https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4708-4371
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ABSTRACT
In the literature, anti-rivalry has been proposed to describe goods that become more valuable when used. Empirical testing of this theory is lacking, and the concept has not yet been applied in the context of news. This study identifies five distinctive value constructs – news value, emotional value, value of reading comments, social value of commenting and social value of sharing – from the statistical analysis of a survey of 2020 online news consumers on Finnish public broadcaster Yle’s website. We then assess changes in these values when the news is consumed and users have contributed to it by commenting on it and sharing it. The results of the analysis and additional in-depth user interviews indicate that news possesses elements of anti-rivalry. Additionally, the results indicate interesting intercorrelations among the values and user groups. When a piece of news has high news value, user contributions do not play a major role, but the value of sharing increases. When a news product is commented on, the act increases the social value of sharing for sharers, decreases the news value for readers and increases the negative emotions felt by readers.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Supplemental data
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/16522354.2023.2189426
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Atte Jääskeläinen
Atte Jääskeläinen is a doctoral candidate at LUT University in Finland. He was a professor of practice at LUT University from 2018 to 2020 and conducted visiting fellowships at LSE London (2017–2020) and the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford (2017–2018). He has held the position of Director General of Higher Education and Research Policy at the Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland since 2020. He was director of news and current affairs at the Finnish Broadcasting Company from 2007 to 2017 and managing director of the Finnish News Agency from 2004 to 2006.
Johannes Koponen
Johannes Koponen is a doctoral candidate at the University of Helsinki. He has advised the public and private sectors on platform business models, media business and strategy for over 10 years. He is a member of the Council for Mass Media, a self-regulating committee that interprets good professional practices in journalism in Finland. In the past, Johannes served on the Finnish Prime Minister's Office's Strategic Coronavirus Communication Steering Group, worked with the renowned think tank Demos Helsinki, and founded three startups. Notably, two of these startups have received prestigious media innovation awards.
Vera Djakonoff
Vera Djakonoff is a graduate student at the University of Helsinki (UH). Her academic background is in political science and communication studies at UH and at University College London. She is a consultant in a prominent think tank, where she specialises in the analysis and evaluation of the interface between policy and communication.