The study at hand is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to comprehensively validate the original dimensions and models using aggregated data from the same sample of Western countries. Three out of four dimensions of media systems show relatively high levels of internal consistency, but “role of the state” should be disaggregated into 3 subdimensions. A cluster analysis reveals 4 empirical types of media systems that differentiate and extend the original typology.
Online delivery of content has changed media advertising markets, undermining the business model which has underpinned provision of ‘public media’. Three business models have sustained mass media: direct payment for content, payment for advertising and state subsidy, and the author argues, contrary to others’ claims, that advertising finance has made possible production and provision of high-quality, pluralistic and affordable public media. In consequence, substitution of the internet as an advertising medium has undermined the system of finance which, in the UK and societies like it, sustained public media. Global advertising revenues have both fallen and been redistributed, though to differing degrees in different countries, with particularly deleterious effects on local newspapers. Prices have risen, original content production has fallen and reversion to a direct payment-for-content business model is pervasive. And this despite the growth of new entrant online media and established publicly funded media (notably public service broadcasters) resulting in the likelihood of a continued general worsening of affordable and pervasive access to high-quality and diverse public media.
This article asks whether the concept of community is of continuing relevance in a postindustrial society that is rapidly advancing to a networked form of social organization. The author argues that community is necessary for democratic life to function, and asks what new forms of integration might emerge to create the boundaries necessary for community reproduction. Turning to Habermas's theory of communicative action, the author shows the relevance of the two-level concept of society, system, and lifeworld for addressing this question, and proposes the concept of the communicatively integrated community as a framework for understanding the central role of communication in producing community. Finally, the article offers a mid-range analytic theory of community communication ecology as a frame for connecting this larger theory to the specific analysis of communication and community.
Online media have contributed to transforming media industries as well as media audiences, globally, nationally and locally. This article studies the readers of local and regional newspapers with online and print editions and analyses how the audiences use and assess the two versions as information sources, identity mediators and arenas of the local public sphere. The findings suggest that although the younger generations are moving online, there are social and cultural differences between audience groups that make the transition from print a risky and uncertain strategy for local newspapers. It is generally the same sociodemographic groups that read both editions, except for one critical dimension: attachment to the locality where they lived was shared by those preferring the printed over the online newspaper.
The purpose of this study is to articulate the concepts and assumptions of communication infrastructure theory (CIT) in its present stage of development and validation. As an ecological approach to communication and community, CIT claims that access to storytelling community resources is a critical factor in civic engagement. When embedded in a neighborhood environment where key community storytellers encourage each other to talk about the neighborhood, individual residents are more likely to belong to their community, to have a strong sense of collective efficacy, and to participate in civic actions. CIT framework offers a way to examine the ecological processes that concern the effects of communication resources on civic community.
Mediated Politics explores the changing media environments in contemporary democracy: the internet, the decline of network news and the daily newspaper; the growing tendency to treat election campaigns as competing product advertisements; the blurring lines between news, ads, and entertainment. By combining new developments in political communication with core questions about politics and policy, a distinguished roster of international scholars offers new perspectives and directions for further study. Several broad questions emerge from the book: with ever-increasing media outlets creating more specialized segments, what happens to broader issues? Are there implications for a sense of community? Should media give people only what they want, or also what they need to be good citizens? These and other tensions created by the changing nature of political communication are covered in sections on the changing public sphere; shifts in the nature of political communication; the new shape of public opinion; transformations of political campaigns; and alterations in citizens' needs and involvement.
Declining advertising revenue and print copy sales have propelled extensive paywall experiments in local newspapers to generate new revenue and fund local journalism. The success of these experiments is ultimately depending on whether or not they deliver the value that customers require. This article studies local newspapers’ potential to build successful paywalls by conducting a two-sided analysis of paywall value propositions and local news audiences’ responses to these value propositions. Drawing on mixed methods – in-depth interviews with 20 newspaper managers and a national survey (N = 1586) among local newspaper audiences – our study identifies a major gap between intended value of paywalls and customer value perception and behavior. These are misalignments between the intended attractiveness of paywalled content and audience attitude toward this content, and misalignments between access to paywalled content and use. Local newspapers’ offerings are particularly misaligned with younger, lower income and lower news interest customers. When these groups hit a paywall, they most likely bounce off.
This comparative case study of two community news organizations takes a Resource Dependence approach in assessing impact of audience metrics on news decisions, and on mechanisms underlying these decisions. Findings show that the organization that more strongly emphasizes metrics publishes fewer in-depth civic-issue stories, and metrics are more likely to influence newsworthiness. However, reporters’ expertise with strategies for increasing numbers may actually free reporters for enterprise work. Findings also suggest effects from community size.
