Paywalls and Revenues

Pew's fact sheet suggests that in 2014 The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal had a similar number of users who paid for access to the websites (more than 700,000). The Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times also had a similar number of such users (around 60,000).  However, I am interested in examining the relationship between the type of paywall – metered or hard – and the growth in digital subscribes. The New York Times, for example, uses a metered paywall that allows online visitors to view a limited number of stories for free before requiring a subscription. In the first quarter of 2015 the outlet added around 33,000 net digital subscribers. Circulation revenue from digital-only subscription was 46.1 million – an increase of 14.4% from the first quarter of 2014. While this revenue accounts for about 20% of the total circulation revenue, it allows The New York Times to earn more revenue from paid circulation than from advertising. The newspaper has tried to improve in engaging users to the point where they are willing to pay – for example, by analyzing the last pages that users visited before signing up for a subscription. I have not seen similar data about The Wall Street Journal and other newspapers that use a hard paywall, but I am curious to see whether and how the number of their digital subscribers has grown, and look at their revenue from digital only subscriptions.

Digital Natives and News Consumption

I was particularly interested to read about "digital natives" and newspaper consumption. Contrary to popular belief, Chyi (2015) showed that "digital natives" do not necessarily prefer online newspapers to their print editions. For example, a national survey of US college newspaper advisers indicated that their students overwhelmingly preferred to read the print edition of the college newspaper. Other studies found that while older people were more likely than younger ones to read a print newspaper, the penetration of a given print newspaper was higher than its online penetration even among young people. That said, whether the news is in a digital or print format, young people are less likely to find news interesting or relevant for them (Lee & Chyi, 2014). They prefer entertainment over news. Chyi encourages newspaper managers to acknowledge that print is their asset and digital is not their forte. I tend to agree, but I am also concerned that in an attempt to attract more young readers to news websites, these websites may display even less news and more content related to entertainment and non-public affairs.

Fun Reading about Social Media

I enjoyed reading the four items, as they present interesting findings regarding the use of Facebook and Twitter. While I already knew that less than a quarter of adult Internet users in the US use Twitter compared with more than 70% who use Facebook, I was somewhat surprised to see that Twitter users are also less active than Facebook users. Only 38% of Twitter users use it daily, compared with 70% of Facebook users. Also, 40% of Twitter users do not even use it once a week. As for the other Pew's report: It was interesting to see that among Twitter users who tweeted about news, less than 20% focused on government and politics news. However, given the small sample used for this study, I would treat the findings with caution. The sampling error may be very high. I like the typology offered by Bruns and Stieglitz (2012), but in addition to thematic and contextual factors that influence the usage of different communicative tools on Twitter, I would like to see how different types of users are associated with the usage of these tools. For example: it is plausible that journalists, politicians, and "ordinary" citizens use these tools differently even if the topics and events are identical. Finally, as for the experiment pertaining to Facebook: while the number of likes did not influence the way in which users evaluated a news story, I am curious to see if the new "dislike" button will have an impact. Also, soon we may be able to examine the influence of new emoji buttons on Facebook. Check out this.  

Social Science in the Age of Big Data

While big data provide us new opportunities to make sense of the world, they do not "speak for themselves" and do not override the need for theoretical models. Contrary to Anderson's argument, theory still matters as it "can help discriminate noise from signal, and provide the right context for the interpretation" (Gonzalez-Bailon, 2013, p. 9). For example, we can use big data to identify key actors and flows of information in digital networks, but based on the findings we may construct different stories. In order to make sense of the findings, we need to use theoretical lenses. 

It was also interesting to read that even though there are different types of actors in networked spaces, the public opinion is still overwhelmingly shaped by a minority of actors. For example, as Gonzalez-Bailon mentioned, Wu et al. (2011) found that about 0.05 percent of Twitter users account for almost half of public opinion. However, I suspect that it may vary in different contexts. Therefore, I think that further research is needed.

