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

Julia Cagé, Nicolas Hervé and Marie-Luce Viaud
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Marie-Luce Viaud: INA - Institut National de l'Audiovisuel

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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.

Keywords: Internet; Information spreading; Copyright; Social media; Reputation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-04-01
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03393091
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Production of Information in an Online World: Is Copy Right? (2019)
Working Paper: The Production of Information in an Online World: Is Copy Right? (2019)
Working Paper: The Production of Information in an Online World: Is Copy Right? (2017)
Working Paper: The Production of Information in an Online World: Is Copy Right? (2017)
Working Paper: The Production of Information in an Online World: Is Copy Right? (2017)
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