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Media economics is the study of choices, what incentives and disincentives influence them, and how to make better choices to inform company decisions, public understanding, and policymaking. The present paper reviews the development of the field since the beginning in the 1970s with scholars such as Alfonso Nieto at the University of Navarra, Nadine Toussaint- Desmoulins at the University of Paris 2, and Karl Erik Gustafsson at the University of Gothenburg to the emerging of the field with more scholars from different countries. Nowadays the field of media economics research has matured and become multifaceted, encompassing a wide variety of theories and approaches necessary to explore multiple developments and issues in media structures and operations. It is particularly relevant because media and communications are amid a massive transformation created by technology, social changes, and changes in demand. Expansion of commercial media and personal communications, new means of production and distribution, and new economic arrangements are altering well established relationship and interactions in media. This situation requires clear mindedness and knowledge to comprehend the developments and to develop the best individual, firm, and social responses to the challenges arising from the changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For two decades, convergence culture has been an important motivator for change in journalism worldwide. Journalism research has followed these developments, investigating the dimensions of change that define convergence as a cultural shift in the newsroom. Research in the European context has mostly been comprised of national case studies of flagship media outlets whereas comparative, let alone quantitative, studies are scarce. In response to these shortcomings, we present a comparative survey among newspaper journalists in managerial positions on convergence strategies in newsrooms from Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, and Portugal. Results show that there is still a dominant print culture present in newsrooms across Europe; however, a shift toward convergence journalism is evident in the strategic implementation of editorial routines and practices as well as in the encouragement of journalists to join convergence developments. Furthermore, newsrooms in Mediterranean countries are more advanced than those in North/Central Europe when it comes to embracing convergence culture because of a stronger audio-visual than print news tradition and a higher motivation among journalists. Our study reveals that after two decades of European convergence journalism, cultural change moves slowly but steadily toward a news production that makes use of the possibilities emerging from convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current news media landscape is characterized by an abundance of digital outlets and increased opportunities for users to navigate news themselves. Yet, it is still unclear how people negotiate this fluctuating environment to decide which news media to select or ignore, how they assemble distinctive cross-media repertoires, and what makes these compositions meaningful. This article analyzes the value of different platforms, genres, and practices in everyday life by mapping patterns of cross-media news use. Combining Q methodology with think-aloud protocols and day-in-the-life-interviews, five distinct news media repertoires are identified: (1) regionally oriented, (2) background oriented, (3) digital, (4) laid-back, and (5) nationally oriented news use. Our findings indicate that users do not always use what they prefer, nor do they prefer what they use. Moreover, the boundaries they draw between news and other information are clearly shifting. Finally, our results show that in a world with a wide range of possibilities to consume news for free, paying for news can be considered an act of civic engagement. We argue that perceived news use and users' appreciation of news should be studied in relation to each other to gain a fuller understanding of what news consumption entails in this rapidly changing media landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the synergy effect of digital video advertising through television, mobile TV, and the Internet on general outcomes of advertising effectiveness. In a 3 (paired media conditions for ad repetition) × 2 (product involvement) mixed factorial design, we examined empirical outcomes of the cross-media synergy effect. The results show that participants exposed to repetitive ads on paired media of television, Internet, and mobile TV have greater perceived message credibility, ad credibility, and brand credibility than counterparts exposed to repetitive ads from a single medium. The multiple-media repetition also generated more positive cognitive responses, attitude toward the brand, and higher purchase intention than the single-medium repetition. Finally, the cross-platform synergy effect remained robust for different levels of product involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents and discusses three different approaches to the exploration of the cross-media challenges facing news audiences, as they seek access to, navigate in and make sense of the multitude of news sources across print, broadcasting, online and mobile media platforms. From a modernized uses and gratifications perspective, based on the notion of “worthwhileness” as the determinant of people's everyday selections from the “supermarket of news”, the article first reports from a longitudinal survey study in Denmark in which the author's foundational mapping of cross-media news consumption in pre-mobile 2008 is compared with replicating mappings carried out in 2011 and 2012, in a collaborative project between academics and news publishers. The analytical interest here focuses on the fluctuations between traditional news media and the surging digital news outlets of the internet and mobile devices. Secondly, the article summarizes the findings of a qualitative study of citizens' news repertoires, which was fortified with a quantitative factor analysis in order to find patterns in people's news consumption. Thirdly, findings are presented from a 2013 study that explored ubiquitous news consumption, asking respondents to specify the nexus of news platform and location of use. