IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/spo/wpmain/infohdl2441-3tcpvf3sd399op9sgtn8tq5bhd.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Production of Information in an Online World: Is Copy Right?

Author

Listed:
  • Julia Cage

    (Département d'économie)

  • Nicolas Hervé

    (Institut national de l'audiovisuel)

  • Marie-Luce Viaud

    (Institut national de l'audiovisuel)

Abstract

This paper documents the extent of copying and estimates the returns to originality in online news production. We build a unique dataset combining all the online content produced by French news media during the year 2013 with new micro audience data. We develop a topic detection algorithm that identifies each news event, trace the timeline of each story, and study news propagation. We unravel new evidence on online news production. First, we document high reactivity of online media: one quarter of the news stories are reproduced online in under 4 minutes. Second, we show that this comes with extensive copying: only 33% of the online content is original. Third, we investigate the cost of copying for original news producers. Using article-level variations and media-level daily audience combined with article-level social media statistics, we find that readers partly switch to the original producers, thereby mitigating the newsgathering incentive problem raised by copying.

Suggested Citation

  • Julia Cage & Nicolas Hervé & Marie-Luce Viaud, 2019. "The Production of Information in an Online World: Is Copy Right?," Sciences Po publications 2019-05, Sciences Po.
    • Handle: RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/3tcpvf3sd399op9sgtn8tq5bhd
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://spire.sciencespo.fr/hdl:/2441/3tcpvf3sd399op9sgtn8tq5bhd/resources/2019-cage-herve-et-viaud-the-production-of-information-in-an-online-world-is-copy-right.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bae, Sang Hoo & Choi, Jay Pil, 2006. "A model of piracy," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 303-320, September.
    2. Rob, Rafael & Waldfogel, Joel, 2006. "Piracy on the High C's: Music Downloading, Sales Displacement, and Social Welfare in a Sample of College Students," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 49(1), pages 29-62, April.
    3. Shane Greenstein & Yuan Gu & Feng Zhu, 2016. "Ideological Segregation among Online Collaborators: Evidence from Wikipedians," Harvard Business School Working Papers 17-028, Harvard Business School, revised Mar 2017.
    4. Alessandro Gavazza & Mattia Nardotto & Tommaso Valletti, 2019. "Internet and Politics: Evidence from U.K. Local Elections and Local Government Policies," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 86(5), pages 2092-2135.
    5. Lesley Chiou & Catherine Tucker, 2017. "Content aggregation by platforms: The case of the news media," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(4), pages 782-805, December.
    6. Kennedy, Patrick & Prat, Andrea, 2017. "Where Do People Get Their News?," CEPR Discussion Papers 12426, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro & Daniel F. Stone, 2014. "Media Bias in the Marketplace: Theory," NBER Working Papers 19880, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Xing Li & Megan MacGarvie & Petra Moser, 2014. "Dead Poets’ Property - How Does Copyright Influence Price," Discussion Papers 14-001, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    9. Timothy Besley & Andrea Prat, 2006. "Handcuffs for the Grabbing Hand? Media Capture and Government Accountability," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 720-736, June.
    10. Abdallah Salami & Robert Seamans, 2014. "The Effect of the Internet on Newspaper Readability," Working Papers 14-13, NET Institute.
    11. Megan MacGarvie & Petra Moser, 2015. "Copyright and the Profitability of Authorship: Evidence from Payments to Writers in the Romantic Period," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Analysis of the Digital Economy, pages 357-379, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Julia Cage, 2014. "Media Competition, Information Provision and Political Participation," Sciences Po publications info:hdl:2441/16juu6v6rg8, Sciences Po.
    13. J. Duggan & C. Martinelli, 2011. "A Spatial Theory of Media Slant and Voter Choice," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 78(2), pages 640-666.
    14. Susan Athey & Emilio Calvano & Joshua Gans, 2013. "The Impact of the Internet on Advertising Markets for News Media," NBER Working Papers 19419, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Shane Greenstein & Feng Zhu, 2012. "Collective Intelligence and Neutral Point of View: The Case of Wikipedia," NBER Working Papers 18167, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Barbara Biasi & Petra Moser, 2018. "Effects of Copyrights on Science - Evidence from the US Book Republication Program," NBER Working Papers 24255, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Michela Giorcelli & Petra Moser, 2020. "Copyright and Creativity. Evidence from Italian Opera During the Napoleonic Age," NBER Working Papers 26885, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Inés Moreno