The economic and social value of information in the network society By José Moreno Abstract In this paper, our purpose is to investigate the economic and social value of information in the network society. We analyze the changes taking place in the way information is distributed in society after the massive adoption of new digital information and communication technologies and try to understand if and how those changes impact the economic and social value of information. The network architecture of the information paths in society, the prominence of computers in the information and communication management and the migration from analog to digital technologies seem to have profound consequences on the economic and social value of information. Our hypothesis is that the network society, with the corresponding social uses and appropriations of digital technologies, decreases the economic value of information and increases its social value. To test that hypothesis we first look at the economic data of the companies that distribute information, the old mass media and the “new media” of the digital age. And then we study the way information is distributed and disseminated in society using those same digital technologies, namely thought popular online social networks such as Facebook, to see if and how that social use corresponds to an increase of social value to the people who use it. We expect to demonstrate that the business model of the mass media is not sustainable in the digital environment, that the “new media” of the digital age are only profitable on a global scale and that the causes for the decreasing economic value of information are the same that explain the increase in tis social value. Keywords: network society, information, economic value, social value, mass media, business models [Note: This paper is translated from the master thesis “O Valor Económico e Social da Informação no quadro da Sociedade em Rede”, submitted to evaluation on ISCTE-IUL in June 2014] 1. INTRODUCTION The network society has changed profoundly, and is still changing, the way we organize and connect with each other in the social context. One of those changes concern the way information is distributed throughout society. From a society in which mass media had the leading role in the distribution of information relevant to society, we transitioned to a network society in which there are new agents and new ways to disseminate information in the social body. The purpose of this paper is to analyze those changes in a double perspective. First, from an economic point of view, by looking at the way the business models of the traditional mass media have deteriorated in this transition. And, secondly, from a social point of view, by analyzing how those changes affect the way we use information to connect with one another in the social context. Our hypothesis is that the current deterioration affecting the business models of the traditional mass media is not the result of their own actions or omissions, but rather the necessary result of a general decrease in the economic value of information as a result of the referred changes. On the other hand, our second hypothesis is that those same features, that are at the basis of the decreasing economic value of information, are responsible for an increase in its social value, as a result of the abundance of information and the range of new possibilities that the manipulation of digital technologies permits. In the first part we will review the available literature on the three main areas involved in this investigation: the network society, the economic value of information and the social value of information. Then, we will detail our hypotheses and the methodology that will be used to study them. In the third part we will look at data regarding the evolution of the revenue streams in digital and analog media, first with global generic data openly available and then with specific data from the weekly magazine Autohoje. We will progress our analysis from the most general to the most specific. In the fourth and last part of this paper we will gather the results of several studies on the way individuals engage in social connections via online social networks and how that increments or supplements their social capital. This is not an empirical study; this is a theoretical study that uses empirical data to support its arguments. The purpose is not to produce new empirical data or produce new knowledge from empirical data. The purpose is to produce new knowledge from the establishment of novel relationships between previously existent concepts and variables and its combination with the existent empirical data. 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK The literature review for our subject has two different purposes: the first, to establish the theoretical framework of the study; and, the second, to clarify some of the basic concepts that are used. We begin by clarifying what we understand by network society and what are the changes that it implies on various levels relevant to this investigation. Then we will analyze some theoretical contributions regarding the economic approach to information distribution in the digital era and we will conclude this part by looking at other contributions that have been made to understand the social value of information in the network society. 2.1. The Network Society The network society in which we now live is the result of the social adoption and appropriation of a collection of new information and communication technologies that developed in the last 50 years. The ways by which that collection of technologies was integrated in the social process and adopted by the individuals changed radically – and is still changing – the way we communicate with one another and the type of social connections that we build with those technologies. The final outcome of these changes is not the mere result of the technology but rather the product of the interdependence between these new information and communication technologies, the economic models of the media and the type of social appropriations that individuals make in regard to those technologies (Cardoso, 2006:119). In other words, those technologies are not in themselves a determinant factor, but they present an array of possibilities, both at the individual and social levels, that condition the uses of technology but are also conditioned by them (Benkler, 2006:17). Manuel Castells was the first to use the concept of “network society” as we understand it and to frame it within the global changes we are witnessing, in a broad collection of published works, namely “The Rise of the Network Society” (Castells, 2011). To Castells, the network society emerges in the transition from a social paradigm in which the domination of energy was the determinant factor – the industrialism – to a new paradigm upon which the decisive element is the domination of information – the informationalism (Castells, 2011; Castells, 2004; Cardoso, 2006). To Castells, the network society is a particular architecture of society in which the social structure is nurtured by digital information and communication technologies, through computers connected to one another in the form of a network (Castells, 2004:3). The network society is organized in nodes – individuals or institutions – and it is through the information that flows between the nodes that individuals and institutions establish and organize their social connections (Castells, 2004:3; Castells, 2009:20). Hence the importance that deep changes in information and communication technologies may have in the way individuals and institutions connect in society and the social architectures and procedures they build with those technologies. The distinctive attribute of a networked social organization, as opposed to a vertical and hierarchical one, is that the network has no center and, therefore, cannot be commanded from a central point. To Castells, three factors relating to the digital information and communication networks explain why the network became its structuring paradigm: first, these networks have a capacity to process information, both in volume and complexity, that is historically new, and have the ability to self-expand; second, these networks have a capacity to combine and recombine information, due to the use of digital technologies that was also unknown; and, third, modern information and communication networks are extremely flexible, also due to their digital nature (Castells, 2004, 9-11). To Castells, the digital information and communication networks are global and therefore the social structures that are sustained by their data flows will also tend to be global (Castells, 2004, 22). However, the social existence of most individuals is still confined to local, regional or national borders. According to Castells, from the clash between these two conflicting logics results a fragmentation that is more than just the result of a transition between two very diverse ways of organizing the social experience. To Castells, that fragmentation of the existing social structures is in itself a structural element of the network society (Castells, 2004, 23). As we shall see, that applies to the ways by which the social distribution of information is being affected by those technologies and meets our thesis in this paper: the fragmentation that affects the business models of traditional media – which are of course a particular way of organizing the social distribution of information – is not the mere result of a transitional and adaptive stage; it is a structural element of the new information and communication paradigm of the network society. The same logic can be applied to the problematic of value in the network society. To Castells, in a capitalist society those who hold power are the ones who decide what has or does not have value. Hence, with network structures of global reach, the conditions for the creation of value are necessarily altered and the entities that cannot have a global reach are in a disadvantageous position in relation to those that can. Again, this has obvious practical implications for the traditional media, which are usually created and operated in a national or regional logic. Because of that, those media are in a position of disadvantage regarding the “new media” of the network society, which tend to be global in its nature, as we will see. To Manuel Castells, the information and communication technologies in the network society dilute the traditional distinction between mass media and interpersonal media, creating a new mode of communication to which he calls “mass self-communication” (Castells, 2011; 2009). It is a form of mass communication because its reach is potentially global. But, at the same time, it’s an interpersonal form of communication because it can be individually produced, distributed and consumed, benefiting from the convergence and flexibility permitted by the digital information and communications technologies and tools. This outcome is the combined effect of a distributed computation capacity and its organization in the form of a network. By combining multiple computers, of various types, connected to each other in the form of a network, the resources to manage the communication tend to be located in the network itself. And that is why the network converts into the ideal social system for processing information (Castells, 2011:52), overcoming the linear communication channels of the past. Finally, Castells also identifies five elements that constitute the material foundations of the network society: first, information is the raw material of the network society. The previous stages of information and communication technologies generated information that acted on the technology. Now, on the contrary, we are dealing with a new kind of information and communication technologies that act on information itself. (Castells, 2011:70). Second, considering that information is part of all human activity in society, these new information and communication technologies are present in all aspects of social life and therefore so are also its effects. Third, any use that is made of these technologies enters inevitably in network logic. And that means that also the network logic ends up spreading to all aspects of social life. Fourth, these new information and communication technologies allow an almost complete flexibility on the way information is used and communication established. And, fifth, these digital technologies tend to push convergence between different kinds of messages into one single global system, both at production and at distribution and manipulation of information (Castells, 2011:72). Another sociologist that studied deeply the network society and its characteristics was Jan van Dijk, namely in his book “The Network Society” (2006). To van Dijk, the network society is the central nervous system of society and corresponds to a social formation on which the social and informative infra-structures, organized in the form of a network, constitute the basic mode by which society organizes at the individual level, group level and social level (van Dijk, 2006:20). On the contrary, in the mass society that existed before the network society, the social infra-structure was composed of groups, organizations and communities of larger or smaller number (some were the “masses”), and that was the characteristic that conditioned all the forms of social organization (at the level of the individual, the groups and the society as a whole). This means that the basic determinant unit for the social functioning is no longer the broad social group – the masses – but rather the network itself (van Dijk, 2006:20), which is a similar approach to that of Castells. From a mass society in which the social organization was mostly based in groups with different sizes and functions (families, cities, nations, companies, armies, governments, etc…), with strong connectivity and density and clear power holders (van Dijk, 2006:33-34), we transitioned to a highly individualized society, in which one’s social experience is both local and global and transcends the social groups to which he or she belongs, complementing them with a new set of bonds that are weaker and lengthier than traditional ones (van Dijk, 2006:35-36). Like Castells, van Dijk also identifies the fragmentation of traditional social units (family, city, state, nation, enterprise, etc…) as one of the characteristics of the network society, along with a more prominent role played by the numerous weak social links one develops. On the other hand, van Dijk also mentions, like Castells, the dilution of space and time traditional markers that is induced by the new digital information and communication technologies. Considering all these elements of analysis by van Dijk, we can draw the conclusion that to this sociologist – same as to Castells - the traditional mass media are one of the social units whose social function is deconstructed – “fragmented” would be a better description – by the massive