The Learning In A NetworKed Society International Conference
Looking Forward after Five Years of LINKS Research
February 19th,20th and 22nd, 2018
Beit Daniel, Zichron Yaacov
Haifa-LINKS Symposium on
Content Producers: Incentives, Motivations, and Value Creation
18-19.2.18
Location: University of Haifa, Education Faculty Building, FLS, 1stFloor
Day 1: February 18th, 2018
9:30/
Morning coffee at FLS, University of Haifa
10:00/
Open symposium: Greeting and round of acquaintance
14:35-14:55 /
Efrat Nechushtai, Columbia University
Lior Zalmanson, University of Haifa
Repackaging Newspaper Subscriptions in the Digital Age
The turn to subscription as a funding model for journalism, increasingly taking the historical place of advertising as the prominent funder of news operations, is being recognized as one of the substantial developments in U.S. news in recent years. However, to this day, most news contents are effectively available free of charge. The question is then: how are newspapers framing their value proposition to prospective subscribers? What tactics are they using to convince readers to pay?
This study addresses these questions by examining the rhetoric employed when newspapers ask readers to subscribe. We analyzed the texts top-circulating U.S. newspapers published on their sites, in pages typically titled “subscribe now,” “join now” or “become a member,” and the extent to which these pleas align with prominent theorizations of U.S. journalism.
We utilized Meyer and Allen’s organizational commitment theory which divides the notion of commitment to continuance (based on cost-benefit), affective (social) and normative (value-based).
We found that alongside a traditional information-centered and cost-benefit value proposition, online newspapers are using the reasoning that provokes affective or normative commitment. 62% of the newspapers mentioned social or community-related benefits as a reason to subscribe, and 33% used value-based rhetoric — suggesting that subscribing to the newspaper would enable readers to materialize broad societal goals. We also found significant differences in the elements of subscription pitches between newspapers that are based in different regions of the U.S. and red and blue states, indicating that different communities react distinctly to communicate different expectations to their local news organizations. These findings indicate profound developments in the relationship between news producers and their audiences in the digital age.
The Future Business of News
15:00-15:20 /
Sagit Bar-Gill, Yael Inbar, and Shachar Reichman, Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University
The Impact of Social vs. Non-Social Referring Channels on Online News Consumption
The digitization of news markets has created a key role for online referring channels. This research combines field and lab experiments, and analysis of large-scale clickstream data, to study the effects of social versus non-social referral sources on news consumption in a referred news website visit. We propose that referring channels generate a new type of priming effect, denoted the referrer effect, as unique features of the referrer affect user behavior in a subsequent news visit. We find that social referrals promote focused reading – visits with fewer articles, shorter durations, yet higher reading completion rates - compared to non-social referrals. Furthermore, social referrals decrease news sharing propensity, likely due to lower perceived novelty of content discovered via highly personalized social media. The results provide insights applicable to news outlets’ social media strategies, and speak to ongoing debates regarding biases arising from social media’s growing importance as an avenue for news consumption.
17:00-21:00 /
Haifa walking tour (weather permitting) and dinner
15:25-15:40 /
Coffee Break
15:45-16:45 /
Keynote: Axel Bruns, Creative Industries Faculty, School of Communication, Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology
10:30-11:30 /
Keynote: Vili Lehdonvirta, Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University
11:35-11:55 /
Coffee break
12:00-12:25 /
Arianne Renan Barzilay, University of Haifa - Faculty of Law
Anat Ben-David, Open University of Israel
Platform Inequality: Gender in the Gig-Economy
Laboring in the new economy has recently drawn tremendous social, legal, and political debate. The changes created by platform-facilitated labor are considered fundamental challenges to the future of work and are generating contestation regarding the proper classification of laborers as employees or independent contractors. Yet, despite this growing debate, attention to gender dimensions of such laboring is currently lacking. This Article considers the gendered promises and challenges that are associated with platform-facilitated labor, and provides an innovative empirical analysis of gender discrepancies in such labor; it conducts a case study of platform-facilitated labor using computational methods that capture some of the gendered interactions hosted by a digital platform.
