This paper discusses the evolving importance of cultural commodities for local news businesses searching for solutions to their sustainability. It draws on the concept of "place as currency" to understand how local news outlets leverage cultural products inspired by geography, collective memory, and people's connection to place. Our research suggests that small-town newsrooms have a renewed appreciation for the value of cultural commodities - from cookbooks celebrating local produce to memorabilia - as products that reinforce their powerful placemaking role and help to indirectly support their provision of public-interest journalism. We suggest that "place as currency" is an under-explored area in academic research examining the business of local news sustainability. Our findings are drawn from a thematic analysis of data collected via a series of interviews with news producers in rural and regional areas of Australia.
In a high-choice media environment, consumer attention is split across multiple media which makes it challenging for news outlets to increase subscriptions to a single title. This study examined audiences' paying intent for bundling news with non-news content. We conducted a choice-based conjoint analysis through an online survey (n = 2,125) including 7 core attributes: number of titles, news topics, non-news content, bundling with other digital subscriptions, ad-free, subscription frequency and price. We found that bundles at higher price points maintain strong uptake rates, even though these consumers are sensitive to factors such as price, frequency of payment and inclusion of other digital content in the package offered. Younger people, city dwellers, those with high income and education levels were more likely to prefer bundled options.
Indian newspapers have been on a growth trajectory, while markets in developed countries are witnessing dwindling circulations. This study investigates the reasons behind the survival and growth of Indian English newspapers. Through examining the circulation of newspapers and interviewing experienced experts from the industry, this study provides insights on the emerging circulation trends and its consequences. Findings reveal the existence of a specified bracket or print-run range for maintaining positive cost-benefit ratio and profitability. This specific range is termed as the "Conundrum Range". After the revenue from advertising and other sources for a particular day is locked, Indian English newspapers make a deliberate decision to stay within this range while deciding about the quantity of newspaper copies to print the next day.
The empirical investigation of Virtual Reality (VR) gaming is still emerging. This study advances hedonic media technology acceptance by analysing the interplay between personality traits and technology-specific characteristics. It extends the technology acceptance model by considering the potential antecedent factors flow, content offering, and system quality. Moreover, the interaction effects of the escapism motive and the cybersickness barrier are analysed. The model was empirically tested in a study with 1,784 experienced VR users. In the analysis, all factors except for cybersickness show significant direct or indirect effects on the usage intention, with perceived enjoyment having the largest effect. Content offering and flow positively correlate with technology acceptance and thereby affect the intention to use VR games indirectly. Recommendations for practitioners in the VR games industry are derived.
This article examines how media organisations in eight European countries responded to the war in Ukraine through corporate social responsibility (CSR). Based on a comparative analysis of 203 initiatives, the study identifies media-specific patterns combining symbolic support, editorial interventions, philanthropic aid, and infrastructural backing, reflecting both journalistic commitments and civic engagement. Existing CSR models only partially capture this complexity. To address this gap, the article proposes a four-dimensional CSR model for wartime contexts, incorporating activity type, temporal phase, organisational depth, and target group. The model captures the hybrid nature of media CSR intersected with wartime editorial, civic, and organisational logic. This article contributes to CSR scholarship and media management research, offering a media-specific CSR model grounded in wartime conditions and applicable to other crisis scenarios.
In an era marked by fractured socio-political landscapes and escalating crises, the role of fear in news media management has become increasingly significant. This paper presents a scoping study on the manifestation and impact of fear within news media management processes during crises. The study systematically reviews 18 peer-reviewed articles using Scopus, EBSCOhost, and Web of Science databases to identify key themes and research gaps. Findings highlight the influence of internal and external fear factors on journalists' professional autonomy, mental health, and organisational dynamics. The analysis also addresses manifestations and functions of fear during crises for news media management. The paper calls for expanded research across different media functions and contexts to better support media professionals and enhance news media management practices.