adoption of digital information and communication technologies. To van Dijk, the advances in microelectronics, the digitization and computerization of communication processes (van Dijk, 2006:44), in conjunction with the availability of broadband connections and the consequent massive transfer of data (van Dijk, 2006: 49-51) are the technological foundations of the network society. Resulting from the convergence effect those technologies endorse, the internet integrates data communication as well as mass and interpersonal communication (van Dijk, 2006:54) and places all the information that circulates through any form of communication under the supervision and command of computers. The third most important narrative about the network society and its characteristics was authored by Yochai Benkler along several books and papers, mostly in his known “The Wealth of Networks”. Benkler himself asserts that, in relation to Castell’s approach and although agreeing with it, his perspective on the network society is based on the relative role of market and non-market sectors in the production, distribution and consumption of information knowledge and culture (Benkler, 2006:18). In a certain way, Benkler’s approach openly faces issues that both Castells and van Dijk had left unresolved. First, Yochai Benkler considers that the way we organize the production, distribution and consumption of information, knowledge and culture influences the way our societies work (Benkler, 2006:1). And, secondly, he also considers that, in the network society, those conditions have radically changed, giving prominence to the sharing and social exchange as a way to make such production, distribution and consumption of information, knowledge and culture (Benkler, 2006:92). This means that the new digital information and communication technologies are not only a threat to the dominant agents of the prior mode of social production of information – the mass media – but also an opportunity for the emergence of new forms of social production of information, knowledge and culture resulting from the individual action of people and from different systems of cooperation between them (Benkler, 2006:2). To Benkler what is new in the digital era is the paradigm of social distribution of information as we enter what he calls the “networked information economy” (Benkler, 2006:32). And, on the other hand, other thing that is also novelty is the fact that this change makes the production of information, knowledge and culture available to all the population. In the past, the technical entry barriers caused that information would be distributed through proprietary channels established according to market laws – the mass media. When those technical barriers disappear, a non-proprietary sector, not subject to the laws of the marketplace, tends do flourish as a source of information, knowledge and culture (Benkler, 2006:4). When you perform a search in the Google search engine, for example, the system produces a response, an information “good”, that is the coordinated effect of a set of uncoordinated actions performed by a large ensemble of social agents, both individual and collective and profit-seeking or not (Benkler, 2006:33). The effect is coordinated because Google prepared its algorithm to respond in a given way to a given query. But it’s the result of a group of uncoordinated actions because the construction of that outcome is a consequence multiple searching and browsing behaviors that the users did not coordinate amongst themselves. To Benkler, the network society expands the ability of individuals to participate in the process in at least three ways: first, it increases their individual ability to produce information, knowledge and culture; second, it increases their ability to do that production in cooperation with other individuals and outside the traditional social and economic modes of organization; and, third, it also increases their ability to produce information whilst in formal organizations outside the sphere of the market (Benkler, 2006: 8). To Benkler, that corresponds to a form of decentralization of capital, considering that a part of the capital structure necessary for the production of information, knowledge and culture will now be controlled by the users (Benkler, 2006:30). From the quick review of these three authors, we can conclude that the network society mediated by computers encapsulates two components that cannot be dissociated and that work in tandem to produce the results we observe: the architecture in the form of a network of nodes, on one side, and the fact that this network is mediated by computers, on the other. The mediation through computers is a decisive feature that mostly results from the migration from analog to digital technologies. This element, because it’s decisive, will be detailed in what follows. 2.2. From analog to digital The current network architecture that supports the internet and its social distribution of information would not be possible without the mediation of computers. And leads us to look carefully at the migration from analog to digital as a central element to understand the technological changes we are studying. To Castells, the transition from analog to digital is the technological layer upon which all other developments at the level of computation, microelectronics and telecommunications take place (Castells, 2011:70). And that’s why this particular shift is at the heart of what has been the evolution of the information and communication technologies in the last 50 years. Van Dijk also considers the migration from analog to digital as being the decisive factor that makes data communication and computerization two of the main elements of the infra-structure of the network society (Van Dijk, 2006: 44). The digital codification of data that supports information involves two basic dimensions that explain its prevalence. First, digital codification in mathematical and therefore it fits the basic mathematic calculus rules on which computers operate. And, second, the digital mode of codification is binary. Made from complex strings of simple “zeros” and “ones”, the digital “language” has an “on-off”, “yes-no”, “true-false” functioning logic. That means it has no middle term. And that’s one reason why it’s so apt for the sophisticated calculating machines we now call computers. The binary signals that make the digital code are like the DNA of digital information (Negroponte, 1995:14; Castells, 2011:54). A given digital code can always be decomposed and recomposed using its constitutive units in any machine that is able to manipulate it, which means any computer. By comparison, any information coded in an analog mode of codification will be limited to the physical constraints of the object or matter that supports it. Digitization is therefore the process by which any form of information, whether a text, a sound, an image or a video, is converted into the binary language that is used inside the computers (Hamelink, 1997). There are two ways by which the digital mode of codification tends to pervade all the information production and distribution that is made in society: the creation of new informative content in originally digital format and the digitization of infomative content that existed previously in analog format and makes part of our collective memory. Nicholas Negroponte attributes digital technologies four basic qualities with large implications on the respective social uses and appropriations: they are decentralizing, globalizing, harmonizing and empowering (Negroponte, 1995: 229-231). Castells considers that the ongoing informational revolution will probably be even more important than the invention of printing press, because it establishes a feed-back circuit that will push for further development and dissemination of information technologies (Castells, 2011:30-31). Manovich also stresses that, differently from other information changes in the past, the digital communication mediated by computers affects all stages of communication and all types of media (Manovich, 2001:43). Combining the contributions of the diverse authors studied for this literature review, we can signal out five main repercussions on the way information is produced, distributed and consumed in the social body that are the combined result of the new digital information and communication technologies and the way they are used. The first of those effects is convergence, a concept that refers to the fact that the devices that are prepared to produce and receive digital information are – precisely because they are digital - capable of handling all types of content – text, audio and imagens, both static and moving. The fact that this allows for the easy expansion of the types of content one can produce and distribute led many traditional media to add audio to text or video to audio or text to video, for instance. Today this trend is still evolving and it is common to see media outlets that traditionally were print beginning to explore video, for example. For the traditional media, of course, this trend opens up interesting business opportunities. But, on the other hand, it also threatens their current business models (Negroponte, 1995: 18; Van Kamm e Bordewijk, 2003:582). Here’s why: from one side, convergence may be understood as a “downward” process in which mass media incorporate into their informative products and services different kinds of content that previously were separated. But, viewed from other side, convergence may also be understood as an “upward” process by which individuals learn to use and command these technol- ogies and take advantage of convergence themselves. Both processes occur simultaneously and condition one another (Jenkins, 2006: 18). The second main repercussion digital technologies have on the way we use media is that of the metadata, an additional layer of data that characterizes and contextualizes information and does not exist in analog media (Van Dijk, 2006:45). These “bits about bits”, in the wording of Negroponte (1995:18), are precisely the level at which computers operate, sorting, manipulating and comparing data relative to the production, distribution and consumption of information, both individually and collectively. It’s by gathering the metadata associated with the communication that computers can apply the algorithms with which they manipulate information to meet the needs of the user. On the other hand, connected in a network, computers and servers can communicate with one another and share both the information and the metadata in a way that permits any of those computers to act on both the information and its metadata, resulting in what Castells called “pervasive computing” (Castells, 2001:51). The third massive change that results from the shift to digital technologies is the interactivity of communication. According to van Dijk, digital media are more interactive than analog media in three dimensions: at the space dimension, because digital media enact bilateral and multilateral communication processes regardless of the physical space where the subjects may be; at the time dimension, because a digital communication can be enacted instantaneously or delayed in time; and, finally, in the behavioral dimension, because, in digital, sender and receiver can change roles at any moment during the process (Van Dijk, 2006:8). Bordewijk and van Kamm, for their part, built a communication interactivity matrix, with four quadrants, of increasing interactivity (allocution, registration, consultation and conversation) and concluded that digital media tend to “push” the type of communication to levels of higher interactivity (Van Kamm e Bordewijk, 2003:580). Negroponte, finally, also stresses that, in the operating mode of the mass media, information is fundamentally “pushed” by the media, whereas in the digital environment it tends to be “pulled” by the user within his own convenience of time, space and use context. Obviously, that’s the same as saying that the individuals exercise a higher degree of control over the process of communication (Negroponte, 1995:168-170). Castells characterized this issue in terms of “space of flows” and “timeless time”. Space of flows refers to the fact that the information space is no longer that of the physical space but rather that of the virtual flows of information. Timeless time, for its part, refers to the circumstance that information may be used on whichever moment the users find it most convenient. In conjunction, these two aspects constitute what Castells calls “the material foundations of a new culture” for the digital era (Castells, 2011:406). The fourth distinctive feature of the digital mode of codification versus the analog mode relates to its flexibility. The fact that the digital code may be decomposed in its constitutive units - the bits – also means that it can be recomposed in any other computer that is in contact with the first, as is the case in a network architecture. This has two fundamental consequences. First, it hugely simplifies the reproduction and sharing of any content. That is what explains the simplicity and reach with which from time to time apparently innocuous pieces of content become so viral. And, second, it makes the remixing of different parts of the code as easy as its production or reproduction. Both changes – the easiness to reproduce and simplicity with which one can to remix all forms of information – result from de dematerialization of information that is associated with the shift from an analog paradigm to a digital paradigm. The ability to produce, redistribute and remix information is really what turns the previous information consumers into its producers, giving birth to a new communicative agent that Axel Bruns called “produser” (Bruns, 2007) and that Ritzer and Jurgenson called “prosumer”, using a term originally coined by Alvin Toffler (Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010). The fifth great transformation brought by the digital mode of codification is seldom acknowledged as one and relates to the global reach that digital technologies have when they’re combined with a network of computers. Of course, globalization is not a product of the digital information and communication technologies. But these technologies – because they are digital – speed up that process in ways that many times are not manifest and pass unnoticed (Cardoso, 2006:113). This results – again – from the fact that a digital code manipulated inside one computer is immediately available, in the same conditions, to any other computer that is connected to the first, regardless of physical location, country or language, since both computers operate according to mathematics and both use the same digital binary language. With Negroponte, we could say that the digital code is a sort of “lingua franca” made of bits (1995:63) that permits to overcome the limits of geography (1996:165). 