de Barreda & Gilat Levy & Ronny Razin, 2017. "Persuasion with Correlation Neglect: Media Power via Correlation of News Content," Economics Series Working Papers 836, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    2. Kennedy, Patrick & Prat, Andrea, 2017. "Where Do People Get Their News?," CEPR Discussion Papers 12426, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Charles Angelucci & Julia Cagé & Michael Sinkinson, 2020. "Media Competition and News Diets," NBER Working Papers 26782, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Milena Djourelova, 2020. "Media persuasion through slanted language: Evidence from the coverage of immigration," Economics Working Papers 1720, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Julia Cagé & Nicolas Hervé & Marie-Luce Viaud, 2020. "The Production of Information in an Online World," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 87(5), pages 2126-2164.
    2. Alaoui, Larbi & Germano, Fabrizio, 2020. "Time scarcity and the market for news," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 173-195.
    3. Piolatto, Amedeo & Schuett, Florian, 2015. "Media competition and electoral politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 80-93.
    4. Saltuk Ozerturk, 2018. "Choosing a media outlet when seeking public approval," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 174(1), pages 3-21, January.
    5. Bertin Martens & Luis Aguiar & Estrella Gomez Herrera & Frank Muller, 2018. "The digital transformation of news media and the rise of disinformation and fake news," JRC Working Papers on Digital Economy 2018-02, Joint Research Centre (Seville site).
    6. Ruben Enikolopov & Maria Petrova & Konstantin Sonin, 2018. "Social Media and Corruption," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 150-174, January.
    7. Junze Sun & Arthur Schram & Randolph Sloof, 2019. "A Theory on Media Bias and Elections," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 19-048/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    8. Alessandro Gavazza & Mattia Nardotto & Tommaso Valletti, 2019. "Internet and Politics: Evidence from U.K. Local Elections and Local Government Policies," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 86(5), pages 2092-2135.
    9. Jetter, Michael, 2017. "Terrorism and the Media: The Effect of US Television Coverage on Al-Qaeda Attacks," IZA Discussion Papers 10708, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Gans, Joshua S., 2015. "“Selling Out” and the impact of music piracy on artist entry," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 58-64.
    11. Cagé, Julia, 2020. "Media competition, information provision and political participation: Evidence from French local newspapers and elections, 1944–2014," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    12. Antony Millner & Hélène Ollivier, 2016. "Beliefs, Politics, and Environmental Policy," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 10(2), pages 226-244.
    13. Barbara Biasi & Petra Moser, 2018. "Effects of Copyrights on Science - Evidence from the US Book Republication Program," Working Papers 18-06, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    14. Christophe Bellégo & Romain De Nijs, 2020. "The Unintended Consequences of Antipiracy Laws on Markets with Asymmetric Piracy: The Case of the French Movie Industry," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(4), pages 1064-1086, December.
    15. Dongook Choi & Yeonbae Kim, 2010. "Effects of Piracy and Digital Rights Management on the Online Music Market in Korea," TEMEP Discussion Papers 201072, Seoul National University; Technology Management, Economics, and Policy Program (TEMEP), revised Dec 2010.
    16. Inés Moreno de Barreda & Gilat Levy & Ronny Razin, 2017. "Persuasion with Correlation Neglect: Media Power via Correlation of News Content," Economics Series Working Papers 836, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    17. Charles Angelucci & Julia Cagé, 2019. "Newspapers in Times of Low Advertising Revenues," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 319-364, August.
    18. Gehlbach, Scott & Sonin, Konstantin, 2014. "Government control of the media," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 163-171.
    19. Herings, P. Jean-Jacques & Peeters, Ronald & Yang, Michael S., 2018. "Piracy on the Internet: Accommodate it or fight it? A dynamic approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 266(1), pages 328-339.
    20. C. Bellégo & R. De Nijs, 2015. "The redistributive effect of online piracy on the box office performance of American movies in foreign markets," Documents de Travail de l'Insee - INSEE Working Papers g2015-17, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Internet; Information spreading; Copyright; Social media; Reputation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality
    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
    • L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/3tcpvf3sd399op9sgtn8tq5bhd. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Spire @ Sciences Po Library). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecspofr.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.