Digital Ad Engagement

As I usually focus on user engagement with news stories or political messages, the reading materials related to advertising provided me with new lens to look at online engagement. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, ad engagement is a spectrum of "activities and experiences – cognitive, emotional, and physical – that will have a positive impact on a Brand" (p. 6). While I think that the three offered forms of engagement could also be applied to messages pertaining to public affairs, achieving "a positive impact" may be more complicated in a political context. If, for example, people keep posting or reading nasty comments, or start using Facebook's dislike button, would it have a positive impact on political attitudes and participation? It could also make things worse

  In addition, it was interesting to read about Facebook advertising, as I was not aware of some ad options. As a Facebook user I will probably be more suspicious when I look at my newsfeed. I do not  know to what extent these ads are effective, but advertisers are willing to spend more money on .Facebook ads, as indicated by Pew's report 

Measuring Audience Attention on Websites

Media organizations often emphasize how popular their websites are, as they attract many unique visitors. However, this is only part of the picture. As Zheng, Chyi & Kaufhold (2012) showed, audience attention on the web has different dimensions, including visibility (audience share), popularity (unique visitors), loyalty (visits per person), depth (pages per visit), and stickiness (time per page). Pew's fact sheet on the top 50 online news entities in 2015 allows us to examine two of the five dimensions: popularity and stickiness. According to the current ranking, these are the five websites that attracted the highest number of unique users: 1) Yahoo-ABC News Network, 2) CNN Network, 3) NBC News Digital, 4) Huffingtonpost.com, 5) CBS News. However, if we rank the 50 online news entities based on the average minutes per visit, these are the top five websites: 1) Fox News Digital Network, 2) NBC News Digital, 3 + 4) The New York Times Brand and CBS News, 5) Yahoo-ABC News Network. Two entities that appear on the second list are not included in the first list. While the number of visits per person is not mentioned in the fact sheet, Zheng et al. found that in June 2008 weather sites and news portals scored the highest on loyalty. Also, magazine sites performed well in terms of depth, as they received  a high number of page views within one visit. I am interested in examining the different dimensions of audience attention in different sections of a given website. For example, the sport section may attract more visitors, but users could spend more time in the news section, and the entertainment section would score the highest on loyalty. On other websites it may be different. I am also curious to see social networking sites' performance on the five dimensions of audience attention.    

Research Ideas

I have two research ideas related to online behavior:

1) Examining the characteristics of the most retweeted versus the most replied messages posted by journalists on Twitter – As Webster (2014) suggested, behavioral data may help understand what is commanding public attention. While various studies examined what types of content generate more public attention than others, my recent work (Tenenboim & Cohen, 2015) showed that different types of content on news websites are often associated with different expressions of interest – consumption versus discussion. Drawing on this study, I am interested in examining  the types of content that are associated with different participatory mechanisms on Twitter. This may allow us to better understand the role of these mechanisms and their potential contribution to a deliberative democracy.

2) Examining if / how design features of user comments sections affect the level of (in)civility - While user comments sections were typically designed as a long list of statements that users could merely read and add comments to it, leading news websites now offer users opportunities to rate comments, to indicate that they like a given comment, and to respond directly to it. According to Manosevitch (2014), such design features “matter for the potential of online spaces to facilitate effective public deliberation” (p. 1). I am interested in exploring the relationships between different features of user comments sections, and communication that conveys "an

unnecessarily disrespectful tone toward the discussion forum, its participants, or its topics" (Coe, Kenski & Rains, 2014, p. 660) and is manifested in these sections.

References

 Coe, K., Kenski, K. & Rains, S. A. (2014). Online and uncivil: Patterns and determinants of   incivility in newspaper website comments. Journal of Communication, 64(4), 658-679    

 ,Manosevitch, I. (2014). The design of online deliberation: Implications for practice

theory and democratic citizenship. Journal of Public Deliberation, 10(1): 1-4.

Tenenboim, O & Cohen A. A. (2015). What prompts users to click and comment:

A longitudinal study of online news. Journalism, 16(2), 198-217. doi:10.1177/1464884913513996 

Webster, J. G. (2014). The marketplace of attention. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

User Information Regimes

Reading both McQuail (1997) and Webster (2014) provides a comprehensive picture of audience measurement challenges across time. When McQuail wrote his book, he asserted that "only a small fragment of the total of actual audience behavior can ever be measured, and the rest is extrapolation, estimate or guesswork" (p. 49). However, as a result of technological developments, it is now possible to know more about the actual audience behavior and to get information that is disaggregated at the story level, unlike tools such as circulation statistics and surveys, which provide aggregate and indirect information. This information could be helpful in understanding what is commanding public attention, but as Webster pointed out, "all media measures are biased… it means they can never offer a completely objective picture of reality. Bias is inherent in the process of collecting and reducing data" (p. 86). Also, these measures "don't stand apart from the reality they purport to measure; they reshape it" (p. 93). We should remember this when we rely on what Webster calls "user information regimes." We should also think how we can study the effects of these regimes.