This study examines how media-tech start-ups achieve optimal distinctiveness by balancing conformity and differentiation in their strategic positioning. Using the case of an Estonian media-tech accelerator, we identify three cognitive framing strategies employed by start-ups: "zooming in and out for conformity", "keeping competitive differentiation centred-focus" and "zooming in for differentiation from non-competitors". These strategies enable start-ups to position their identity, business models, and market roles dynamically, aligning with industry norms while emphasising unique value propositions. The findings highlight the role of managerial cognitive frames in navigating complex environments, shaping strategic flexibility, and achieving competitive advantage. These insights contribute to advancing theory and practice in media management and entrepreneurship.
In recent years, external support for journalism innovation has grown, driven by public, private, and philanthropic actors, such as governments, tech companies and foundations. This paper analyses how these supporters assist media organisations in overcoming common challenges and barriers in their innovation processes. Using the German WPK Innovation Fund as a unique research setting, it adopts a qualitative longitudinal multiple-case study approach combining interviews, document analysis and observations to examine 20 innovation ventures in journalism. Findings show that such support can play a pivotal role for media organisations, particularly at the meso level of organisational challenges. The paper provides a framework for future research to analyse other support structures more systematically and holds practical implications for all parties designing and improving them.
Today's media industries are facing fundamental challenges, which could be overcome in part through graduate innovation and entrepreneurial activity. However, it has been unclear how to best adapt entrepreneurship education (EE) to media business education. Based on reflections of our experiences of designing an entrepreneurship course for media business students, we outline the unique features of that course that would also be pertinent to media entrepreneurship education (MEE). Our findings provide valuable insights into the ongoing scholarly discussion on contextualising EE to specific fields of study and industry sectors. We designed and present a learner-centred development framework for context-specific EE programmes. This framework can also be applied to other sectors and domains that may be grappling with how to best adapt EE to meet the needs of their learners. In addition, we present a checklist for media entrepreneurship educators to consider when developing MEE courses and programmes.
Despite advances in news recommender systems (NRS) research, their application in news organizations remains limited, hampered by practical obstacles and organizational challenges. This study applies the multi-stakeholder framework (Smets et al., 2022) alongside ambidexterity theory to analyse the complex decision-making dynamics in applying NRS within two large commercial news organizations. Based on 11 in-depth interviews with different stakeholders, two “balancing acts” emerged. The first is stakeholder alignment through two strategies: knowledge management with dummy-proof presentations and “showcasing success” to help increase stakeholder buy-in for NRS. The second balancing act is managing trade-offs between exploration and exploitation in a roadmap prepared by the multidisciplinary team of product owners (POs), ensuring a balanced allocation of resources for NRS innovation and optimization. This research shows how organizational ambidexterity supports successful technology integration and provides insights for implementing emerging technologies in complex news media environments.
This study examines media agencies and their provider-client co-creation activities based on four business characteristics: value creation, reputation, funding, and governance structure. The conceptual framework, named CoKnowledgeShop, combines a strategic management business model with a service marketing co-creation perspective. This interdisciplinary framework provides the conceptual basis for a qualitative comparative case study, in which a global network and a nationally independent media agency are analysed. The findings - based on nine and ten interviews, respectively - reveal notable differences in how the two types of agencies operate and adapt their business practices in response to digital transformation. Both agency cases have expanded their traditional media buying portfolios by incorporating specialised non-media services, including content production and technological solutions such as programmatic advertising.
As the publishing industry changes, a culture of innovation becomes increasingly important for media management. Innovation literature offers a limited understanding of the potential impact of innovation culture on media organisations. Based on document analysis and semi-structured interviews, this research conducts a multiple case study of three publishing houses. The results are regarded from economic, organisational, and technological perspectives and structured along five categories: (1) corporate culture and values; (2) innovation and innovation culture; (3) infrastructure for innovation efforts; (4) implementation of innovations; and (5) influencing factors and performance of innovation. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of the innovation culture concept as well as innovation potential in the publishing industry and supports the formation of an innovation theory in the media management domain.
