• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.177-195
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• 2017

Traditionally, news was consumed only through printed newspapers and broadcasting media, such as radio and television. However, the Internet has enabled people to consume news content online. Since most of online news content has been provided for free, it is not easy for news providers to charge the fixed subscription fee for online news content. Therefore, as an alternative strategy, some online news providers have tried to adopt the Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) pricing model, which allows users (readers) to pay as much as they want after consuming news content. As this pricing model shows some possibility to grow and replace the unsuccessful monetization strategy of online news content, we therefore examined the comparative importance of seven heuristic attributes (i.e., article evaluation, article share, article comment, article information design, article length, writer SNS, and writer information) affecting readers' voluntary payment behavior through a conjoint analysis with 379 news articles collected from online news Website (i.e., Ohmynews.com) where the PWYW model has been working successfully. This study found that article share and article length are the most important factors which affect online news content users' voluntary payment. Finally, two major and eight minor propositions are suggested based on the findings of the study. This study would suggest guidelines for how to create online news content which induces much more voluntary payment.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.75-100
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• 2018

Mobile devices have become an important channel for news content usage in our daily life. However, online news content readers' resistance to online news monetization is more serious than other digital content businesses, such as webtoons, music sources, videos, and games. Since major portal sites distribute online news content free of charge to increase their traffics, customers have been accustomed to free news content; hence this makes online news providers more difficult to switch their policies on business models (i.e., monetization policy). As a result, most online news providers are highly dependent on the advertising business model, which can lead to increasing number of false, exaggerated, or sensational advertisements inside the news website to maximize their advertising revenue. To reduce this advertising dependencies, many online news providers had attempted to switch their 'free' readers to 'paid' users, but most of them failed. However, recently, some online news media have been successfully applying the Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) payment model, which allows readers to voluntarily pay fees for their favorite news content. These successful cases shed some lights to the managers of online news content provider regarding that the PWYW model can serve as an alternative business model. In this study, therefore, we collected 379 online news articles from Ohmynews.com that has been successfully employing the PWYW model, and analyzed the comparative importance of systematic attributes of online news content on readers' voluntary payment. More specifically, we derived the six systematic attributes (i.e., Type of Article Title, Image Stimulation, Article Readability, Article Type, Dominant Emotion, and Article-Image Similarity) and three or four levels within each attribute based on previous studies. Then, we conducted content analysis to measure five attributes except Article Readability attribute, measured by Flesch readability score. Before conducting main content analysis, the face reliabilities of chosen attributes were measured by three doctoral level researchers with 37 sample articles, and inter-coder reliabilities of the three coders were verified. Then, the main content analysis was conducted for two months from March 2017 with 379 online news articles. All 379 articles were reviewed by the same three coders, and 65 articles that showed inconsistency among coders were excluded before employing conjoint analysis. Finally, we examined the comparative importance of those six systematic attributes (Study 1), and levels within each of the six attributes (Study 2) through conjoint analysis with 314 online news articles. From the results of conjoint analysis, we found that Article Readability, Article-Image Similarity, and Type of Article Title are the most significant factors affecting online news readers' voluntary payment. First, it can be interpreted that if the level of readability of an online news article is in line with the readers' level of readership, the readers will voluntarily pay more. Second, the similarity between the content of the article and the image within it enables the readers to increase the information acceptance and to transmit the message of the article more effectively. Third, readers expect that the article title would reveal the content of the article, and the expectation influences the understanding and satisfaction of the article. Therefore, it is necessary to write an article with an appropriate readability level, and use images and title well matched with the content to make readers voluntarily pay more. We also examined the comparative importance of levels within each attribute in more details. Based on findings of two studies, two major and nine minor propositions are suggested for future empirical research. This study has academic implications in that it is one of the first studies applying both content analysis and conjoint analysis together to examine readers' voluntary payment behavior, rather than their intention to pay. In addition, online news content creators, providers, and managers could find some practical insights from this research in terms of how they should produce news content to make readers voluntarily pay more for their online news content.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.1-17
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• 2013