Audience Motivations and the Use of Social Media

I think that Lee (2013) made an important contribution to the uses and gratifications theory, as she showed that different types of people have different types of news motivations, and the latter can predict the consumption of different news genres. Put differently, she offered useful answers to the questions: who is using what type of news, and why? I was somewhat surprised that information motivations did not strongly predict the use of Twitter and that compared with Facebook it was consistently used more among those with entertainment, opinion and social motivations. Has this possibly changed since the study was conducted? A recent study by Pew (2015) suggested that "the proportion of users who say they follow breaking news on Twitter… is nearly twice as high as those who say they do so on Facebook (59% vs. 31%) – lending support, perhaps, to the view that Twitter’s great strength is providing as-it-happens coverage and commentary on live events". The study also suggested that on both Twitter and Facebook, more users are getting news than in the past.As Webster (2014) pointed out, various theoretical approaches assume that people have preexisting preferences that they bring to the media and this drives their choices. However, these approaches "allow very little room for the possibility that our encounters with media have other causes and that those encounters might actually shape our preferences, reversing the traditional direction of causation" (p. 14). I am wondering if and how our encounters with social media have shaped our preferences. 

Is The Term Audience Still Relevant?

As McQuail (1997) acknowledged, the audience concept is in many ways outdated and its traditional role in communication models has been called into question. However, while suggesting that new terms may need to be developed "for some genuinely new kinds of communication participant groups, perhaps differentiated according to types of new media use" (p. 149), the scholar was in favor of keeping the old concept audience and addressing its different dimensions. These include, for example, the degree of activity or passivity, the degree of interactivity and interchangeability, and the simultaneity of contact with sources.

These dimensions seem useful and can lead to new terms. A team of journalism scholars

who focused on websites affiliated with leading newspapers in ten countries suggested that users were "active recipients" (Hermida, 2011). These users discussed the news and sometimes contributed eyewitness accounts and audio-visual materials, but they had relatively little impact on the selection and processing of news.  Nevertheless, users of social media can be more than active recipients. For example, Papacharissi (2014) showed how journalists and users, including elite and non-elite actors, co-curated and co-created flows of information on Twitter. Professional journalists still have an important role in communication models, but maybe we should talk less about their interactions with the audience and more about an ecosystem where there are different types of actors and interactions.

References

Hermida, A. (2011). Fluid spaces, fluid journalism: The role of the "active recipient" in participatory journalism. In J.B. Singer, A. Hermida, D. Domingo et al. (eds.). Participatory journalism: Guarding open gates on online newspapers. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Papacharissi, Z. (2014). Affective publics: Sentiment, technology, and politics. New York: Oxford University Press. 

My Online Audience

My online audience is mainly on Facebook, where I currently have around 240 friends. I engage with them by liking some of their posts, commenting from time to time, and exchanging private messages. As Facebook allows me to see which messages have been seen by the relevant users, it is a useful way to track the communication, especially in group conversations. I also have an academic audience, as I have recently found out that a journal that published my article presents a list of “the most read” articles. The ranking is calculated at the beginning of the month and is based on full-text and pdf views. While I do not know how many users viewed my article and who they are, I can see how “popular” it is. The article still appears on this list. In addition, I have a small audience here, and the blog allows me to monitor how many users have seen my post :)

Bleeding, Not Dying: Challenges to the Newspaper Industry

Newspaper circulation in the United States fell around 3% from 2013 to 2014, and the average user stayed on a top newspaper website only for three minutes per visit. These are the main audience-related issues that caught my eye when I read Pew's fact sheet on the newspaper industry. While the findings suggest that the industry is struggling, it is too early for eulogies.

Millions of Americans still consume newspapers, and most of them prefer the print

editions. Readership data suggest that 56% of those who consumed a newspaper in 2014 read it exclusively in print, and 27% sometimes read it in print but also on desktop or mobile devices. The remaining newspaper consumers relied exclusively on desktop or mobile devices. In addition, more than 80% of the newspaper ad revenue in 2014 came from print. Although the report does not address the readership by age groups, it seems that there is still considerable demand for print newspapers. Publishers should devise their strategies accordingly.

However, in order to attract young readers, newspapers need to gain visibility on

social media, which have become major traffic drivers to online publishers. As the social media editor of The New York Times said at the 2014 International Symposium of Online Journalism, around 70% of the newspaper's followers on Facebook are not more than 34 years old. Rather than relying on the online newspaper's homepage, many followers only consume stories that were posted on social media. This may be one of the explanations for the short time that the average user stays on a newspaper website. A possible way to face the challenge is creating partnerships with tech companies, such as Facebook, which has recently announced deals with publishers, including The New York Times, to deliver select articles "instantly" on mobile apps. The newspaper is not dead yet. It is both in print and on social media.