Using a business model lens, we analyse local newspapers’ paywall strategies and ask how monetisation has affected the newspapers’ offerings to users and advertisers. Based on interviews with 20 local newspapers in Norway, findings suggest that paywalls represent two different strategies: A brake strategy in the user market, whereby the newspaper targets existing customers with bundled and differentiated products to secure subscription revenue and protect print from web cannibalisation. In addition, an acceleration strategy, in the advertiser market, focused on improving services with more relevant and valuable audiences and user behaviour insights from user data harvesting. Local newspapers have been relatively successful with balancing these two strategies, providing some optimism on paywalls’ potential contribution to the funding of local journalism.
A number of social, technological, and economic shifts over the past two decades have led to the proliferation of audience analytics and metrics in journalism. This article contends that we are witnessing a third wave toward the rationalization of audience understanding and distinguishes between audience analytics (systems that capture information) and audience metrics (quantified measures output by those systems). The body of literature on analytics and metrics in the context of news production is then synthesized across the ABCDE of news production: attitudes, behaviors, content, discourse, and ethics. That synthesis leads to an overarching conclusion that while contemporary journalism is not being driven by quantified audiences, both audiences and quantification are playing far more prominent roles in news production than in the past. Scholars and practitioners have also become less pessimistic about analytics and metrics over time, recognizing more nuanced effects and prosocial possibilities. Finally, important gaps in the literature are identified and new research directions proposed to help address them.
This fundamental guide on programmatic advertising explains in detail how automated, data-driven advertising really works in practice and how the right adoption leads to a competitive advantage for advertisers, agencies and media. The new way of planning, steering and measuring marketing may still appear complex and threatening but promising at once to most decision makers. This collaborative compendium combines proven experience and best practice in 22 articles written by 45 renowned experts from all around the globe. Among them Dr. Florian Heinemann/Project-A, Peter Würtenberger/Axel-Springer, Deirdre McGlashan/MediaCom, Dr. Marc Grether/Xaxis, Michael Lamb/MediaMath, Carolin Owen/IPG, Stefan Bardega/Zenith, Arun Kumar/Cadreon, Dr. Ralf Strauss/Marketingverband, Jonathan Becher/SAP and many more great minds.
This study uses qualitative research interviews and a survey to quantify and analyse business models at online newspapers in the UK. Senior editors and executives reported that news websites rely on advertising income to a greater extent than their print counterparts. Despite this, British news sites continue to charge users for some content, although to a varying degree. The fact that online editions still contribute barely a tenth of total revenues explains this experimental approach towards business strategy. Although paid-for content has mostly failed as a mechanism for the online news business in the past, changes in technology and net culture may mean that it is becoming an option again. The authors examine what content is being charged for and why, and investigate: how the 12 newspapers studied are balancing the need to develop additional revenue streams with the demand for traffic in a buoyant advertising market; the extent to which cannibalisation of the print parent is still a concern; the complementary benefits of developing digital products; strategies towards archived content; the value of columnist content to online users; the success of digital editions and email alerts; the potential of mobile services; and the rapidly developing number of online services and commercial partnerships hosted by newspapers on the Web.
This chapter traces the insights about citizenship offered by audience reception research since its inception in the 1980s, through a theoretical and analytical portrait of five historical stages of reception research about mediated citizenship: (1) hegemonic citizenship; (2) monitorial citizenship; (3) popular citizenship; (4) participatory citizenship; and (5) ubiquitous citizenship. Maintaining a strong empirical commitment throughout, mostly to the findings of qualitative research, the chapter also reports substantially from recent and ongoing reception research into the ways in which the news media – and popular and entertainment media in a broader sense – may serve as resources for a political and cultural citizenship that is anchored in everyday life. The five stages of reception research, conceptualized as scientific paradigms, are modeled into a historical typology that synthesizes, for each historical stage, its aims, its theoretical foundation, the preferred methods, the key scholars, and the approximate year in which the paradigm became visible in the scholarly landscape.
We develop a model of advertising markets in an environment where consumers may switch (or “multi-home”) across publishers. Consumer switching generates inefficiency in the process of matching advertisers to consumers, because advertisers may not reach some consumers and may impress others too many times. We find that when advertisers are heterogeneous in their valuations for reaching consumers, the switching-induced inefficiency leads lower-value advertisers to advertise on a limited set of publishers, reducing the effective demand for advertising and thus depressing prices. As the share of switching consumers expands (e.g., when consumers adopt the Internet for news or increase their use of aggregators), ad prices fall. We demonstrate that increased switching creates an incentive for publishers to invest in quality as well as extend the number of unique users, because larger publishers are favored by advertisers seeking broader “reach” (more unique users) while avoiding inefficient duplication.