2.3. Mass media versus “new media” The changes induced by the network society and the migration from analog to digital have had huge consequences on the media landscape in most developed countries. In the mass society that, according to van Dijk, preceded the network society (2006:20), the mass media had the center role in the system for social distribution of information. That role started with the invention of printing, in 1495, and, although changing throughout history, remained remarkably stable until the emergence of the internet (Benkler, 2006:29). Whether we look at a small gazette from the 19th century, with a very limited circulation, at a radio broadcast from the beginning of the 20th century or the operating routines of a global TV network like CNN, the underlying informative paradigm is always the same: the transmission of information “from one to many”, in only one direction, controlled by the sender. In this respect, Gustavo Cardoso considers that an information and communication paradigm is constituted by the interdependence between the technology, the media and the business models. And, consequently, a radical change in one of these terms involves a necessary change in the paradigm (Cardoso, 2006:16). What really transforms the information and communication paradigm that ruled the age of the mass media is the networked communication mediated by computers (Castells, 2009:24). This new communication and information paradigm changes the operating environment of the media in four ways: 1) it mixes the roles of producer and consumer of information and thus establishes the bidirectional as the core of the system; 2) it creates a networked architecture that allows communication to be, at the same time, from one to one, from one to many and from many to one; 3) it grants each individual (or node in the network) increased power over the operation of the network, because communication no longer depends of any other particular individual (or node in the network); and 4) it establishes a media environment where information is abundant, contrary to the previous media environment where information was scarce (Anderson, 2006). To van Dijk it is the simultaneous presence of integration, interactivity and digital code that distinguishes “new media” from traditional media (Van Dijk, 2006:9). A classic TV broadcast, for example, is integrated because it includes images, sound and text, but isn’t interactive or digital. A traditional copper phone call, on the contrary, is interactive but not integrated nor digital. With the migration from analog to digital, a television transmission can now also be interactive and a phone call may be integrated with text or video. This means that interactivity and multimedia are two of the distinctive features of what we call “new media” (Cardoso, 2006:123). Changes in the information and communication paradigm established by the network society, along with the corresponding changes in the operating environment of the media, have caused a deterioration of their traditional business models. But, simultaneously, that same new information and communication paradigm promoted the blossoming of a new kind of companies, with a different position in the chain of information. These are the companies or services we call the “new media”, as opposed to the traditional mass media. Companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are certainly very different from one another. But they also share some characteristics and attributes that, as opposing to the mass media, are common between them. First, all these companies/services tend to act on a global scale and not a local, regional or national scale, like most of the traditional media (Cardoso, 2006:113). Second, these are companies/services that distribute and channel information instead of producing it. They are platforms for searching, sharing and managing information, but they don’t produce the information they search, share or manage. That information is produced by the users. This means that, considering the changes mentioned above, resulting from the network society and the migration to digital, these are companies whose service is a direct result of the new information and communication paradigm. It is because they are better adapted to the new way the social distribution of information is made that this companies prosper and other traditional media don’t. These “new media” of the network society have a global reach because the tools they offer for people to communicate and exchange information can be used by anyone in any place, regardless of their language or culture (Castells, 2009:96). In the mass society we discussed earlier, mass media had a precise social function for which their structure and process was suitable. Within the frame of the network society commanded by computers, on the contrary, the “new media” we’ve been talking about have a different function, for which, likewise, their structure and process are adapted. “New media” do not exist to produce and distribute content, like traditional media; they exist to supply the users with the tools they need to produce and distribute their own content. Therefore, “new media” have a new function within the network society, one that results from the fact that the aforementioned tools they provide are the ones that promote the empowerment of the users as producers of information besides its consumers (Cardoso, 2006:133). Furthermore, by using those tools, individuals are participating in the configuration of the network itself (Castells, 2004), influencing not only their own behavior online but also the overall operation of the “new media” platforms on which they participate. This aspect is often forgotten: although this kind of platforms for the communicative and informative action of individuals are economically operated by private and for-profit companies, they are themselves a social construction even more than traditional mass media, precisely because those platforms depend on the content and the participation of the users in order to operate. To Manuel Castells there is a direct connection between the power of sharing and the sharing of power (Castells, 2004). What this means is that the empowerment of the users is not only individual but also collective and that the “new media” we’ve been discussing have less power over the users, both individually and collectively, than the mass media that previously dominated the informative landscape. In this sense, Benkler considers that we are witnessing a massive redistribution of power and value (also of value, it should be stressed) from the mass media to the individuals, on one side, and to the companies that provide the tools for them to operate on the new informative and communicative environment on which they live (Benkler, 2006:23), that is, the “new media”. To sum up, the social function of the media has changed and it’s that fact that explains the change in the overall media landscape. From a mass society on which mass media had the center role in the distribution of information relevant to society, we shifted into a network society, connected by computers, on which the platforms for the informative and communicative action of the individuals have the prominent role in the distribution of information relevant to society. In this new information and communication paradigm, the intermediaries – the “gatekeepers” and “newsmakers” of the age of the mass media (Wolf, 1999) – cease to have the relevant social function they had before. On the contrary, it is the “new media” – like Google, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube – that rise to a higher social relevance, because they are performing the social functions that the network society – its structure and its processes – requires of them. 2.4. Data, information and knowledge The changes that are occurring in the network society connected by computers have effects of the data that is produced and manipulated, on the information that is transmitted and on the knowledge that is accumulated by the individuals and by society as a whole. Therefore, it’s important to detail these concepts and their interconnections in the context of the network society. One of the regularities that we detect when going through the various theoretical analysis that have been made to the concepts of data, information and knowledge is that there is a diagnosis of frequent confusion and overlapping between “data” and “information” and between “information” and “knowledge” (Zins, 2007; Boisot e Canals, 2004). On the other hand, although the concept of “data” is always considered to be objective, the concept of “information” is frequently understood as subjective, constructed entirely within the cognitive capacity of an individual and “observable” only through his testimony. The concept of “knowledge”, for its part, is always perceived as being subjective and therefore not directly observable (Zins, 2007). In his study of this issue, Zins concludes that data is that which makes information possible and information is that which forms knowledge (Zins, 2007; Jones, 2010). From that sense of progression between the three concepts, Clampitt derives the D-I-K-A model, referring to “Data-Information-Knowledge-Action” (Clampitt, 2010, 122). In this model, data is what feeds information, information is what feeds knowledge and knowledge is that which sustains the action of the individuals. This means that the communicative and informative process is made from objective data that, once interpreted (and interiorized) by a given individual, turns into information. In the possession of a coordinated and structured set of diverse pieces of information, that individual is said to have a certain knowledge of a subject. And, finally, it is with that knowledge that he decides which actions to take in the social context. Van Dijk proposes a similar approach with his “pyramid of information processing” (van Dijk, 2006: 202-203): in the era of digital information and communication technologies, the information processing starts with the manipulation of bits and bytes at the digitization level, goes through the manipulation of that data at the computer level, becomes information when it is made understandable by a human being and turns into knowledge when it relates multiple pieces of information in a coherent set. These new technologies we’re studying have an impact in all the stages of this process, but are more influential at the bottom than at the top of the pyramid. To put it differently, these digital technologies are especially effective in processing bits and bytes, manipulating data and producing and distributing information, more than in producing knowledge or wisdom. But they are – in the digital context of a society that is flooded in data and information – the matter by which knowledge and wisdom are made. Information is something inherent to all social relations. The substance of social relations is made through the exchange of information between individuals and between them and society. This mechanism is important in order to understand that the way individuals use this new digital information and communication technologies is influenced by their social uses and customs, but, on the other hand, are also influential to those uses and customs (Fuchs, 2003). Manuel Castells also considers social processes to be always based on knowledge and information processing. Using classic sociology concepts, he argues that knowledge is “a set of organized statements of facts or ideas” and information is the “data that has been organized and communicated” (Castells, 2010: 17). In this correlation, as we can see, it’s also implicit the idea of a progression of complexity and meaning that goes from data to information and from information to knowledge. In the context of the network society and the migration to digital, the data that supports the social distribution of information is increasingly the digital data stored in computers and servers (Hilbert and López, 2011). The way that data is treated and manipulated by computers is one of the most profound changes we’re going through. Because it is that computational treatment that permits to register, tag, combine and recombine data in multiple ways, including of course the metadata we mentioned before. On the other hand, it is the way that data appears to individuals and is perceived by them that converts it into information. Therefore, information involves a subjective individual interpretation of data, but it’s also affected by the attributes of the digital data, namely its abundance, convergence and flexibility. This means that information is the link that establishes a connection between the data, which is objective and neutral, from a social point of view, and knowledge, which is subjective and non-neutral from a social point of view. Knowledge is non-neutral, of course, because it is based on knowledge that individuals chose to act in a certain way within their social interactions, whatever those may be (Jones, 2010). Consequently, the social function of information is precisely to establish that connection between the objectivity of data and the subjectivity of knowledge, which manifests in social action. What follows is that the current changes in the social distribution of information necessarily alter the way information fulfills that function. In this paper we use the term “information” in a broad sense, integrating all forms of data that can be interpreted by humans and serve as raw-material to produce knowledge. This means that, for us, in this paper, the term “information” includes all forms of “news” as well as all kinds of entertainment and information products and services. Whenever we refer to “information” throughout this paper, this is what we mean: all and every bit of interpreted data that produces any form of knowledge. “Communication”, on the other hand, is the sharing of meaning through the transmission of information (Castells, 2009:54). Meaning can only exist if there is a shared code between those who communicate. This means that any communication act implies a social connection. The interactive nature of the digital information and communication technologies stimulates bidirectional instead of unidirectional communications and dilutes the frontier between mass communication and all the other forms of communication (Cardoso, 2006). For the purpose of this paper, we consider “communication” to be the transmission and sharing of information, organized data that is understandable by the individuals. The data communication between computers, for instance, is also very relevant for the changes we are witnessing, but that kind of communication is outside the scope of this paper. Interpersonal communication, for its part, has likewise a central role in the context of the social distribution of information, but that is also out of our scope, which focuses on mediated communication. 