Digital news consumption and copyright intervention: evidence from Spain before and after the 2015 'Link tax'

We analyze patterns of digital news consumption before and after a 'link tax' was introduced in Spain. This new legislation imposed a copyright fee for showing snippets of content created by newspapers and resulted in the shutdown of Google News Spain. The Spanish copyright law is a preced...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Majó-Vázquez, Sílvia, Cardenal, Ana S., Gonzalez-Bailon, Sandra
Tipo de documento: artigo
Estado:Versão publicada
Data de publicação:2017
País:España
Recursos:Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
Repositório:O2, repositorio institucional de la UOC
OAI Identifier:oai:openaccess.uoc.edu:10609/93078
Acesso em linha:https://hdl.handle.net/10609/93078
Access Level:Acceso aberto
Palavra-chave:online news
media audience
fragmentation
social media
regulation
audience
networks
noticias en línea
audiencia de medios
fragmentación
medios de comunicación social
regulación
audiencia
redes
notícies en línia
públic audiovisual
fragmentació
mitjans de comunicació social
regulació
públic
xarxes
Broadcasting
Comunicació audiovisual
Comunicación audiovisual
Descrição
Resumo:We analyze patterns of digital news consumption before and after a 'link tax' was introduced in Spain. This new legislation imposed a copyright fee for showing snippets of content created by newspapers and resulted in the shutdown of Google News Spain. The Spanish copyright law is a precedent to the Copyright Directive currently submitted to the European Parliament, which is planning to impose a similar 'link tax'. We offer empirical evidence that can help evaluate the impact of that sort of intervention. We analyze data tracking news consumption behavior to assess changes in audience reach and audience fragmentation. We show that the law has no discernible impact on reach, but we identify an increase in the fragmentation of news consumption.