This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.
Subsidies constitute a prominent media-policy instrument, serving to correct media-market failures. However, because they interfere in the market, and because the commercial media market is under structural pressure in the digital age, there is much debate about the role of media subsidies. Within this context, this article revisits the foundation of media subsidies in certain developed democracies, aiming at qualifying the current discussions. Focusing on the Nordic countries, the article explores the connection between the social-democratic welfare-state regime and the extensive public frameworks for media subsidies found in this region. The article argues that even though continuity rather than disruption characterises the systems of direct and indirect subsidies, the current developments point towards a recalibration of the ways the Nordic countries subsidise media in the future.
Twenty years into US newspapers’ online ventures, many are stuck between a shrinking market for their print product and an unsuccessful experiment with digital offerings. Since readership is the foundation for subscription and advertising revenue, this study, through a longitudinal analysis of readership data (2007, 2011, and 2015) of 51 US newspapers, provides an up-to-date review on these newspapers’ online and print readership. Results indicated that the (supposedly dying) print product still reaches far more readers than the (supposedly promising) digital product in these newspapers’ home markets, and this holds true across all age groups. In addition, these major newspapers’ online readership has shown little or no growth since 2007, and more than a half of them have seen a decline since 2011. The online edition contributes a relatively small number of online-only users to the combined readership in these newspapers’ home markets. These findings raise questions about US newspapers’ technology-driven strategy and call for a critical re-examination of unchecked assumptions about the future of newspapers.
Building on a survey of media institutions in eighteen West European and North American democracies, Hallin and Mancini identify the principal dimensions of variation in media systems and the political variables which have shaped their evolution. They go on to identify three major models of media system development (the Polarized Pluralist, Democratic Corporatist and Liberal models) to explain why the media have played a different role in politics in each of these systems, and to explore the forces of change that are currently transforming them. It provides a key theoretical statement about the relation between media and political systems, a key statement about the methodology of comparative analysis in political communication and a clear overview of the variety of media institutions that have developed in the West, understood within their political and historical context.
This article chronicles the recent history of the debate in the United States over digital paywalls, a model often hailed as newspapers’ savior. We show how this debate has evolved from emphasizing industry-wide adoption to focusing on individual experiments. While highlighting potential legal, economic, and democratic concerns with paywalls, we examine the empirical record of three prominent newspaper paywall models: the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Dallas Morning News, and the New York Times. While each has enjoyed varying levels of success, our analysis suggests that paywalls are unable to offset steep losses in advertising revenue. We conclude by briefly discussing non-commercial alternatives.
This paper explores and identifies the content which news publishers consider worthy of placing behind a paywall. It compares online news commodification in the leading Australasian financial newspapers—the Australian Financial Review (AFR) and the National Business Review (NBR). Based on a quantitative content analysis of 614 articles published on the AFR’s and NBR’s homepages, the paper finds that publishers consider hard news and opinion pieces as the most valuable news commodity. These were the most frequently paywalled content of the papers. Both papers allowed greater access to technology news to attract audiences and to enhance their digital subscriptions. Additionally, NBR offered free access to its routine market news, whereas AFR paywalled the same content. There were some major differences between the papers: AFR locked 86 per cent of its content compared to NBR’s 41 per cent. The findings of the paper suggest that ownership structures, corporate finances, and publication models need to be considered when examining newspaper paywalls.
Surveys, although widely used to measure media exposure, are blunt instruments. In today’s complex media environments it is difficult to accurately recall usage. Audience measurement data, often collected by the media industries for commercial purposes, offer an alternative. However, unlike surveys, where individuals are the unit of analysis, audience measurement companies report data aggregated at the level of media outlets. Despite this limitation, audience measurement data may be analyzed for deciphering media use patterns in theoretically productive ways.
Transformations in media and society have forced journalists to reconsider their relation to the audience. In this article, we argue that due to these changes, a new conceptualization is needed of the way journalism addresses the audience, which goes beyond the traditional consumer–citizen dichotomy. Results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with three samples of Chilean news (N = 1,988; N = 795; N = 812) support the hypothesis that audience approaches in journalism are best represented by a three-factor solution: the infotainment, the service, and the civic models. The data also show that approaching the audience as consumer or as citizen are not two poles of one continuum, and that approaching the audience under a consumer-orientation consists of two approaches: providing service and providing entertainment.
In this updated and expanded edition of the acclaimed Economics and Financing of Media Companies, leading economist and media specialist Robert G. Picard employs business concepts and analyses to explore the operations and activities of media firms and the forces and issues affecting them.Picard has added new examples and new data, and he covers such emerging areas as the economics of digital media. Using contemporary examples from American and global media companies, the book contains a wealth of information, including useful charts and tables, important for both those who work in and study media industries. It goes beyond simplistic explanations to show how various internal and external forces direct and constrain decisions in media firms and the implications of the forces on the type of media and content offered today.