2.5. The value of information The concept of “value” is very complex and may be approached via many different perspectives: philosophic, economic, sociologic and even psychologic. It is arguably one of the most debated and analyzed concepts in the world of social sciences, precisely because it is at the center of many of the mechanisms that regulate the functioning of society. From a Marxist point of view, the value of something reflects the amount of work and capital that is incorporated into its production. And it may manifest in two basic types of value attribution: use-value and exchange-value (Fuchs, 2014:175). Use-value corresponds to the benefit that someone may withdraw from the work or capital incorporated in a given good. The exchange-value corresponds to the price at which that given good may be object of a transaction in the marketplace (Repo, 1986:375). The first meaning of the concept depends on a subjective assessment by someone; the second, on the contrary, is manifest and can be quantitatively measured in the marketplace. The first problem is that these two very different notions of value frequently appear overlapped and the second problem is that there is no necessary and direct correspondence between the use-value and the exchange-value (Picard, 2010). One cannot be inferred from the other. Robert Picard (2010:50) groups values connected to the production and distribution of information in a matrix that comprises, on one axis, intrinsic values (truth, identity, belonging, etc...) versus instrumental values (democratic participation, understanding, learning, etc.); and, on another axis, social values (community, participation, social integration, etc.) versus individual values (knowledge and understanding, decision making, etc…). This means that the social function that is to be served by the production and distribution of information has the purpose of helping the individual or community, on one side, and to do it following values and goals that are either intrinsic, an end in themselves, or instrumental in the obtaining other benefits. The ensemble of these values corresponds, roughly, to our understanding of what is the social value of information, which we will detail later. Individuals live together in society through the communicative exchanges they enact and use the information they share with one another to construct their social life, which of course cannot be dissociated from the values mentioned above. This is why some types of information – like journalism, for instance – take up a certain social relevance and come with a set of institutionalized structures or procedures, including some strict professional rules. That happens because it is understood by society that those activities – like journalism – produce and sustain certain values (individual and/or collective and intrinsic or instrumental) that the community should preserve. The problem with this kind of values is that they are either impossible or very difficult no measure with any quantitative scale. Because they are “use-values”, they depend on the subjective appreciation of a given individual and can solely be empirically measured through an inquiry to that individual, which carries of course a heavy burden of subjectivity because the values an individual cherishes may not be the same that other individual does (Picard, 2010:48). In a capitalist society and in a market economy, the economic production and distribution of information is guided by profit and therefore tries to match the offer of information products and services with the values individuals wish to fulfill with those information products and services, whether those values are intrinsic or instrumental, and personal or social. That is how, in most western developed societies, organized in a market economy, the ensemble of the community chose to institutionalize the social distribution of information. On one hand, there are other societies on which the social distribution of information is not ruled by the market and, on the other hand, even in capitalist societies with a market economy, there is frequently a “private” sector co-existing with other institutional forms for distributing information, sometimes directly though government control, other times through other hybrid (and complex) solutions. In the instances that information is in some way object of transaction in the marketplace, is converts in an economic good and has a given exchange-value. That value, contrary to the use-value, can be measured and quantified. What this means is that, although exchange-value cannot be inferred from use-value, like we said before, it logically derives from it. It is because a given information good has a certain use-value to someone (whether individual or social and intrinsic or instrumental) that it has a corresponding exchange-value, even considering that such correspondence can’t be directly established and measured, basically because one is subjective and the other is objective. In this paper the purpose is not to measure such a connection, but rather to analyze in what way the new digital information and communication technologies and the network society affect both aspects autonomously. How it affects the exchange-value of information, that is, its economic value; and how it affects the use-value of information, that is, its social value. In part 4 we will analyze the ways in which those technologies affect the economic value of information as it is measured in the marketplace. In part 5 we will look into the way information is used in the social domain and try to perceive if those new technologies alter in some way the social value individuals get from it. The economic analysis of the distribution of information in the digital era is particularly important in the current context because, like we suggested above, the social distribution of information though mass media, with its functioning rules and its business models, is the way that was collectively devised to make that distribution. The emergence of a network of computers and the spreading of digital technologies changes the way that distribution is made and that, for its part, reflects on the economic value of information – measured in the marketplace – and on the social value of information, expressed through the use individuals make of digital information in the social context. These are the two aspects of the current changes that we aim to analyze in this paper. 2.6. The economic value of information What we broadly call “information” is something with specific characteristics that make the approach to its economic value very problematic, to the point that some economists debate and discuss if information should at all be considered an economic good, subject to the same economic laws as other products (Bates, 1990). According to Benjamim Bates information may indeed behave in the market like any other economic good because: a) it can be transferred; b) it has some use to someone; and c) it may have a certain value (Bates, 1990). Nevertheless, some characteristics that are specific to information have a decisive impact on the analysis of its economic value. Bates mentions for instance the infinite reproducibility of information, the fact that it only manifests its value through use and the crucial feature that subject A is not deprived of the information he transmits to subject B (Bates, 1990). Fuchs, for its part, points out that information: is not worn out by being consumed; can endlessly be copied and shared; is easily transmitted; is a social good; has fixed costs that are far greater than its marginal costs; and, finally, is frequently sold in the market with a profit (Fuchs, 2014). Picard indicates that the distinctive features of information as an economic good are that it only exists - physically – in the perception of humans, it can easily be transported, spread and shared, and its dissemination maximizes its use instead of diminishing it (Picard, 2010:45). For Shapiro e Varian, finally, the fundamental element we have to consider on this issue is that information is very expensive to produce but extremely cheap to reproduce, which means that it has high fixed costs but very low marginal costs (Shapiro & Varian, 1999:9). According to Bates the paradox we detect when we look at information with an economic eye is a result of the fact that its value is more attached to the way it is distributed than to information itself (Bates, 1990). When coupled with the physical medium on which it travels, analog information behaves in the marketplace very much like any other economic good. However, decoupled from that particular analog medium, information itself reveals specific economic characteristics (above) that challenge its behavior as an economic good. And this is increasingly manifest as we continue to migrate from a world of analog information to a world of digital information. To validate, from a theoretical point of view, the inclusion of information within the field of economic goods, Benjamim Bates uses the concept of “stock value”. When it is shared, a given information still holds some use value to its original holder, but, at that point, its “stock value” is reduced, because each time an information is shared it is reduced the “capital” that it can still hold to its “proprietor”, that is, the potential of such “value generating actions” that the holder can still enact. Given that fact, Bates concludes that, from the point of view of the economic theory, the “stock value” of information reduces with its dissemination (Bates, 1990). In practice and considering the context of the network society and the migration to digital, this simply means that when information becomes abundant the respective economic value is reduced. The traditional informative products, in analog format, coupled their value with that of the physical medium on which they existed. Its marginal cost is the marginal cost of the medium and, in that context, their economic behavior in the market was that of any other product. But the dematerialization of information that results from migrating to digital radically alters that equation. The new digital nature of information reduces the cost of producing and distributing it and pushes the marginal cost towards zero, thus depriving information of any economic value. Yochai Benkler identifies two main characteristics of information that have consequences on its economic value. The first of those characteristics is that information is “nonrival”. The fact that someone transmits a given piece of information to another person does not mean that the first person is deprived of that information. In a scheme, if A transmits an information to B, B is then in possession of that information, but A is still also in possession of the same information. What Benkler stresses in this regard is that, from an economic perspective, this means that the marginal cost of information tends to zero and therefore information will display a tendency to lose its economic value and became a public good (Benkler, 2006:36). That is, due to the fact that its marginal cost tends to zero, information, when deprived of analog attachment supports, cannot be profitable and therefore is of no interest to those economic agents whose function is to produce profit. That’s why, in order to remunerate creative work in general and information production in particular, our societies “invented” copyright as an institutional solution to this problem. By the way, it is very interesting that this institutional solution is intimately connected to the analog distribution of information: the “copyright” is the right to make a copy of the analog medium that holds the information, whether it’s a book, a newspaper, a celluloid film or a videotape. Considering that the digital format involves the dematerialization of information – like we said before – this means that it becomes impossible to institutionalize the copyright in the same way that it was made for analog information. But Benkler considers information has yet another distinctive quality as an economic good that further reinforces this thesis. To him, information is at the same time the input and the output of the production process (Benkler, 2006:37). That is, he who produces information needs to use information in the process of its production. From that point of view, any economic cost on the information that is used as input for the production process is a cost that will reflect on its output, increasing the price and the revenue of the information producer. On the contrary, a lower cost of the information used as input in the production process (such as that resulting from the current abundance and easiness to copy and reproduce) will tend to reflect on a reduction of the price of the output, which is the same as say that it will result in a reduction of the value of information. Again, this is a perspective that reinforces the central thesis of this paper. On the other hand, Benkler also considers that the new digital information and communication technologies help reducing the transaction costs in the social process. In our social interaction is frequent that neighbors, family or friends help each other when they need, without any economic exchange. The problem is that there are numerous social contexts in which that kind of interaction is not possible without involving transaction costs that are too high. According to Benkler, what modern information and communication technologies permit is, precisely, the reduction of those transaction costs in the social process – especially for information goods – and resolve through (non-economic) social exchange that which previously had to be resolved through economic exchange (Benkler, 2014:297). Still according to economic theory, Benjamim Bates underlines that the reduction of uncertainty that information provides points to the potential economic appropriation of its value. But, on the contrary, the fact that the consumption of information by one individual does not imply its deterioration for another individual suggests that information should be seen as a public good (Bates, 1990). What is curious to underline, in this context, is that what new information and communication technologies do is precisely increase the dissemination of information and thus reinforcing its role as a public good. When we think about the changes brought by new information and communication technologies we notice that the function and social relevance of information is still the same; what is reduced – theoretically – is the respective economic value that can be captured and appropriated. To Picard, the value of information revolves around two factors: scarcity and need. When a certain good is scarce its economic value increases and when it’s abundant its price tends to drop. On the other hand, the value of a given product or service is also the result of an individual’s state of need towards that product or service. Water is a classic example: it has more value for an individual when it is scarce or he is thirsty than when it is abundant or he just drunk a cup (Picard, 210:46). Chris Anderson, for its part, wrote profusely about information abundance and scarcity, also concluding that the economic rules that apply to a state of abundance are very different from those that operate on a state