As online communities proliferate, online news sites have received great attention in news media research. Although most of the online news sites provide contents for free, some have adopted the Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) model by offering a voluntary payment option to the readers. In this study, we investigate the factors which influence subscribers' voluntary payment behavior on an online news site. Drawing upon both the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) framework and the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), we hypothesize that appreciation has a direct effect on the subscribers' voluntary payment behavior, whereas central factors (positive emotional content, cognitive content) and peripheral factors (news sharing, news article length) of the news articles have indirect impacts on voluntary payment behavior through the enhanced appreciation. Based on an empirical analysis of 172 news articles from the Korean online news site that adopted the PWYW pricing model (i.e., Ohmynews.com), we find that appreciation plays a critical role in voluntary payment behavior and that peripheral factors have significant impacts on appreciation. However, the impacts of central factors on appreciation are not found. By identifying influencing factors of subscribers' voluntary payment behavior on online news sites for the first time, this paper suggests a prospective alternative profit model for online news providers faced with fierce competition.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.10 no.12
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• pp.569-578
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• 2021

Thanks to web development today, we can easily access online news via various media. As much as it is easy to access online news, we often face fake news pretending to be true. As fake news items have become a global problem, fact-checking services are provided domestically, too. However, these are based on expert-based manual detection, and research to provide technologies that automate the detection of fake news is being actively conducted. As for the existing research, detection is made available based on contextual characteristics of an article and the comparison of a title and the main article. However, there is a limit to such an attempt making detection difficult when manipulation precision has become high. Therefore, this study suggests using a verifying article to decide whether a news item is genuine or not to be affected by article manipulation. Also, to improve the precision of fake news detection, the study added a process to summarize a subject article and a verifying article through the summarization model. In order to verify the suggested algorithm, this study conducted verification for summarization method of documents, verification for search method of verification articles, and verification for the precision of fake news detection in the finally suggested algorithm. The algorithm suggested in this study can be helpful to identify the truth of an article before it is applied to media sources and made available online via various media sources.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.33-48
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• 2019

The current Moon Jai-in administration in South Korea is facing serious challenges as a result of a scandal involving the manipulation of news online. Staff in Moon's camp are suspected of manipulating public opinion by creating millions of fake news comments online, contributing to Moon being elected president. This South Korean political scandal raises a number of theoretical issues with regard to new platform technologies and media manipulation. First, the incident exposes the technological limits of blocking manipulation of the news, partly because of the nature of social media and partly because of the nature of contemporary technology. Contemporary social media is often monopolistic in nature; with the majority of people are using the same platforms, and hence it is likely that they will be subject to forms of media manipulation. Second, the Korean case of news manipulation demonstrates a unique cultural aspect of Korean society. News comments and readers' replies have become a major channel of alternative news in Korea. This phenomenon is often designated as "reply journalism," since people are interested in reading the news replies of ordinary readers equally to reading news reports themselves. News replies are considered indicators of public opinion and are seen as affecting trias politica in Korean society. Third, the Korean incident of news manipulation implicates a new form of populism in the 21st century and the nature of democratic participation. This article aims to explicate key issues in media manipulation by including wider technological, cultural, and political aspects in the South Korean news media context.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.16-32
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• 2019

Media manipulation of breaking news through article selection, ranking and tweaking of social media data and comment streams is a growing concern for society. We argue that the combination of human and machine curation on media portals marks a new period for news media and journalism. Although intermediary platforms routinely claim that they are merely the neutral technological platform which facilitates news and information flows, rejecting any criticisms that they are operating as de facto media organisations; instead, we argue for an alternative, more active interpretation of their roles. In this article we provide a contemporary account of the South Korean ('Korean') online news media ecology as an exemplar of how contemporary media technologies, and in particular portals and algorithmic recommender systems, perform a powerful role in shaping the kind of news and information that citizens access. By highlighting the key stakeholders and their positions within the production, publication and distribution of news media, we argue that the overall impact of the major portal platforms of Naver and Kakao is far more consequential than simply providing an entertaining media diet for consumers. These portals are central in designing how and which news is sourced, produced and then accessed by Korean citizens. From a regulatory perspective the provision of news on the portals can be a somewhat ambiguous and moving target, subject to soft and harder regulatory measures. While we investigate a specific case study of the South Korean experience, we also trace out connections with the larger global media ecology. We have relied on policy documents, stakeholder interviews and portal user 'walk throughs' to understand the changing role of news and its surfacing on a distinctive breed of media platforms.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.606-632
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• 2021

