Digital technologies have transformed the news landscape, shifting consumption from print media toward online providers. This has allowed news outlets to collect richer data on individual readers, and to use those data both to tailor the news a reader sees — which stories appear and how they are framed — and to sell more precisely targeted advertising. Online news outlets also increasingly recruit readers from social media, amplifying incentives to capture reader attention through sensationalized stories and other techniques to increase engagement. Generative AI is likely to accelerate this trend by lowering the cost of personalizing news. Whether cheaper production and finer personalization raise or lower consumer welfare depends on how closely the objectives firms maximize are aligned with the underlying preferences of consumers. This review studies how the shift toward online news consumption affects both the supply and the demand for news and draws potential implications for consumer welfare.
F. Capozza, Ingar K. Haaland, Christopher Roth et al.· CESifo working papers· 2 citations
Voters in multiparty systems often fail to coordinate on majority-preferred parties. Using constituency-level election data linked to party-ideology measures across 96 countries, we show that in 20–30% of multiparty elections since 1940 the Condorcet winner does not win, and in roughly 10% the winner is the Condorcet loser. Failures are most common under plurality rule and in fragmented, volatile party systems, and systematically disadvantage opposition and culturally liberal parties while benefiting organizationally strong ones. Can information fix this? In four pre-registered experiments around Indian elections (N > 4,000), constituency-level polls shift voting intentions by at most 2 percentage points, a precisely estimated null, despite modest belief updating, though undecided voters become 7 points more likely to support a viable party. A model with expressive motives rationalizes both results: polls refine beliefs but lack the leverage to overcome entrenched attachments, identifying boundary conditions on polls as coordination devices.
F. Capozza, Ruben Durante, S. George· CESifo working papers· 0 citations
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