of scarcity (Anderson, 2006:143-146). Obviously, there are still elements of scarcity in the new digital paradigm, like the attention span or the time available to consume information. But what Anderson underlines is that information itself is not one of those scarce elements anymore, and that radically changes the economic conditions for its production, distribution and consumption. To Manuel Castells, the definition of what has value in the network society is an exercise of power, like in all forms of society throughout history: it has value that which those who hold power in society decide it has. But, in the context of multiple juxtaposed and distributed networks that Castells outlines, that power is also distributed and can be selectively exercised in one network or the other. Therefore, both elements point to a redistribution of the power to establish what has value in the network society (Castells, 2009:27-29). Castells warns us that any attempt to reduce value to a single indicator will face huge practical and methodological difficulties (Castells, 2009:28). However, he also considers that the overall indicator of value transfer between different networks is money, which is of course the standard metric for the exchange-value we mentioned previously (Castells, 2009:52). In sum, this literature review about the economic value of information permits us to conclude that the changes occurring in the network society significantly alter the economic value of information and therefore have huge consequences on the way the respective social production and distribution is made. According do Shapiro and Varian, in a world on which the problem is less the access to information than the excess of it, the real value produced by an information supplier resides in its ability to locate, filter and provide the information someone needs or seeks. That’s why search engines, for instance, are amongst the most visited sites in the world wide web (Shapiro & Varian, 1999:13), as we’ll see further ahead when we look at the data sets. On the other hand, the investigation by Von Hippel on the factors of innovation also concludes that, for information products and services, just like in the other sectors, innovation tends to sprout more from the users – individually or socially organized – than from the companies that traditionally produce and distribute those products and services. And that suggests a revision of the business models associated with that production and distribution (Hippel, 2005). A broad vision about the new business models created by the digital paradigm reveals multiple possibilities (Cardoso, Mendonça & Neves, 2013; Gambaro, 2013). But the fact is that most of them are created and developed by new companies and not by the traditional media companies. That is the result of their shorter capacity for innovation and adaptation. Taken together, the changes in the way we communicate in society reinforce the role of both the end users and the companies that supply them the tools to communicate, which are those companies that were able to innovate accordingly. And that necessarily implies a corresponding displacement of the ability to capture the economic value of information, which now is made by different agents and in different economic and communicative contexts. To Manuel Castells, although the tools for user-generated content that these companies provide may seem free at first, they really are not (Castells, 2009:97). For two reasons: the first is that its use qualifies and converts its users into better advertising targets. When people use the communication and information tools provided by the “new media” of the network society, they generate a set of metadata about that use that increases their own value as advertising targets. That use turns into an accrued economic value that can be harvested by the companies that provide those tools. According to Dan Schiller, the audience qualification that results from the use of these tools corresponds to a shift from “mass marketing” to “class marketing” (Schiller, 1999:135). The second reason why the use of these new tools is not really free is because, as mentioned above, these companies extract their economic value from distributing the content produced by others and not from the respective production itself. This means that the value of a user-generated content platform is as high as the abundance of the content it holds, administers and distributes. By using those participation platforms, users are contributing with content to its enrichment, thus increasing its value and therefore thus “paying” for its use. The similarity between what these new companies – which are digital natives - do in the process of social distribution of information and what traditional mass media used to do is that both capture a part of the economic value of information. The first and foremost difference is that the “new media” do not directly produce the information they distribute and the second difference is that they tend to operate on a global scale. The fact that these companies we call the “new media” of the network society depend on a global scale to operate in a profitable way (as we’ll see later on) is precisely what explains the “winner-takes-all” phenomenon that tends to emerge, with one predominant search engine (Google), one main video platform (YouTube), one major social network (Facebook), one leading microblogging service (Twitter), and so on (Brynjolfsson, Hu & Smith, 2010). On the other hand, for the user, the attractiveness of those services is as high as the number of its users – the known Metfalfe Law (Castells, 2009:42) – and, also, the more users such a network has, the better it can use the data and metadata generated by the users to monetize their participation. Charles Brown, finally, stresses the weight content aggregation had in the business model of the traditional media, operating on analog informative products, and considers that aggregation is the central element of their economic basis. In the new digital paradigm – he argues – the aggregation function did not change; what changed were the technical conditions within which aggregation is made. And if, as he suggests, the capture of value is the result of content aggregation, then the companies that are better positioned to do that capture in the new media landscape are the ones that provide the technical tools do operate on the digital paradigm (Brown, 2013). To sum up, the transition to the network society and the migration to digital information and communication technologies transformed not only the economic value of information, but also the way in which it can be economically captured. Further ahead in this paper we will present aggregated empirical data and a case-study to try to understand how both things happen in practice. In what follows, we will look in more detail to the way these changes may be affecting the social value of information. 2.7. The social value of information After reviewing how the new digital information and communication technologies influence or may influence the economic value of information, we must now look in detail to the social value of information to try to figure out if it too is or may be affected by the network society and the migration to digital. Social relations develop through communication. It’s through the way they communicate with each other that individuals interact on a social context. So, any deep change in the communication technologies that are used in a society imply a corresponding change in the kind of social relationships that individuals establish with and through those technologies (Benkler, 2006:369). However this is not deterministic. The kind of communication technologies we use in our social interactions impose certain latitude of technical possibilities, but, within that latitude, the way they end up being used depends on the individual’s choice, on their social organization, on the economic options available and on the historical context. Be as it may, massive changes in the information and communication technologies inevitably generate corresponding changes on the way they are used in the social context. To analyze the social dissemination of information in the perspective of its social value, we have to resort to the concept of “social capital”. Bordieu defined social capital as “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition — or in other words, to membership in a group — which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectively-owned capital, a “credential” which entitles them to credit, in the various senses of the word” (Bordieu, 2008:21). To Bordieu the understanding of society is not possible without resorting to other notions of capital besides economic capital, like social capital or cultural capital. Social capital corresponds to those resources that individuals obtain as a result of their social interactions with others. Economic capital can be converted into social capital, for example if someone dispends time and effort in the construction of a network of relationships. But it can also be converted the other way round, for example when someone draws economic benefits that would not have been otherwise possible with the investment made in his or her network (Bordieu, 2008:25). Coleman, for its part, considers that social capital expresses in three different ways: in obligations and expectations, that are the basis for the establishment of trust relationships between individuals; in the acquisition of information through the social relations established in a social network, which is the base for social action; and through the norms and social sanctions (Coleman, 1988:102-104). To Coleman, social networks tend to generate more social capital when they are subject to enclosure, because that reinforces the intensity of the bonds between its members. Elinor Ostrom , for its part, also refers to this cohesion function of social capital and stresses that, unlike physical capital, social capital is not worn out with use, but rather with non-use, because the value of the network tends to deteriorate if it is not used regularly (in a way, the network only exists as such when it is used). So, social capital tends to increase in direct proportion to the use of the network, provided that use results from the establishment of trust relationships between the individuals (Ostrom, 2000:180). This means that both authors – Coleman and Ostrom – underline the density of the relationships as an important element for generating social capital, which in principle runs contrary to the lower density of the online social networks introduced by digital technologies. The answer to that is provided by Granovetter, whose studies concluded for the coexistence of a very dense network of near and frequent relationships and other not so dense network of more distant and less frequent relationships. According to Granovetter each of these types of network provides a different kind of social capital: the strong bonds network produces an aggregating kind of social capital that is important for group cohesion, whereas the weak bonds network provides a connecting kind of social capital that is decisive to broaden the reach of the ability to generate social capital (Granovetter, 1983:203). Besides, weak links have an additional function – with high potential to generate value – which is that of establishing bridges between different and highly dense network clusters. Both things - the less dense but more extensive network and the connecting between different networks or network clusters – are concordant with what may be observed in the way modern online social networks operate, as we will see further ahead. Robert Putnam, for its part, considers that, given the way it forms, social capital can either be considered a private or a public good, because its emergence in the social context can benefit both the individual or the network as a whole (Putnam, 1995). Contrary to Putnam, Barry Wellman does not consider that the social relations are deteriorating and puts forward the concept of “networked individualism” to explain that online social networks cannot be seen as a substitute to interpersonal social relations, but its complement. Online social relations act as a supplement to interpersonal social relations, without increasing or decreasing them (Wellman, Haase, Witte & Hampton, 2001:436). For Benkler, the growing importance of non-market forms for the production of information, knowledge and culture, mostly exercised through online social networks, gives rise to three questions that have to be answered. The first is why individuals take part in that production. The second is why they do it here and now, in the context of the changes we’ve been describing. And the third is whether that is efficient, from a social and economic point of view (Benkler, 2006:91). The answer to the third question, we already know, Benkler considers affirmative and attributes it to a change in the social mode of production of information. What is left to know is why people engage in online social networks and why they do it now. The second reason is of course because now they can. The technology that allows it is new and so, the emergence of online social networks gave people communication tools and social interconnection possibilities that simply did not exist before. The first reason – the more important one – is that people engage in online social networking because they obtain some kind of benefit from it. Van Dijk, like many other sociologists, underlined the fact that people’s participation in online social networks results in an exploitation of their work and their data. When they participate in online social networks, people act as content and data suppliers, not receiving any kind of material compensation for it and not controlling the conditions upon which their work and their data is made available for economic exploitation by for-profit companies (Van Dijk, 2009:47). But other studies have also proved that users of online social networks get several benefits from that participation. Studying the contribution of a group of users to a network of photo sharing, for instance, Petersen concluded that most people would participate expecting to establish a social connection with others as a result of that participation. The conclusion is that we are before a set of technologies that have a relational nature and that relational aspect pervades its use. Therefore, Petersen concludes, we cannot analyze the participation of individuals in online social networks solely through the Marxist perspective of the exploitation of the work-value of participation and the market value of its data. We have to look at that participation within the frame of the changes that open up new communication possibilities to support new kinds of social connections (Petersen, 2008, 2). Manuel Castels, for its part, considers that the modern communication platforms on which individuals interact are a construction of the individuals themselves (Castells, 2014:139). The technical structure and the economic exploitation are operated by companies in search of profit, but the decisive element in its mode of operation – and its business model - are the individuals that participate. On one hand, the huge adherence that those sociability spaces register is what attracts all institutions that interact with people – namely companies – to be present rather than absent. And, on the other hand, although the greater number of users in a network makes it more difficult to leave it, the easiness with which it is possible to set up alternative networks reinforces the power of the individuals relative to the very companies that provide them the tools to do so (Castells, 2014:140). This means that the power transfer the new digital information and communication technologies enact has consequences also in this aspect. Gustavo Cardoso, finally, considers that the new mediation technologies we are using to interact with one another are changing our “lifeworld” and, in that process, replacing the “reference groups” of the past with mediated “belonging groups” in which we emulate the kind of functioning and relationships we have in face-to-face groups (Cardoso, 2012:203). Differently said, we are witnessing new ways of establishing social relationships on which the mediating technologies act as a conditioner element. In short, if the amount of available social ties is in itself an element that increases the potential for social capital that can be mobilized by each individual, like Resnick suggests, (2000:10-12), then the exponential proliferation of open channels that is permitted by modern digital technologies is, in and by itself, a multiplying factor for the available social capital, both for individuals and for the community as a whole. This is to say that the dissemination of information that these technologies permit is an element that increases the social value of the information itself. We can say, with Lin (1999), that the proliferation of networked connections that new technologies allow is a decisive element to reinforce the social capital of the individuals, the groups and their networks. 