These empirical findings demonstrate that although women work for more hours on the platform, women’s average hourly rates are significantly lower than men’s, averaging about 2/3 (two-thirds) of men’s rates. Such gaps in hourly rates persist even after controlling for feedback score, experience, occupational category, hours of work, and educational attainment. These findings suggest we are witnessing the remaking of women into devalued workers. They point to the new ways in which sex inequality is occurring in platform-facilitated labor. They suggest that we are beholding a third generation of sex inequality, termed “Discrimination 3.0,” in which discrimination is no longer merely a function of formal barriers or even implicit biases. The Article sketches Equality-by-Design (EbD) as a possible direction for future redress, through the enlisting of platform technology to enhance gender parity. In sum, this Article provides an empirical base and analysis for understanding the new ways sex inequality is taking hold in platform-facilitated labor.
12:30-13:30 /
Industry Panel: Wix - Naama Harari, Fiverr - Yoav Hornung, WeMark - Roy Meirom, BeMedia - Gal Mor
The Future of Content Platforms
13:30-14:30 /
Lunch
Gig Economy
10:30-11:30 /
Hilah Geva, Ohad Barzilay and Gal Oestreicher-Singer, Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University
A Potato Salad with a Lemon Twist: Using a Supply-side Shock to Study the Impact of Opportunistic Behavior on Crowdfunding Platforms
Crowdfunding platforms are peer-to-peer two-sided markets that enable amateur entrepreneurs to raise money for their ventures over the Internet. However, in allowing practically anyone to enter, such markets risk being flooded with low-quality offerings, a situation that might be detrimental to the success of higher-quality products. We empirically investigate the implications of such a situation, referred to as a “market of lemons”. We analyze a quasi-natural experiment in the form of an exogenous media shock that occurred on Kickstarter.com. The shock was followed by a sharp increase in the number of campaigns, particularly low-quality ones, offered on the supply side of the market; no such increase was observed on the demand side of the market (backers who contribute to campaigns). These unique conditions enable us to estimate how crowdfunding platforms are affected by the presence of an atypically large number of low-quality campaigns, while controlling for temporal trends and seasonal effects. We use two novel identification strategies to show that, in line with theory, a market of lemons significantly decreases the revenue of successful campaigns. However, campaign quality moderates this effect, such that the performance of the highest-quality campaigns is unaffected. We discuss theoretical implications as well as managerial implications for entrepreneurs.
11:00-11:20 /
Coffee break
11:20-11:50 /
Roei Davidson, Department of Communication, University of Haifa
Psychological, social and spatial constraints in the crowdfunding of culture
Crowdfunding is one of a large number of online mechanisms that aim to harness the internet for egalitarian purposes (Benkler, 2006; Sundararajan, 2016). In this presentation, I will consider the various constraints that shape artists’ ability to raise funding from the crowd for their creative projects. I will examine the role of personality and social networks in crowdfunding (Davidson & Poor, 2015), the importance of physical location, as well as the role of various intermediaries – including the crowdfunding platforms themselves (Davidson & Poor, 2017), social media platforms, mass media organizations and PR consultants – in the funding of culture. This presentation will rely on data – surveys, in-depth interviews, textual analyses and data scrapes – collected in the U.S. and Israel.
*Acknowledgement: Part of this presentation is based on work I have conducted with Nathaniel D. Poor
11:50-12:20 /
Daphne Raban, Yonit Rusho, University of Haifa
Value of information: Research in progress
Is there a prosumption effect?
Assess value perceptions before and after experiences of information production and consumption.
Study the "prosumer effect": the direct effect of experiencing production on the perceived value of information in consumption.
Investigate whether production cost transparency results in value perception similar to the "prosumer effect".
