The Production of Information in an Online World

Julia Cagé (), Nicolas Hervé () and Marie-Luce Viaud ()
Additional contact information
Julia Cagé: Sciences Po Paris, Department of Economics, 28 rue des Saints Pères, 75007 Paris, France
Nicolas Hervé: Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), Département de la Recherche, 4 avenue de l’Europe, 94366 Bry sur Marne, France
Marie-Luce Viaud: Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), Département de la Recherche, 4 avenue de l’Europe, 94366 Bry sur Marne, France
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Nicolas Hervé and Julia Cagé

No 15-05, Working Papers from NET Institute

Abstract: Information is costly to produce but cheap to reproduce. Who are the main providers of original news in the online world, and are they rewarded for this? What are the benefits of breaking out a story, and how does information propagate? This paper addresses these issues by exploiting a unique dataset including all online content produced by general information media outlets in France during year 2013. Tracking every piece of content produced by these outlets, we develop a topic detection algorithm to construct the set of news stories. We study the timeline of each story and distinguish between original reporting and copy-and-paste. We then merge this content data with data on investment in news gathering and daily audience to investigate the costs and benefits of information production. This paper offers a typology of online media outlets and associated business models. We first highlight the specific role played by news agencies. AFP has the largest news desk and is the main provider of original information, reflecting the use of an adequate copyright system. We then find a quasi-linear relationship between the number of journalists, the quantity of original news production, and online audience. This positive correlation hold for all the media outlets independently of their offline support; hence the relevance of a transmedia approach. However online audience does not translate into significant revenues. This illustrates the need to develop new paywall or copyright models.

Keywords: Internet; information production; paywall; copyright; online audience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L11 L15 L82 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2015-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-ict and nep-mkt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The Production of Information in an Online World (2020)
Working Paper: The Production of Information in an Online World (2019)
Working Paper: The Production of Information in an Online World (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:net:wpaper:1505

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