3. HYPOTESES AND METHODOLOGY From the literature review made above results very clear that the emergence of the network society and the migration to digital technologies has implications in several aspects of our social life. One of those aspects – one of the most striking – is the way the social distribution of information is now done. From a mass society mostly aggregated around the social function of the mass media, we’ve shifted to a networked society in which new actors play new roles in the social production, distribution and consumption of information. On the other hand, something that is well known by anyone who works in or studies the traditional media’s transition to digital, the main problem results from the deterioration of the business models that are associated with that social function. For traditional media, it has been difficult to find a way to connect their economic viability to the new conditions under which information is produced and distributed in the network society. This happens, basically, because they cannot seem to capture the same kind of revenue from their digital audiences that they once captured from their analog audiences. From this naturally results the starting question presiding this investigation: How does the network society and the migration to digital affect the economic and social value of information? And, if it does, can the way it does explain (or help to explain) the difficulties experienced by the traditional media in finding sustainable business models in the digital age? For us, from an exploratory analysis of this issue, results one main hypothesis leading to to three operational hypotheses: MAIN HYPOTHESIS Network society decreases the economic value of information and increases its social value Operational Hypothesis A1 The economic value of the information distributed by the mass media decreased in transition to the network society The economic value of the information distributed by the new media of the network society in less than the economic value of the information that was distributed by the mass media Within the context of its social use, the abundance of information increases the social value of information itself Operational hypothesis A2 Operational Hypothesis B1 The hypothesis we lay is that de real explanation to why traditional media seem impotent to adequate their economic sustainability to the new digital environment is not the result of their own failure but rather the outcome of a change in the way their social function is performed, which necessarily involves a general decrease in the economic value of information. The first logical conclusion – if such a hypothesis is proven – is that the business models of traditional mass media are exhausted and cannot be recovered within the frame of the network society. The second logical conclusion is that, therefore, their social function is at risk. And, third, that we need to look at the new conditions within which that social function is performed to start searching for a new institutional arrangement for it. To study these hypotheses we will use secondary data from various sources, with the purpose of relating that data with the concepts we sketched in the literature review, to produce insight from the establishment of connections between that data and those concepts. For operational hypotheses A1 and A2, concerning the economic value of information, we will analyze in bulk the audiences and revenues of traditional media in the United States and compare them with the audiences and revenues of the new media in the network society. Then we will also look into some equivalent data for Portugal and, thirdly, we will detail de case-study of Autohoje, a specialized information brand, comparing the evolution of its audiences and revenues in the analog and the digital sides. Here we will use analytic tools and concepts such as the CPM (Cost per mille) and ARPU (Average Revenue per User). To study the operational hypothesis B1, regarding the social value of information, we will use several empirical studies already available that were conducted on samples of users of online social networks, namely Facebook, and we will try to confirm the hypothesis with the conclusions drawn from those studies. In the conclusion of this paper we will correlate the theoretical and empirical approaches so as to validate the hypotheses and formulate paths for future investigation. 4. THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF INFORMATION – DATA ANALYSIS In this part of the paper, the purpose is to gather secondary data that will allow us to respond to the stated hypotheses. We believe this data is capable of demonstrating: a) that the media audiences have shifted from analog to digital channels; b) that the corresponding revenue, either direct or indirect (via advertising), tends to follow that shift; c) that the losses registered in the analog channels are not balanced by gains in the digital channels, which originates the fundamental problem of the business model; and d) that the revenue transfer towards digital channels has mostly been captured by a kind of companies that operate like content intermediaries and distributors rather that its producers and that we here call the “new media” of the network society. None of these aspects is new and all of them are thoroughly studied and analyzed. The hypotheses we put in this paper go a little further and aim to provide a broad explanation for why that happens. At first sight, it may seem that the “new media” of the network society capture a greater share of value in the digital channels because they are better adapted to its operating mode. That is certainly true, but only in part. The hypotheses we put is that the changes in the digital environment leads to a general decrease in the value of information itself and only the “new media”, because of their global scale, can find economic balance in that new environment. It should be reminded that, after all, what we call “value” is a subjective concept and can only be measured via some external indicator. That external indicator is the value (or price) at which the information is exchanged in the marketplace, that is, its market value. That’s why we’ll use indicators like the CPM (Cost per Mille) and the ARPU (Average Revenue per User) to deal that issue on a quantitative approach. First we analyze the global situation the media find themselves at, using various data and information sources, in order to provide a broad view of the practical consequences of the changes going on. Then, we will study the specific case of Autohoje to analyze in greater detail the practical operation of the indicators we propose to study. 4.1. Overall situation of the media The overall situation of the media, in most developed countries around the world, is similar to the one that can be diagnosed for the United States of America. Therefore, we will use that national USA data as an example, which will allow us to take advantage of the ample availability of data, both synchronic and diachronic. But we believe the overall situation of the media is not very different in most developed countries around the world. In terms of global media audiences’ evolution, the trend is that of a transfer of viewers and readers from the traditional media in analog formats for the new media in Chart 4.1 – Sources of News (USA, 1991-2012) digital format, either through websites, applications or other digital channels. Chart 4.1 illustrates this trend, representing the yearly change of people that assert using television, radio, newspapers or online channels as their source of news. Newspapers and radio show a clear downward trend is this very long series, contrary to digital channels, that exhibit an upward inclination. The aggregate data confirms this descendant (Source: Pew Research Center/Newspaper Association of America) trend in newspaper readership every year since 2003 (Pew, 2014). The most recent data confirms this trend, as we can see in chart 4.2. The digital segment of the media is the only that grows and newspapers find themselves clearly in loss of popularity. The partial conclusion we can draw – which is not new - is that there is an audience shift from the most traditional channels – press, radio, television – to the new digital channels. The analysis of the ad revenue Chart 4.2 – Audience anual change of the media, for its part, confirms the (USA, 2011-2012) common notion that money tends to follow audiences. As we can see in chart 4.3, the ad revenue of the northamerican newspapers – its most important revenue source, in about 70 percent – has grown since 1950 until 2001 and started falling drastically since then. In that same chart we can already see, also, that the emergence of new revenue source – the digital – although expanding in recent years, is (Source: Pew Research Center) not enough to offset the revenue losses felt in the print business. Chart 4.4 Chart 4.3 – Ad revenue in Newspapers, shows this is even greater detail: to 1950-2013, USA counterweight the huge drop in revenue coming from traditional media products, there is an increase in the digital revenues. However, that occurs in a proportion that is insufficient to compensate the losses of the first item. This analysis is repeatedly made in every report, sometimes by the industry representatives themselves (Wan-ifra.org, 2014). If we look at the evolution of the total amount of money (Source: Newspaper Association of America) invested in internet advertising, in chart 4.5, we see that this item has been increasing in the period and in Chart 4.4 – Ad revenue in the USA, 2003-2013 2013 it supplanted for the first time the amount that was invested in non-cable television. But, what we have to ask then is this: where has that money gone to? The answer is partially in chart 4.6. It went to other suppliers of digital audiences, namely Google, that since 2012 gathers more ad revenue than all the American magazines and newspapers combined. Yet, if we look at the average (Source: NAA) price of the digital ads that are served in the Google network per comparison with that of the ads that are displayed in the channels of the traditional media, we’ll see that it is significantly lower. The indicator which measures that “value” is the cost per one thousand impressions, CPM (Cost per Mille, from the Latin original), and it represents the price paid by an advertiser to reach a thousand impressions with its advertising. There are other indicators to put a price in the access to media audiences, like the CPC (Cost per Click) and the CPL (Cost per Lead) or the CPA (Cost per Acquisition), but CPM is the most used and the most appropriate to put all channels in a comparative level. Considering that CPM always refers to a thousand impressions, its “value” represents the “value” of the audience for the advertiser. Of course, the “cost” of those impressions for the advertiser is – as opposed – the revenue gather by the media outlet that operates those audiences. From this “side” the same indicator is often referred to as RPM (Revenue per Mille) As we can see in table 4.1 (with data from April 2010, the best we got), the average CPM in news websites (“General News”, “Sports” e “Newspapers”) – between 6,14 and 6,99 dollars (4,54 to 5,16 euros) – was considerably higher than the CPM for other kind of sites and the market average (2,52 dollars (1,86 euros) for 1000 impressions. In this table, Google advertising is either not included (search is not considered) or dispersed into other services (e-mail, social networking, for example). But, still, it is interesting to note that e-mail sites (including Gmail) and social networking sites (including Facebook) are those that register the lower CPM of the lot. This, as we’ll see, will repeat when we analyze the case of Autohoje. By then, we’ll be able to directly compare the CPM for Chart 4.5 – Share of ad spending (USA, 2005-2013) (fonte: IAB/PwC) Chart 4.6 – Share of ad spending (2004-2013 – 1st semester) (fonte: Business Insider) Table 4.1 – Average CPM, per type (April 2010) (source: ComScore, in dollars) analog channels with that of digital channels. Another way to analyze the same issue is to look at the direct revenue that media outlets extract from their digital operations and compare it with the analog side of their business. Of course, one can say that the current difficulty in establishing efficient monetization strategies in the digital platforms is a conditioning element. But that difficulty – precisely – is part of the changes currently affecting the media landscape. For analysis purposes, we assume that the media outlets will charge for content as much as they can, considering the motivation (or lack thereof) of their audiences to pay for content. The fact that all the indicators point to a growing difficulty in charging for that content is in itself the result of the changes described earlier and not its cause. To compare