This article explores the relationship between the implementation of a paywall and the editorial content profile in a local newspaper. The premise of the article is that the content published behind the wall is the content the newspaper values the most, and the article aims to contribute to an understanding of the interplay between strategic and economic decisions regarding news production and the editorial content. The Norwegian newspaper Fædrelandsvennen and its online initiative fevennen.no serve as cases in the study, and the article asks two questions: What are the most prominent news values behind the paywall, and how do they relate to commercial strategies regarding the introduction of the wall?
Using the Theory of Planned Behavior and Rogers's Innovation Diffusion Theory a systematic model is developed to predict consumer intention to pay for online content. Results of data analyzed through structural equation modeling suggest that consumer attitude and subjective norms are significant predictors of such intention whereas perceived behavioral control is not. Implications of the results are discussed.
After more than a decade of giving online news away for free, legacy newspaper organisations in many Western countries have recently begun charging audiences for access to online journalistic content. Focusing empirically on a Danish case, this article uses one survey (n = 1054) and two focus groups to examine audiences' attitudes toward paying for online news. The analysis suggests that audiences' general principles regarding paying for online news influence their willingness to pay more than the size of the subscription fee. Furthermore, the analysis shows that younger audiences' willingness to pay increases if they can combine content from different news providers and thereby individualise their news products. The latter in particular can have practical implications as it presents a way forward for economically challenged legacy newspaper organisations, but it might also compromise the democratic ideals of journalism.
This article looks at the opportunities for and challenges to the national press in Scotland in the digital media era. Based on input from interviews with Scottish newspaper editors and managers and on reports about the current state of the industry, it explores how the changes that affect the press globally have impacted the Scottish market and how newspaper companies have reacted to them so far. It discusses the impact of the competition for readership and advertising in a small market with many players, the hope that the industry has placed in paywalls and portable digital devices, and argues that, despite widespread optimism among its members that the industry will successfully survive into the future, the business model that will ensure this survival is yet to be established.
The Nordic countries’ media systems are exemplary of the democratic corporatist model, and newspapers have occupied a very prominent position in the political public sphere supported by wide circulation and a political will to subsidize the press and still keep an arm’s length distance. During past decades, these features have come under pressure due to – among other things – the spread of digital media. In this article, we explore two current structural economic challenges to legacy newspaper organizations in Denmark. The first challenge regards the implementation of subscription on news websites since 2013. The second challenge concerns the revision of the Danish press subsidy law in 2013–2014. The introduction of a ‘platform neutral’ subsidy law could be interpreted as a first step toward rethinking the entire press subsidies system. Taken together, these developments pose serious challenges to the printed press: on the one hand, no viable business model seems ready to replace the old one; on the other hand, a reorientation of the regulatory system, which subsidizes the press, seems under way. Despite the global nature of ongoing transformation (digitalization and commercialization), national particularities continue to influence developments and reflect continued support for the democratic corporatist model.
Given the preponderance of free content on the Internet, news media organizations face new challenges over how to manage access to and the pricing of their content. It is unclear whether content should be free or whether customers should pay via a “paywall.” We use experimental variation from a media publisher’s field test of paywalls to examine demand for online news across several local media markets. We find a 51% drop in visits after the introduction of a paywall and a far larger drop for younger readers.
Political accountability is defined as an important aspect of scrutiny. By analysing newspapers at three different points in time (1961, 1981 and 2001), this study suggests that the kind of scrutiny often mentioned in the literature, characterised by thorough investigations and disclosures of political wrongdoings, barely exists in the local press. By identifying other forms of scrutiny more closely related to ordinary news reporting, the study shows that one-third of the 1500 articles analysed display some degree of scrutiny. The local press plays an important role in communicating information and critique concerning the ways in which local authority service provision works and how political responsibilities are fulfilled. This study indicates that this role has been strengthened during the second half of the 20th century.
The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of sampling and sample size considerations in all qualitative research. Such considerations would help qualitative researchers to select sample sizes and sampling designs
that are most compatible with their research purposes. First, we discuss the importance of sampling in qualitative research.
Next, we outline 24 designs for selecting a sample in qualitative research. We then discuss the importance of selecting a
sample size that yields data that have a realistic chance of reaching data saturation, theoretical saturation, or informational
redundancy. Based on the literature, we then provide sample size guidelines for several qualitative research designs. As such,
we provide a framework for making sampling and sample size considerations in interpretive research.