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12:20-13:20 /
Lunch
Issues in Crowdfunding
9:30/
Morning coffee at FLS, University of Haifa
10:00/
Morning panel: the research area and its challenges into the future
Sheizaf Rafaeli, Lior Zalmanson,David Bodoff, Daphne Raban, University of Haifa
Day 2: February 19th, 2018
13:20-13:50 /
Justice retired Dr. Iris Soroker, Heth Academic Center for Research of Competition and Regulation
Law, Regulation, and Economics
The Power of the Crowd or the Power of the Giants?
The sharing Economy phenomenon acts to achieve the purpose of efficient utilization of resources by sharing them, thus allowing more people to access the resources. The phenomenon of the Sharing Economy reflects the power of the crowd to reach the destination of efficient, varied and multi-purpose use of private resources in a competitive market. In this talk I ask: what do we need for a good sharing economy?
Internet applications are the infrastructure of the modern sharing economy. It is not a secret that the Internet services are governed by "the big 5 Giants": Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft. What seems to look like competitiveness, may turn to be only an illusion of competition. For example, The European Commission found that Google has systematically given prominent placement to its own shopping service and fined Google for 2.42 billion euros. Google's Algorithms are a commercial secret. The way the algorithms work influences what we see on the Internet. The sharing Economy is dependent on Google's platform and therefore is subject to manipulations such as the one that the European Commission addressed in its decision from June 2017.
The ability of the crowd to hold its power is dependent of the ability of the crowd to restrain the power of the Internet Giants. I will briefly suggest two legal tools for this purpose: 1. shape and strengthen mergers' policy in favor of the public interest and in purpose to lower entry barriers and keep the Internet free for new entrants. 2. Develop privacy rules which will adjust the Internet platforms and provide answers to protect users' welfare.
13:50-14:20 /
Amit Schejter, Department of Communication, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Digital transition and audiovisual quality content: Challenges, dynamics and solutions
The transition from analogue to digital platforms disseminating audiovisual content is destabilizing the creative industries and calls for a rethinking of government policies supporting artistically valuable productions. Indeed, amidst the digital transition, entrenched conceptions for the ways and means to support artistic production need to be reexamined.
European and some media systems with similar structures, which were designed in the analogue era, were concerned with the probable decline in artistically valuable content, once commercial media outlets were introduced and competition became the driving force of the industry. As a response, they created quota systems requiring broadcasters, in return for the right to utilize the spectrum, to produce local content. In some cases, criteria were created to ensure that the local content is of high quality.
Digital platforms, and in particular Internet Protocol (IP) based TV, are subject to very little regulation. In particular, regulations based on licensing that characterized traditional spectrum-based analogue media are becoming obsolete. In recent years, we are witnessing a concerted effort in these media systems to introduce new policies that are based on a new logic.
This presentation, describes policy efforts designed to maintain “broad, culturally and linguistically diverse and high-quality content” (in the words of the Council of the European Union) in the digital age. It will review policies regarding the film, audiovisual and digitally converged industries in the European Union and Israel and will offer principles for enhancing local production in the digital age.
14:20-14:50 /
Sheizaf Rafaeli, Faculty of Management and Center for Internet Research, University of Haifa
Collaborative Networks and Subcontracting Relationships between Content Producers
Independent content producers don't work alone -- they organize into informal and formal production networks that are invisible to us as consumers of content. I introduce findings from two collaborative research projects on web content writers, designers, transcribers, and other independent contractors seeking clients through freelancing platforms. To grow their business, deal with unexpected demand, and access additional skills, many of these content producers subcontract work to other contractors via the same platforms. But even more frequently, they enlist help from their local networks: using local subcontractors, hiring local employees, forming local partnerships, and sharing work within family units. The digital nature of the product paradoxically exacerbates the trust issues that lead content producers to prefer these analog networks. The incredible speed and flexibility of the global content economy thus relies in part on the leveraging of hyperlocal social capital, with implications to business and policy.