these realities – the analog and the digital – we have to find an indicator that can be common to both. That indicator is the Average Revenue per User (ARPU). Basically, what this indicator does is cross the partial or total revenue of a given entity with the number of users that use the information products or services originating from that entity on a certain time lapse, most of the times per month (Doctor, 2011). Therefore, ARPU corresponds to the revenue generated by each user individually, in average, and, again, it is a market indicator of the value of the information produced and distributed by a certain media, from the point of view of its users. The paradox that stands out when we look at the audiences of the traditional media outlets is that most of the times these have much larger audiences in their digital channels than in their analog channels. Yet, these remain the main source of their revenues. Fredéric Filloux, referring to data from 2013, points out that The New York Times, for instance, gathers most of its audience via its website (29 million unique users per month against 5 million readers of the paper edition) and its broad social media presence, but still gets the lion share of its income – about 78% - from the print business (Filloux, 2014). In a slightly more dated calculation, Henry Blogdet, from Business Insider, accounted that a paper issue reader of The New York Times – counting subscribers and single issue buyers – represented average annual revenue per user (ARPU) of 879 dollars. During the same period, a visitor to the website – counting its ad revenues (there was no paywall at the time) – was “worth” 3,85 dollars (Blodget, 2011). That is 228 times less! This is a phenomenon that would be observable in many other information brands and that we will see again when we look at the case of Autohoje, further ahead. Although more data is required to strengthen this conclusion, what this phenomenon suggests it that there is a huge gap between the income that can be generated from each information user in an analog environment and in a digital ecosystem. If we consider a continuation of the audience migration from the analog channels to the digital ones (which is highly probable) and considering the characteristics of the new information and communication paradigm (outlined above), the logical conclusion is that the dominant business model that mass media operated in the analog environment will not be sustainable in the digital paradigm. This means, of course, the confirmation of the hypothesis A1 formulated above. Table 4.2 – ARPU calculation for the “new media” On the other hand, the average (2013) revenue per user displayed by the companies we call “new media” is even lower. Forbes, for instance, published the table 4.2, regarding the average revenue per user (ARPU) for four technology companies that fit our (source: Forbes) description of “new media”: Google, Facebook, Linkedin and Yahoo (Louis, 2013). As we can see, only Google has an ARPU above two dollars. Facebook, for example, generated at the time 1,63 dollars per year, for each of its 1,110 million users. If it did not have 1,110 million users worldwide, Facebook could not operate on the basis that it does. If it had, for instance, the same 48 million unique users The New York Times has per month, it would generate an income of mere 78 million dollars (instead of the 1813 million it generated in 2013) and it probably could not maintain the professional and technical structure it exhibits nor could it be evaluated the way it is. Reaching for the second hypothesis we proposed, we would say that the overall decreasing economic value of information also affects the “new media” and that their operation is sustainable only at the scale at which they operate. The situation in Portugal is not very different, but the available data is scarcer and not so adequate for comparisons (Económico, 2014). In the same way that is noticed in other countries, most Portuguese media have far larger audiences online than offline. The sports daily newspaper Record, for instance, has an average audience of 46 thousand readers for its print edition, but has a monthly average of 23 million visitors to its website. The daily newspaper Público has a print readership of 28 thousand people, in average, but has monthly web traffic of 12 million visits (Netscope.marktest.pt, 2014; Apct.pt, 2014). Although the metrics in this case are not the same (readers and visits, respectively) this comparison suggests that, same as in other places, the Portuguese audiences of information products and services are migrating from analog to digital formats. The Obercom report on the internet in Portugal, for example, indicates that 15,3% of the people inquired would find it difficult to live without internet, but only 1,5% find it likewise difficult to quit reading newspapers and magazines (Obercom, 2014a). In another study produced by the same institution, performed on executives and professionals in the communication sector in Portugal, 75,5% of those inquired considered that ad spending in internet would continue to grow in the future, while 72,7% considered that corresponding ad spending in the press would decrease (Obercom, 2014b). What this means is that national Portuguese media are roughly confronted with the same challenges that other media in other countries. 4.2. Case-study “Autohoje” The case-study of the information brand Autohoje, available in several formats and distributed through various channels will permit us to observe, in practice, how the reduction in the economic value of information actually operates. Autohoje started in 1989, edited by Motorpress Lisbon, a publishing house affiliated with a major European media conglomerate, as a weekly newspaper specialized in information about cars and the automotive industry, with some minor content of motorsports. In 2005, Autohoje began publishing in magazine format, but kept its weekly periodicity and gained a brand new website: www.autohoje.com, with free access and information other that the one published in the magazine (mostly short product news, about launches and new cars). The digital news produced by Autohoje is available also in various mobile formats, free as in the website. About a year and a half ago, Autohoje also began to sell its weekly issue in specific app for iPad and iPhone. Presently, the information brand Autohoje also has a significant presence in social networks – Facebook and Twitter – explores a forum associated with its website and broadcasts a small webTV from www.autohoje.com. Overall, the digital presence of Autohoje is not very different from most media operators in Portugal and elsewhere and its audience numbers are arguably the best in the automotive news sector in Portugal. As we can see in chart 4.7, sales have been decreasing since 2010, in line with the overall behavior of print sales in Portugal during the same period. On the other hand, as we can see in chart 4.8, the total audience of the website www.autohoje.com has been stable or even slightly increasing in the same period. On the revenue front, as we can see in chart 4.9, Autohoje earnings coming from the print division have been decreasing since 2010, both for sales and advertising. The revenue generated by the website www.autohoje.com, for its part, almost all coming from advertising (content monetization is insignificant) kept stable but never managed to offset the revenue drop – of sales and advertising – that was registered in the print Chart 4.7 – Magazine sales 2010-2013 (source: APCT) Chart 4.8 – Visits to website Autohoje 2010-2013 (source: Netscope/Marktest) edition. The chart 4.9 is made with all Chart 4.9 – Autohoje revenue 2010-2013 the revenue sources on a 100 index in order to allow comparison between the relative weights in the total revenue. If we compare the sales numbers of the weekly print edition with the traffic numbers of the website www.autohoje.com (charts 4.7 and 4.8, respectively) we will notice that they are much bigger online than in the print issue. Whilst the magazine registered in 2013 a weekly average circulation of (source: Motorpress Lisboa) around 10.330 copies (from official sales data from APCT), the website www.autohoje.com registered, in the same period, an average 786.000 unique visitors per month (also official data from Netscope/Marktest). Yet, as we can see in chart 4.9, the digital revenue stream never amounted to more than a very small part of the total revenue. One can say that digital revenue didn’t grow as strongly as expected. But even if it grew more than it did, it would barely compensate for the losses in the traditional revenue streams. Plus, as confirmed by its executives, the strong (price) competition of companies like Google, YouTube or Facebook is precisely the reason why Autohoje’s ad revenue doesn’t grow faster. This means the correlation between the revenue and audience data for Autohoje confirms the conclusion that, also in this case, it has not been possible to generate the same amount of revenue for a digital user that the one that is gathered form a user of the print edition. Even considering Autohoje operates several digital products and services and only one analog product. Like we said earlier, one way to analyze and explain this difference departs from the prices that are charged for the ads inserted in the analog or digital information products. In average, a single page ad in the weekly magazine Autohoje costs something like 1500€ (and this is a price that, in average, has been dropping lately). Which means that an advertiser who wishes to reach the audience of a print issue of Autohoje – circa 10.330 readers – will be paying about 0,15€ per potential contact (considering an average total circulation of 10.330 copies). In the website www.autohoje.com, on the contrary, a banner in the homepage represents an average CPM (cost per a thousand impressions) of 10€. Which means, therefore, that an advertiser that choses to reach its audience via the website will be paying 0,01€ for each contact, 15 times less than he would pay on the print edition. Of course, in both cases all these prices can vary significantly with a wide array of factors. In the print issue that price is dependent on the number of readers each copy has, the space occupied by the ad and the place where it is inserted (in the beginning or final pages, full page or half page). In the website also the format and place occupied by the ad (homepage or “run-ofsite”, type and banner size, etc…) greatly influences its price. But, again, in both cases these are market values, which means that they are not administratively set or commanded. They are set by the open competition between different market operators and, as expected, they tend to be set at average market values. What remains obvious is the difference – that in this case we can estimate as 15 to 1 – between what are worth (their “value”) the ads in the print edition and the ads in the digital format. The other way to analyze this isTable 4.3 – Average Revenue Per User (2013) sue is through the lens of the revenue obtained from each user of the print edition per comparison with the digital channels. Table 4.3 makes that exercise. In 2013, Autohoje, the weekly magazine, had an average readership (source: Motorpress Lisboa) of 10.300 readers per issue and gathered a total income of 1,215 million euros, considering advertising revenues and sales and subscriptions revenues, which amounts to an average revenue per user (ARPU) of 118 euros/year. The digital channels operated by Autohoje, however, garnered audiences of 780.000 unique users per month, in average, and generated total revenue of 175.000 euros, which amounts to an average revenue per user of just 22 cents/year. Even if we were to consider four weekly editions per month to put the print issue audience (41.320 accumulated readers per month) aligned with the monthly audience of the website, its revenue per user would be 29,41 euros, still much more than the 0,22 cents per user of the Autohoje website. However, this would not be entirely correct because, when counting four weekly issues per month, we’d be considering unique users per month in the website and duplicated readers in the print edition. Either way, what this means is that – just like in any other traditional media company – the amount of revenue that Autohoje manages to extract from its print edition is far greater that the corresponding amount of money that in can generate from its digital ventures, mostly focused on its website. Ultimately this means that the professional structure that supports the information brand Autohoje will not be sustainable if the ongoing audience transfer for digital channels proceeds and if no alternative business model is devised. To put it another way, this means that the case-study of Autohoje confirms – in our view – the hypothesis A1 formulated above. 