HBSDigitalSem: Susan Athey

Title: Aggregators, Social Media, and News Consumption Abstract: In a series of studies, we explore the ways in which aggregators and intermediaries affect the consumption of news on the internet. We analyze several natural experiments involving the Google News aggregator, showing that Google News redistributes news consumption away from large outlets and towards small outlets, and decreases user loyalty to their favorite outlets. We find evidence that Google News increases overall news consumption, consistent with the theory that it reduces search costs and helps users discover stories and outlets that interest them. In another study, we analyze the impact of social media on news consumption. We find evidence that social media changes the composition of news consumption, including promoting the consumption of smaller outlets. It also changes the type of news consumed within a topic, such as increasing the share of articles presenting an individual perspective, and increasing the polarization of news read by conservative and liberal readers. More information