Difference between revisions of "Paywall"

Revision as of 17:48, 13 February 2022

An online paywall is a method that creates a barrier to access online content that is surpassed using a paid subscription.^[1] Paywalls are commonly used by news outlets to provide their content in a digital format while still maintaining a subscription model, maintaining ties to the traditional paper news outlets of the past.^[2] According to a 2019 study, 69% of newspapers surveyed utilized some kind of paywall.^[3]

The term paywall is also used to refer to academic and scholarly articles or journals that require a subscription or other payment to access.^[4] There is debate and lack of consensus surrounding the moral and ethical soundness of paywalls.^[2]

History

Before the digital age, the business model employed by newspaper outlets was traditionally a system where content was sold to audiences, and audience attention was sold to advertisers which created a positive feedback loop with both markets growing over time.^[5]

In the 1990's, personal computers were becoming more commonplace in the American household. Companies initially created websites where they posted articles in an attempt to be involved in the digital scene; initially these publications were free, but eventually companies realized that probability would become an issue. After first attempting to use online advertising, publishers explored alternative revenue options. The paywall was one of these innovations.^[6] In 1996, The Wall Street Journal was the first national newspaper that created a paywall across the entire site.^[1]

In particular, after the recession in 2008 newspapers were motivated to find a method to protect print circulation (and get user data), and paywalls were a method they tested to do this. There was (and is) concern, however, that the implementation of paywalls would decrease user traffic thereby decreasing revenue from advertising.^[5] There is a tradeoff between ad revenue (driven by high reader counts) and paywall revenue (driven by a smaller number of subscribers) and companies attempt to find an optimal balance between the two where a paywall is not too restrictive where the number of page views decreases too drastically, but not too lenient to the extent that paywall revenue is too low. The effect of this tradeoff has encouraged the development of different types of paywall implementations, detailed below.

Classifications

There are various types of paywalls. They are typically categorized based on how they balance the offering of free content versus the offering of premium (paid subscription only) content. The most common sub-categories recognized by experts are hard paywalls, soft (metered) paywalls, and freemium (Combination) paywalls. ^[7]

Hard

A hard paywall is the most restrictive type of paywall. Content obscured behind a hard paywall can only be accessed when a user has paid the subscription or fee. The content is not offered via other channels: there are no free versions, limited free articles, and no free trials. A hard paywall restricts access to a site or service in its entirety: there is no free section. In some implementations, there may exist several tiers; each tier would allow access to increasingly more content for an increasingly higher price. ^[1] The Times is a notable news outlet that employs a hard paywall, which it implemented in 2010. ^[8] In this particular implementation, users are allowed to read approximately the first paragraph of content before being prompted to subscribe. The Times is still categorized as a hard paywall because no article can be read in its entirety for free; the only purpose of offering the first paragraph is to show non-subscribers the articles that could be made available to them.

Amongst those who question the ethical implications of paywalls, this type of paywall is considered to be the most unethical and restrictive.

Soft

Soft, or metered, paywalls allow access to some premium content for free while restricting the remaining content to paid subscribers. A common implementation of a soft paywall is a metered paywall which allows access to a particular number of articles per month, and requires payment to read more than this predefined number. This is a model that The Washington Post has implemented; users are allowed to view between 7 and 10 articles for free each month, and to view additional articles requires a subscription.Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag
- Stewart Brand </blockquote> This quote documents the dilemma: news and information producers deserve reasonable compensation for providing valuable information to the public; similarly, people deserve equitable access to information.^[1] This debate is often considered when considering the ethical use of paywalls in a democratic society.

Copied, use in ethics somewhere: "When less news content is consulted, and fewer individuals encounter the news, the information function of local news media is weakened. Our findings support warnings in previous research regarding widening knowledge gaps between audience groups with financial and technological means to access high-quality news and other audience groups left with lower quality, less substantive free news (Ananny and Bighash 2016; Olsen and Solvoll 2018b; Pickard and Williams 2014). Adding insult to injury, earlier research has shown how local news websites place their best journalism behind paywalls (Kvalheim 2013; Myllylahti 2017; Olsen and Solvoll 2018a; Sjøvaag 2016) and thereby exclude users who can only access free content from enjoying the full informational value of the local medium. Thus, local online newspapers will only partly undertake their function of facilitating public integration and participation in the local communities. With regard to the arena function, we question whether online local newspapers can hold a central position in the discussion of local issues with the access constraints that paywalls represent. To uphold its civic functions, news providers need to continue facilitating and constituting public spheres by developing an active and engaged citizenry."Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag

Quality

Nick Thompson, an editor at Wired, claims that paywalls make online content better. When defending the decision of Wired to introduce a soft (metered) paywall in 2018, he says that "When you create a subscription business model, your incentives change significantly."^[9] He is referring to the idea that paywalls incentivize outlets to obtain the largest number of loyal readers that they can. This incentive results in higher-quality content that is unique.

Power and Open Access to Information

Globalization has accelerated information production in an interconnected world in which research is done by scholars who are more diverse. However, some argue that paywalls diminish the benefits provided by this information production. ^[10] Those debating the ethics of paywalls ask the question: who has the power to decide which information is obscured by a paywall? The answer, clearly, is content publishers. Those who argue against the use of paywalls cite the growing market domination of a few academic publishers, allowing them to set high prices. These barriers make it more difficult for teachers, economically-disadvantaged people, and policy-makers to access this information.^[11] Paywalls limit access to a small proportion of the population, who is able to use this access to further advance their privilege. ^[10]

References

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3} Shah, S. (n.d.). Understanding the Effects of Online Paywalls on Information Access. Oregon State University.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} Harvey, B. (2021, January 20). Should News Sites Have Paywalls? The Prindle Post. https://www.prindlepost.org/2021/01/should-news-sites-have-paywalls/
3. ↑ Simon, F., & Graves, L. (2019, May 9). Across seven countries, the average price for paywalled news is about $15.75/month. Nieman Journalism Lab [BLOG]; Newstex. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2251667383/citation/A0A2FC17C0744FF6PQ/1
4. ↑ Taylor, M. (2013, January 17). Hiding your research behind a paywall is immoral. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2013/jan/17/open-access-publishing-science-paywall-immoral
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1} Paywalls Impact on Local News Websites Traffic and Their Civic and Business Implications.pdf. (n.d.).
6. ↑ The Ethics of News Paywalls—Center for Media Engagement—Center for Media Engagement. (n.d.). Retrieved January 27, 2022, from https://mediaengagement.org/research/the-ethics-of-news-paywalls/
7. ↑ Pickard, V., & Williams, A. T. (2014). Salvation Or Folly? Digital Journalism, 2(2), 195–213. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2013.865967
8. ↑ Rußell, R., Berger, B., Stich, L., Hess, T., & Spann, M. (2020). Monetizing Online Content: Digital Paywall Design and Configuration. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 62(3), 253–260. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-020-00632-5
9. ↑ Johnson, E. (2018, February 1). Paywalls make content better, Wired editor Nick Thompson says. Vox. https://www.vox.com/2018/2/1/16957324/wired-paywall-nick-thompson-magazine-advertising-subscription-peter-kafka-recode-media-podcast
10. ↑ ^{10.0 10.1} Eaves, L. E. (2021). Power and the paywall: A Black feminist reflection on the socio-spatial formations of publishing. Geoforum, 118, 207–209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.04.002
11. ↑ Gershenson, S., Polikoff, M. S., & Wang, R. (2020). When Paywall Goes AWOL: The Demand for Open-Access Education Research. Educational Researcher, 49(4), 254–261. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X20909834