News Consumption in the Digital Age

Francesco Capozza, Ingar Haaland, Christopher Roth, Johannes Wohlfart and Ingar K. Haaland
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Ingar Haaland

No 12945, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Digital technologies have transformed the news landscape, shifting consumption from print media toward online providers. This has allowed news outlets to collect richer data on individual readers, and to use those data both to tailor the news a reader sees — which stories appear and how they are framed — and to sell more precisely targeted advertising. Online news outlets also increasingly recruit readers from social media, amplifying incentives to capture reader attention through sensationalized stories and other techniques to increase engagement. Generative AI is likely to accelerate this trend by lowering the cost of personalizing news. Whether cheaper production and finer personalization raise or lower consumer welfare depends on how closely the objectives firms maximize are aligned with the underlying preferences of consumers. This review studies how the shift toward online news consumption affects both the supply and the demand for news and draws potential implications for consumer welfare.

Keywords: news consumption; engagement; algorithms; generative AI; social media; attention economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D62 D83 D91 L82 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp12945.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: News Consumption in the Digital Age (2026)
Working Paper: News Consumption in the Digital Age (2026)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12945

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().