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Public agencies are reshaping its communication channels through Twitter, a microblogging service which is reaching its peak. This article analyses how the press offices of institutional organizations are using this tool in the general context of the convergence, which encourages the cross-media strategies and the dialogue with the public. It is based on the case study of the Servei Català de Trànsit (SCT), the main official source about road information in Catalonia. It mixes an interview with the content analysis of the tweets distributed by the organism during the last two weeks of June 2012. The main conclusion of this work is that Twitter is basically an informative complement of the corporate website. There is no option to public dialogue neither with the public nor with the journalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1990s news publishers established an online presence and in the 2000s they developed cross-media news work. This has resulted in changing news accessing habits, with varied magnitude among generations. This article aims to construct theoretically sound news media generations, through statistical analysis of data from a nationally representative scientific omnibus survey conducted in 2010. Firstly the article presents a descriptive and explanatory analysis of how eight generational cohorts utilize news in print and/or online and/or mobile. Secondly these findings are used for merging the generational cohorts into a conceptualization involving three media generations. The print generation (1920s- 1940s) shows high probability (70%) and scored its highest value for reading only printed newspaper (Pearson's r = .135). The online generation (1950s-1970s) shows high probability (66%) and scored highest of online only news accessing (Pearson's r = .135). The heterogeneous news usage patterns exhibited by the individualized generation (1980s-1990s) were accommodated for by two cohorts. The online cohort shows high probability for online-only news usage (60%) and a positive correlation (Pearson's r = .065). The cross-media cohort marks high probability for cross-media use (77%) and the highest value for cross-media use (Pearson's r = .141). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digitization and diversification prompted by the development of Web divisions has situated media groups at a decisive point, requiring strategies of adaptation that necessarily involve multimedia convergence. This key term for understanding communication today alludes to a gradual process which has the integration of newsrooms as its goal and is making itself felt in different interrelated fields. In Europe, public audiovisual corporations such as the BBC (United Kingdom), SVT (Sweden), NRK (Norway), DR (Denmark) or YLE (Finland) have provided some relevant cases of convergence to date. In Spain, such adaptation is still moderate and it is the regional media that are showing a particular predisposition to change. In this context, this essay analyses the experience of one of the pioneering public groups in the Spanish state, the public radio television of the Basque Autonomous Community, Euskal Irrati Telebista (EITB). In line with other studies with similar characteristics, it employs a mixed methodology incorporating quantitative and qualitative procedures. The results make it possible to argue that EITB is slowly advancing towards convergence, setting out from strategies typical of the initial phases of this process, such as grouping newsrooms together in the same physical space, cross-media promotion, taking advantage of synergies of multiplatform distribution or basic editorial coordination, which places this group midway between digitization and convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Research on the effectiveness of cross-media campaigns has shown that combining online advertising with advertising in offline media can result in more positive consumer responses than using only one medium. However, when using computers, people increasingly engage in more than one media activity at a time (i.e. media multitasking), which might influence how consumers respond to advertisements they encounter in these media. Therefore, this paper investigates advertising effects during media multitasking. More specifically, the paper gives insight into the effectiveness of simultaneous exposure to online and radio advertising, because simultaneously surfing the internet and listening to the radio is a common media multitasking combination. Results of an experimental study with 111 participants showed that combining online and radio advertising resulted in more positive affective and behavioral responses than using only one medium. However, media multitasking seemed to have a negative influence on the recall and recognition of auditory information as combining media did not result in superior cognitive responses compared to using online ads alone. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

As a result of the emergence of convergent ‘media houses’ at all levels of news journalism, few modern media organizations publish on only one platform. Changing professional practices related to this raise a number of important questions about the relationship between organizational strategies, new technologies, and everyday news journalism. This article addresses these developments from two perspectives, news work and news texts, through the concept of ‘cross-media’. This concept describes communication or production where two or more media platforms are involved in an integrated way. The article argues that in order to be more precise for theoretical and analytical purposes we have to distinguish between cross-media communication, and cross-media production processes. The article concludes by outlining a model that integrates the perspectives of news work and news texts in convergence journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What do cross-media practices and Darwin teach us concerning the matter of adaptation? Traditional models of adaptation orbit the bipolar terms of source and target, imposing not only a linear but also a closed account of adapted and adaptation. By examining key texts from the Alien franchise — including the van Vogt stories (1939) and pre-versions of Alien such as Cahn’s The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) on which Scott’s 1979 film is arguably based, the Alien’s crossovers into the Predator franchise, games and comic books — two additional elements of adaptation are fore-grounded. The first concerns the nonlinear, developmental account of variation and descent amongst the versions and ur-texts in play in the series, which account is best modelled along lines suggested by Darwinian adaptation. The second highlights the inseparability of content from matter as regards the various media platforms in which these ‘evolutionary’ developments take place. The present article provides a model for thinking about adaptation as well as media history as an ecology of intermedial borrowings, joinings and convergences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the characteristics of convergence journalism is the prominence of repurposing of content. This article analyses news production processes at the Norwegian public service broadcaster, NRK, through the concepts of genre and adaptation. Convergent, or cross-media, news journalism involves media content travelling across media boundaries. As different media platforms use different sets of sign systems (audio, video, writing, images and graphics), this requires some form of translation or adaptation. This article analyses some examples of audiovisual content that travels across media platforms; mainly from television and radio to the Web, but also between radio and television. News content made for a specific programme on a specific platform, with a characteristic rhetoric, is adapted in part or as a whole to be republished on a different platform with a different rhetoric. In conclusion, the article outlines a typology of different forms of repurposing in cross-media news journalism, expanding on those found in Dailey et al.'s (2003) “convergence continuum”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]