Journalism in Social Media: Too Little Pay for Good Content // ZEW Study Models System for the Reimbursement of News Publishers

ZEW Study Models System for the Reimbursement of News Publishers

The ZEW study shows that social media and news providers can also benefit from each other.

Social media and traditional news websites are in strong competition with each other: on the one hand, journalistic content enhances social networks and reaches a broad audience there; on the other hand, online journalism loses advertising revenue when potential readers do not visit news websites. This can become an existential problem for publishers. Generally, regulated and higher compensation is desirable: ideally, the amount of compensation would be based on the quality of the content provided. These are the findings of a study conducted by ZEW Mannheim together with the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.

"If social media companies paid the traditional news providers better, the benefits would be two-fold: Firstly, such payments increase the incentive for higher-quality news. If journalistic content increases the quality of social media feeds, more people will use social media. Secondly, this increases competition in the digital advertising market on both social media and news websites, which in turn benefits online journalism. In our study, we show that social media and news providers can benefit from each other," explains Luca Sandrini, PhD, co-author of the study from the ZEW Research Unit "Digital Economy".