With many consumers being exposed to news via social media platforms, news organizations are challenged to attract visitors and generate revenue during visits to their websites. They therefore need detailed information on how to write articles and headlines to increase visitors' engagement with the content to drive advertising revenues. For those news organizations whose business model depends mainly on advertisements, rather than subscriptions, it is particularly crucial to understand what makes the website attractive to their visitors, what drives users to stay on the website, and what factors affect a user's exit decision. The current research examines individual news consumers' choices to find patterns of increase or decrease in user engagement relative to a variety of topics, as well as to the mood or tone of the content. Using clickstream data from a major news organization, the authors develop a user-level dynamic model of clickstream behavior that takes into account the content of both headlines and stories that visitors read. The authors find that readers appear to exhibit state dependence in the tone of the articles that they read. They also show how the topics expressed in headlines can affect the amount of content readers consume when visiting the news organization to a much larger degree than the topics expressed in the content of the article. Online publishers can make use of such findings to present visitors with content that is likely to maintain and/or increase their engagement and consequently drive advertising revenue.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.159-176
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• 2015

As a public medium and one of the big data sources that is accumulated informally and real time, online news comments or replies are considered a significant resource to understand mentalities of article readers. The comments are also being regarded as an important medium of WOM (Word of Mouse) about products, services or the enterprises. If the diffusing effect of the comments is referred to as the degrees of agreement and disagreement from an angle of WOM, figuring out which characteristics of the comments would influence the agreements or the disagreements to the comments in very early stage would be very worthwhile to establish a comment-based eWOM (electronic WOM) strategy. However, investigating the effects of the characteristics of the comments on eWOM effect has been rarely studied. According to this angle, this study aims to conduct an empirical analysis which understands the characteristics of comments that affect the numbers of agreement and disagreement, as eWOM performance, to particular news articles which address a specific product, service or enterprise per se. While extant literature has focused on the quantitative attributes of the comments which are collected by manually, this paper used text mining techniques to acquire the qualitative attributes of the comments in an automatic and cost effective manner.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.81-100
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• 2016

Much effort has been exerted to analyze online texts and understand how empirical results can help improve sales performance. In this research, we aim to extend this stream of research by decomposing online texts based on text sources, namely, companies and consumers. To be specific, we investigate how online texts driven by companies differ from those generated by consumers, and the extent to which both types of online texts have different effects on online sales. We obtained sales data from one of the biggest game publishers and merged them with online texts provided by companies using news articles and those created by consumers in user communities. The empirical analyses yield the following findings. Word visualization and topic analyses show that firms and consumers generate different contexts. Specifically, companies spread word to promote their own events whereas consumers produce online words to share winning strategies. Moreover, online sales are influenced by consumer-generated community topics whereas firm-driven topics in news articles have little to no effect. These findings suggest that companies should focus more on online texts generated by consumers rather than spreading their own words. Moreover, online sales strategies should take advantage of specific topics that have been proven to increase online sales. In particular, these findings give startup companies and small business owners in variety of industries the advantage when they use the online channel for distribution and as a marketing platform.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.12
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• pp.8195-8209
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• 2015

The purpose of this paper is to propose a method for recommendation and personalization of important news articles based on evaluating news value. Evaluation of news is the approach by which editors select news articles for cover-story in traditional offline news papers area. For this, my study proposes a suite of methods to select and personalize a set of news based on evaluating news articles, not just on the personal preference for them. The aforementioned the value of news articles including social impact, novelty, relevance to each audience, and human interest, all of which have been factorized in many previous studies, is a main concept for a procedural and structural application methodology deduced in this study. After a comparative case study with other online news services, it was shown that my research provides more effective way to select important news articles in terms of user satisfaction than others.