5. THE SOCIAL VALUE OF INFORMATION – EMPIRICAL STUDIES As exposed in the previous sections, the innovative characteristics of the digital information and communication technologies and the way society organizes in a network of computers connected to one another is something that has huge consequences on the way we value information in society and therefore also in the way we produce and distribute it. That is the economic effect of the changes in progress. What remains to determine is which are the social effects of those changes. The hypothesis we put, it should be reminded, is that the proliferation of social connections made possible by the profusion of digital communication channels and the corresponding abundance of information throughout society are two elements that reinforce the social capital of the individuals, of the groups and of the community as a whole. And that, as a consequence, the network society increases the social value of information by way of its abundance. In this section, we will analyze the results of three empirical studies, conducted on populations with different characteristics, made precisely with the purpose of inquiring if and how individual’s use of online social networks increases or supplements their social capital. We chose to analyze studies on online social networks firstly because they are abundant and secondly because online social networks are a by-product of the new digital information and communication technologies. The first of these studies was conducted by Elison, Steinfeld and Lampe in 2007, with a sample of 287 students from Michigan University who were Facebook users (Ellison, Steinfield & Lampe, 2007). The researchers used several instruments to gather data about the intensity with which people used Facebook, what kind of satisfaction they drew from that use and what types of social capital they used (or rendered usable) with that participation. In this regard, the authors took into account three types of social capital, in line with previous theory produced on this issue: bridging social capital, a kind of social capital that results from the establishment of bridges between different network clusters; bonding social capital, a kind of social capital that results from the strengthening of the bonds between the members of a network; and maintained social capital, a kind of social capital that results from the preservation of social bonds that otherwise might be rendered inactive by people’s lasting geographic displacements. As a result, the researchers concluded that the use of Facebook permits individuals to draw advantages from different kinds of bonds as a way to increase the amount of resources that are available to them, but that online networks are particularly effective to establish bridges between different networks or network clusters, that is, the first of the aforementioned types of social capital. The researchers also concluded that the use of the internet was not in itself an element sufficient to permit the accumulation of social capital, but the participation in online social networks was. This means that, according to the data that was gathered in this study, there’s an accumulation of social capital that is the result of the establishment and maintenance of social connections, in result of the use of digital information and communication technologies, that otherwise would be lost or would not be activated. This reaches to the main conclusion that it is precisely the ability to keep open those channels and those connections that fosters the increasing of the social capital at the disposal of the connected individuals. A final word to echo yet another interesting conclusion from this study. Although that is not the main finding we’re interested here, this study also concludes that the use of Facebook is seen by those who use it as intrinsically gratifying. And that was most evident in individuals with lower self-esteem and a lower degree of satisfaction with their own lives. This means the study at hand also answers, at least partially, to the question as to why individuals engage in online social networks and points to intrinsic motives as well as instrumental ones. Another empirical study, conducted in 2012 by Bakshy, Rosenn, Marlow and Adamic, also has relevant and interesting conclusions for the purpose of this paper (Bakshy, Rosenn, Marlow & Adamic, 2012). Departing from a quantitative analysis of the sharing information behavior of an extensive population of 256 million individuals that participate in the network, the researchers concluded that the predisposition to share information was greater if and when that information was validated by friends or connections of the observed individuals. The study therefore concludes that what’s in operation here is a kind of social sanction towards the value and validity of a certain piece of information. That social sanction, in consequence, must be seen as increasing the value of some pieces of information in relation to others. In some cases that is the result of connections that are derived from offline social interactions of the individuals, but in other cases that “capital of trust” is constructed exclusively online and based on online social interactions. This, for its part, permits us to conclude that this kind of mediated relationships end up producing a kind of social capital that would not exist otherwise. And that, consequently, is an increment for the social capital of the individuals and the community as sole result of the use of these digital technologies. But, even though concluding that the strongest links are the most influential on the process of validation of the information, this study also settles that it’s the numerous weak links pointed out by Granovetter that are responsible for the massive dissemination of information that Facebook can provide. This is particularly keen for those information pieces that are considered to be unknown by the network, suggesting a voluntarism attitude that compels individuals to seize the opportunities posed by the network and its tools to share precisely those pieces of information that seem of some utility for the network itself. The information that is considered “not new” or “less important” is comparatively less the object of sharing. This has important implications, because it suggests the conclusion that individuals use online social networks to disseminate information that for them seems to be useful to allow other individuals in the network to mobilize resources they might need, that is, a kind of information that is directly seen by those who share like a form of social capital that they wish to make available for others. To put it another way, the individuals studied in this extensive research denoted not only an acute awareness of the relevance some pieces of information may have for them, but also of the importance that it may also have for other members of their network or for the network as a whole. This means that there are two levels upon which individuals see the sharing of information as enrichment (that is, increase of social value): the enrichment of the individual himself; and the enrichment of the group or groups that he relates to. These are of course precisely the two levels that were mentioned above in the advanced hypothesis that the increase in the number of communication channels and the correspondent abundance of information was an element to increase the social value of information via the respective effect of producing social capital. A final word to yet another quantitative study conducted by Ugander, Karrer, Backstrom and Marlow in 2011 (Ugander, Karrer, Backstrom & Marlow, 2011). Although this study was mostly directed at analyzing the structure and functioning of the Facebook network, for our purpose there are two most relevant conclusions. The first is the extremely high degree of connectivity displayed by the network, The researchers estimate that 99,91% of all the individuals connected to the network are in some way or another connected to each other. If, for the purposes of this paper, we are to understand each connection as a potential generator of social capital – and therefore a potential increase of social value - then this means that each individual has at his or her disposal a potential to generate social value than was unknown in history. The second conclusion that interests us is that the mediated network that each individual constructs on top of Facebook tends to be highly correlated with his or her offline network in terms of friendships and nationalities. What suggests, of course, that the adoption of mediated social networks does not occur in opposition to offline social networks but rather emerging from them. The conclusion that interests us is that what digital technologies associated with online social networks do is precisely increase the reach of the social connections of the individuals, thus equally increasing the enrichment and value of their social experience. Synthetizing, these three empirical studies seem to point all in one direction: the online social network known as Facebook serves the purpose of disseminating information in order to provide individuals with the social connections necessary to mobilize the several forms of social capital available to them. And it does so with a reach and an intensity that was unknown until the emergence of online social networks operated with digital technologies. Differently said, the abundance of social connections that individuals can maintain today due to digital information and communication technologies has the effect of enlarging and diversifying the social bonds they can keep active. What reflects in benefits for the individual and for the collective, to which he or she belongs, proving that more information circulating in the network is in itself an element of enrichment for the network and for the individuals that take part in it. That is, the massive adoption of online social networks – an outpour of modern information and communication technologies – is an element that increases the social value of information. If the social role of information is to connect the individuals and process the social mobilization of resources, then the massive expansion of connective possibilities allowed by digital information and communication technologies cannot be discarded as an increase in the social value of information, which of course is the hypothesis B1 we advanced earlier. 6. CONCLUSION The use value of information is subjective and therefore impossible to quantify. Its exchange value, for its part, depends on multiple factors and is extremely complex to quantify. Yet, that is exactly what we’ve tried to do in this paper, using indicators like the price of advertising or the average revenue per user. These quantitative indicators provide us some insights into the economic value of information, but not into its social value. The social value of information must be analyzed as a result of its social function. The starting point for this paper, we should recall, was the changes introduced by the network society and the migration to digital in the way we produce and distribute information in society. The first hypothesis was that these new digital technologies and the network architecture upon which they operate necessarily reduce the economic value of information, thus disrupting the business models of the traditional mass media. And the second hypothesis was that those same technologies increase the social value of information, by way of its abundance alongside the proliferation of new communication channels. The literature review made at the beginning and the empirical data analyzed in the second part seem to confirm these main hypotheses. First, the abundance of information that is the result of these technologies, side by side with the consumers of information converting into its producers and distributors, is something that dilutes the economic value of information traditional business models are able to harvest. And that means the professional structures put in place by the mass media to produce and distribute information may not be sustainable in the new information and communication paradigm in which we’re living. If this conclusion is correct, that means the obvious difficulty experienced by the mass media to find alternative business models is not the result of their own failure or omission, but rather the effect of the new information and communication paradigm and the decrease in the economic value of information that it implies. In and by itself, this fact already carries massive consequences, if we take into consideration that mass media are the institutional form by which the western market societies ensure the distribution of relevant information throughout society, with very strict rules and regulations. In the new information and communication paradigm that supports this society of networked computers, the social distribution of relevant information seems to be dominated by new actors on the process. No longer the traditional mass media, as producers and distributers of content, but the “new media”, which are platforms for the search, curation, manipulation and distribution of information that act as tools for the communicative action of individuals but are not themselves the producers of the content they search, curate, manipulate or distribute. This means that these new actors have found their “place” in the information distribution process in a way that is coherent with the architecture of the network society mediated by digital technologies. But, if our hypothesis is correct – as we believe to have demonstrated – these “new media” of the network society are also affected by the referred decrease of the economic value of information and are only viable at the global scale at which they operate. They are, therefore - and simultaneously - a product and an agent of globalization. What about the social value of information? The analysis we’ve made suggests that information still has the same basic social function: it’s the way by which social connections are activated. The difference to our near past is that the network architecture that now characterizes the communication channels and the abundance of information that circulates in the network both permit the increase of the number of social connections each individual can maintain as well as the frequency and easiness with which he or she can activate them. And that constitutes an increase in the social value that information may have both for the individual and for the groups and communities he or she makes part of and for society as a whole. A couple of investigation paths that would be interesting to pursue in the future stand out from this investigation. First, the question of what new business models the media may adopt to retain their institutional position in society and the role that is reserved for journalism in that context. The traditional social function of the media, related to the production and distribution of information that is true, relevant and reliable, was framed by a set of conditions and constraints that were put in place to assure precisely those attributes. Assuming that truthfulness, relevance and reliability are still necessary attributes of information, one possible line of investigation questions the new conditions and constraints that should be created in the new digital information and communication paradigm for thos attributes to be maintained. To put it bluntly: if we don’t need journalism, what do we need in its place? Or, if we still need journalism, of what kind? On the other hand, the issues of privacy and power that are raised by the participation of individuals in the new platforms for the production and distribution of information, alongside the relevant social role that those platforms perform in the new communication paradigm, inevitably leads us to question the respective collective control. In that regard, it would be interesting to investigate new forms of exercising collective control (a form of power), whether through direct public regulation or through any new system of “commons” that some authors have been proposing. Finally, with the greater role of computer intelligence in the process of social information, one has to question whether some of the safeguards for privacy, legality, relevance or reliability of digital information fluxes should not be put inside the fluxes themselves via computer algorithms, like some authors have already suggested. In sum, same as the huge changes the network society and the digital technologies brought have not yet stalled and continue to produce effects, so the challenges to someone who wants to study the impact of those changes continues to arise. With this paper on the economic and social value of information we hope to have contributed to that study. BIBLIOGRAPHY • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Anderson, C. (2006). The long tail (1st ed.). New York: Hyperion. Apct.pt (2014). APCT: Análise Simples. Retrieved 15 June 2014, from http://www.apct.pt/Analise_simples.php Bakshy, E., Rosenn, I., Marlow, C., & Adamic, L. (2012). 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