Camilla Colombo
In the crisis of the capitalist media sector exists the paradox of the information decreases their economic value, while increasing social. And if in this strange you could find an alternative business models proposed so far?
Paul Mason, economic columnist for Channel 4 News, in an article published on the Guardian said that the end of capitalism has begun. Although it will take time because the old structures disappear completely, the statement of information and communications technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy demonstrates the possibility of a new paradigm. Specifically, according to Mason the two main causes are the technological advancements and the abundance of information. If the first point makes the traditional work less and less necessary, the second relates directly to the value of the same news. And so the business of journalism.
With the advent of ‘ Information Tecnhology analog media from around the world have been faced with a challenge which they were not prepared. The study The Economic and Social Value of Information in the Network Society, published on the Observatory of Journalism Portuguese, it has suggested that the attempts made so far to adopt alternative online business models were unsuccessful not because wrong or poorly applied, but because the information inevitably loses economic value when passing from analog to digital. The error of the media is to keep hoping to get online by the audience and advertisers the same digital recessed economic previously earned by the media and analog and products advertised offline. So what is the new element in this technology that undermines the market capitalist production? In three words, the overabundance of information penetrating. When you combine digital technologies with the flow of information in networks and the pervasiveness of information, inevitably you get a decrease in the economic value of the news. The plight of thousands of media companies lies in this fact. Implement new sustainable business models around the production and distribution of news is to accept the end of the capitalist era and understand the emergence of the sharing economy.
In the paperless form digital information reveals his economic peculiarities: high fixed costs but low, if not zero, the marginal costs which translated means a cancellation of any substantial economic value of information. Redundancy and the dematerialisation of information explains why the news is so little revenue at the economic level. It is here that comes the paradox of the current crisis in the media sector and perhaps his possible escape route, because while drastically reduced the economic value of information, increases the social value. The causes of a decrease in royalty income are the same that enable individuals, groups and communities, to increase the social value of information, extending the reach of collective mobilization. It is this paradox that feeds the rise of the share of the economy to the detriment of market capitalism. Google, Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, BlaBlaCar are responsible for the crisis of traditional business models. These companies manage platforms – or set of digital information and communication tools – which allow people to mobilize capital and social resources. In a post-capitalist direction, driven by information and communication technologies, the next step is not to profit from the economic service, but has split the costs among users. RideWith is an example. It is a carpooling system designed by Google to Tel Aviv where to drivers drive up to four passengers is not allowed to levy charges. It can also apply to journalism? Or, if also in this area, instead of continuing with the business model of capitalism, they tried not alternatives related to the advancement of the sharing economy, where are the people to stake their capital and media companies to deliver a platform? The answer to this question is the same as those who wonder if journalism today, sooner or later, will come out of this crisis.
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