IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/spo/wpmain/infohdl2441-52cps7rdns8iv8fr3f1kqm7iuv.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Production of Information in an Online World

Author

Listed:
  • Julia Cage

    (Département d'économie)

  • Nicolas Hervé

    (Institut national de l'audiovisuel)

  • Marie-Luce Viaud

    (Institut national de l'audiovisuel)

Abstract

News production requires investment, and competitors’ ability to appropriate a story may reduce a media’s incentives to provide original content. Yet, there is little legal protection of intellectual property rights in online news production, which raises the issue of the extent of copying online and the incentives to provide original content. In this article, 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 provide 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 min. We show that this is accompanied by substantial copying, both at the extensive and at the intensive margins, which may constitute a severe threat to the commercial viability of the news media. Next, we estimate the returns to originality in online news production. Using article-level variations and media-level daily audience combined with article-level social media statistics, we find that original content producers tend to receive more viewers, 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," Sciences Po publications info:hdl:2441/52cps7rdns8, Sciences Po.
    • Handle: RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/52cps7rdns8iv8fr3f1kqm7iuv
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://spire.sciencespo.fr/hdl:/2441/52cps7rdns8iv8fr3f1kqm7iuv/resources/2019-cage-herve-et-viaud-the-production-of-information-in-an-online-world.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Emeric Henry & Carlos J. Ponce, 2011. "Waiting to Imitate: On the Dynamic Pricing of Knowledge," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(5), pages 959-981.
    3. Abdallah Salami & Robert Seamans, 2014. "The Effect of the Internet on Newspaper Readability," Working Papers 14-13, NET Institute.
    4. Joel Waldfogel, 2012. "Copyright Protection, Technological Change, and the Quality of New Products: Evidence from Recorded Music since Napster," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(4), pages 715-740.
    5. Markus Prior, 2005. "News vs. Entertainment: How Increasing Media Choice Widens Gaps in Political Knowledge and Turnout," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(3), pages 577-592, July.
    6. Peitz, Martin & Waelbroeck, Patrick, 2006. "Why the music industry may gain from free downloading -- The role of sampling," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(5), pages 907-913, September.
    7. 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.
    8. 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. 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).
    2. Charles Angelucci & Julia Cagé & Michael Sinkinson, 2020. "Media Competition and News Diets," NBER Working Papers 26782, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Sílvia Majó-Vázquez & Ana S. Cardenal & Oleguer Segarra & Pol Colomer de Simón, 2020. "Media Roles in the Online News Domain: Authorities and Emergent Audience Brokers," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(2), pages 98-111.
    4. Joan Calzada & Ricard Gil, 2020. "What Do News Aggregators Do? Evidence from Google News in Spain and Germany," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(1), pages 134-167, January.

    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. Cag�, Julia & Herv�, Nicolas & Viaud, Marie-Luce, 2017. "The Production of Information in an Online World: Is Copy Right?," CEPR Discussion Papers 12066, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. R. Scott Hiller, 2016. "The importance of quality: How music festivals achieved commercial success," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 40(3), pages 309-334, August.
    3. Lee, Jonathan F., 2018. "Purchase, pirate, publicize: Private-network music sharing and market album sales," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 35-55.
    4. 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.
    5. Aguiar, Luis & Martens, Bertin, 2016. "Digital music consumption on the Internet: Evidence from clickstream data," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 27-43.
    6. Laurina Zhang, 2018. "Intellectual Property Strategy and the Long Tail: Evidence from the Recorded Music Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(1), pages 24-42, January.
    7. Herz, Benedikt & Kiljanski, Kamil, 2016. "Movie Piracy and Displaced Sales in Europe: Evidence from Six Countries," MPRA Paper 80817, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Tim Paul Thomes, 2010. "Vertically Related Markets of Collective Licensing of Differentiated Copyrights with Indirect Network Effects," Jena Economic Research Papers 2010-056, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    9. 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.
    10. Frosio, Giancarlo F., 2016. "Digital piracy debunked: a short note on digital threats and intermediary liability," Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin, vol. 5(1), pages 1-22.
    11. Godefroy Nguyen & Sylvain Dejean & François Moreau, 2014. "On the complementarity between online and offline music consumption: the case of free streaming," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 38(4), pages 315-330, November.
    12. 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.
    13. 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.
    14. 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.
    15. Ben Shiller & Joel Waldfogel & Johnny Ryan, 2017. "Will Ad Blocking Break the Internet?," NBER Working Papers 23058, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Joel Waldfogel, 2017. "How Digitization Has Created a Golden Age of Music, Movies, Books, and Television," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(3), pages 195-214, Summer.
    17. 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.
    18. Felix Oberholzer-Gee & Koleman Strumpf, 2010. "File Sharing and Copyright," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 10, pages 19-55, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Oz Shy, 2011. "A Short Survey of Network Economics," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 38(2), pages 119-149, March.
    20. Oberholzer-Gee, Felix & Strumpf, Koleman, 2016. "The effect of file sharing on record sales, revisited," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 61-66.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Internet; Information Sharing; 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:2441/52cps7rdns8iv8fr3f1kqm7iuv. 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: http://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.