MOOCs and Checkbooks, Open and Closed Journals and Wallets
The "Hole in the Wall" experiment in technology-delivered bottom-up education, initiated by Sugatta Mitra, crystallized into a world-wide reality of flipped classroom initiatives. The MOOC environment, preceeded by TED and Khan Academy, Wikipedia and Open E-publishing, has raised the idea and ideal of free and open education to levels that were never even hoped for. Estimates of 60 million students (or more, as of 2018) elevate the "Open" part of Massive Open Online Courses, and place the question of business model, source of revenue, and sustainability under the limelight. Technology is disrupting the economics of higher education, just as it disrupted other industries related to content: from music to film.
In this talk I will share a little about the cost of making a MOOC, and discuss the realities behind ideals of "Free". From Chris Anderson's "Free - The Future of a Radical Price" to Stephen Harnad's "Skywriting", from Open Journals to crowdsourced encyclopedias, we need to upgrade our thinking from both old ideologies: neither "free as in free beer", nor "no such thing as a free lunch".
Early in the process of MOOCs, discussion turned to whether MOOCs should be C-MOOCs or X-MOOCs. Now, the burning question is whether the "O" in MOOCs should mean open for all to audit, or does it, will it also mean "free" to all. Facebook has famously pledged to be free forever, never charge for its use. Libraries, from Carnegie and on have embraced open public access as a goal to strive for. Western ideals of education for all (or at least all young ones) are subscribed to widely. So how will all of this be financed?
14:30-15:30 /
Closing keynote: Joel Waldfogel, University of Minnesota
16:00 /
Explore Zikhron Ya'akov (weather permitting)
LINKS evening gathering at Beit Daniel
18:30 /
Digital Renaissance
Decades of investment and careful nurture by cultural gatekeepers – music labels, book publishers, film studios, and television networks – delivered great art, successful entertainment, and lots of jobs. But new digital technologies, from Napster and online streaming to low-cost production, have shaken the cultural industries to their cores, with two opposing effects. First, by facilitating piracy and undermining traditional revenue streams, new technologies have made it harder to finance investment. At the same time, the costs of creating, distributing, and promoting new works, leading to an explosion of new songs, television shows, and movies brought to market, much of it without the permission and support of the traditional gatekeepers. Both critics and industry representatives warn of cultural Dark Ages. But is the new work, created without adult supervision, any good? There’s some reason for optimism. It is notoriously difficult to predict which new songs or movies or books will succeed with audiences. So a raft of new products, including scores of self-published books, independent music, and movies released by independent producers, holds the possibility of delivering a substantial number of winners along with, perhaps, a large pile of creative and artistic failures. Determining what has actually happened requires a careful assessment of the evidence. Using data from a variety of sources, including sales, airplay, television and movie production, along with assessments of critics and lay consumers, this book presents evidence that we are living through a digital renaissance.
Gatewatching and News Curation: Industry Responses to Habitual Newssharing by Audiences
Social media users now engage almost instinctively in collective and collaborative gatewatching processes as they respond to major breaking news stories, as well as in their day-to-day sharing of interesting articles with their social media contacts. Meanwhile, existing media outlets are increasingly seeking to maximise the shareability of their stories via social media, and a number of new players (such as Buzzfeed) are fundamentally built around providing ‘viral’ content; in essence, they are attempting to optimise their offerings in anticipation of audiences’ evaluation and selection of content through gatewatching. As a result, the new channels of news diffusion via social media which are emerging in the process may in fact require us to fundamentally change how we conceptualise the structure of the public sphere.
This keynote outlines the processes that have led to this demoticisation of newssharing, and shows how this impacts on news industry practices and approaches. It reviews the practices of everyday users as they engage with the news, and highlights how enterprising journalists have come to connect and engage with such users. Overall, it traces the conflicted responses of journalists and news outlets from their early dismissals to gradual engagement with social media, and asks whether – far from a normalisation of social media as part of journalistic practice – we are seeing a normalisation of journalism into social media practices instead. If so, how can news outlets remain distinctive enough to survive?