12. Juni 2020

DIW Applied Micro Seminar

Local News, UGC and Professionals: Evidence from Citizen Journalism

Termin

12. Juni 2020
13:15 - 14:30

Ort

Online seminar via Cisco Webex

Sprecher*innen

Jörg Claussen, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Einladender

Tomaso Duso/Kevin Tran

Abstract:  User generated content is increasingly substituting content created by professionals. Local news that is generated by citizen journalists could be a promising way of supporting the struggling newspaper industry by reducing costs for professional journalists. We study a network of 122 local Austrian newspapers operating a hybrid model of citizen and professional journalism. We first observe that citizens cover different topics, write shorter articles, and create less engagement. We then exploit a change in the platform’s social recognition system to show that non-monetary incentives drive the production of citizen content, especially for contributors with more experience. We also find that amateur content acts as a substitute for content produced by inexperienced professionals. We finally see that the incentive and substitution effects are more pronounced in smaller regions and for soft news.

Joint with Pedro Ferreira and Ananya Sen.

Speaker

Jörg Claussen, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

DAMS goes online

This is an online seminar using Webex.

You will receive the login data with the invitation to the talk. Please get in touch with Sibylle Kremser if you want to receive an invitation.

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