Within the competitive landscape of creative industries, fostering employee creativity is essential for organisational innovation. Recently, mindfulness has been recognised as a significant contributor to creativity, yet its impact within creative industries and the underlying mechanisms remain underexplored. To address these gaps, we examine the relationship between mindfulness and employee creativity and propose a model based on the Componential Theory of Creativity, tested with employees from six media organisations in Turkey (N = 561). The findings confirm that mindfulness significantly enhances employee creativity through intrinsic motivation and cognitive flexibility. Additionally, we examine the moderating effect of perceived supervisor support, revealing a moderated mediation effect in the link between mindfulness and creativity. Finally, we discuss practical implications and future research directions.
The release of ChatGPT and related tools has made generative artificial intelligence simply accessible to the broader public. We present an empirical investigation of how the transparency of the content generation in generative AI (GAI) can work as a heuristic when making evaluations on quality and trust. This study examines the effects of transparency on fairness and accountability and their subsequent impact on the user assessment of the quality in GAI. Our goal is to understand how transparency affects humans' trust in GAI. The results showed that users' perceived transparency, fairness, and accountability mediated the relationship between transparency and users' quality assessment in GAI. Users' understanding of transparency led to higher perceived fairness and accountability, which increased quality and, consequently, trust. This relationship illustrates the heuristic roles of transparency in fairness and accountability, implying new algorithmic attributes in the context of algorithmic media.
Trust in media brands and its implications for consumer behaviour, perception of (social) reality and the impact on advertisers present in media environments is of growing interest. While previous publications provided fundamental insights into the nature of trust in the media, only highly theoretical approaches on the measurement of trust in media brands have been presented so far. This paper is building on the media brand trust scale presented in a previous publication and aims for the reduction of the scale to a version better applicable in practice. Resulting from this approach, it presents a medium and short version of the media brand trust scale, providing different levels of insights into the construct while retaining the core objective (i.e. measuring trust in media brands).
Local news publishers increasingly face the challenge to develop viable revenue models. In this article we aim to optimise the three central metered model effects, namely the lead-in, cannibalisation and advertising effect. After a conceptualisation of the effects, we conduct two choice-based conjoint studies and a simulation to measure the effects empirically. We find that samples of 40, 50 and 60 free articles per month lead to an overall increase in total revenue, with 40 free articles showing the strongest positive impact. Conversely, offering 20 or 30 articles per month results in an overall decrease across all business model scenarios for local news publishers.
This article investigates the price sensitivity of newspaper subscription demand across different markets in Norway. Leveraging unique data on subscription prices and circulation from 2010 to 2019, we estimate how demand responds to price changes and analyse variations across market segments and over time, particularly in the context of digital media growth. Our findings reveal that subscription demand has become increasingly price-sensitive, especially in markets with multiple competitors. This underscores the growing reliance - and vulnerability - of subscription revenue in the evolving media landscape. By illuminating these trends, our study contributes to a deeper understanding of newspaper market dynamics and revenue models in the digital age.
Influencers have experienced a decline in trust, leading to the rise of virtual influencers as a counter-trend. Understanding the impact of virtual influencers on followers' purchase behaviour has thus become crucial, yet scientific studies on the factors influencing their credibility are scarce. This study conducted a laboratory experiment with 116 participants, using a within-subject design and randomised stimulus delivery. Participants rated either a virtual or real influencer on credibility and purchase intention. The results reveal that virtual influencers are perceived as slightly more credible and trusted for their expertise compared to real influencers. Additionally, their credibility partly shows a stronger influence on purchase intention. Surprisingly, social media users do not necessarily express scepticism towards virtual influencers, suggesting a potential shift in trust dynamics.
This article analyzes the evolution of the size of news brand repertoires used by people in Spain between 2015 and 2022, and its relationship with the changes in news attitudes and behaviours. Based on data from the Digital News Report in 2015 and 2022, the research reveals a significant reduction of around 50% in the number of mainstream news brands regularly consulted by citizens during this period and identifies news interest and frequency of access to information as the main predictors of brand repertorie size, a relationship that is not significant in the case of news trust. The article also highlights some important implications of these findings from the point of view of media brand management and the implementation of public policies aimed at media diversity. .
