News as Commodity

Some recent thoughts or what Torill Mortensen claims, weblogs “are changing the way we think about thinking.”

An old saying, old news is no news still holds ground, despite communication scholars concerns with a definition of news and less with the question of what is not news. A directed report about a supposed event is inherently information.

When talking about information, Shannon’s mathematical theory of communication justifies the use of bits as a universal currency of information in many contexts, supported by his transmission theorems and source-channel theorems. Information that is news poses the question of time dependence and subsequent relation to the economics of news as a commodity.

Purchasing news is an experience, once viewed, its novelty wears off. And knowing too much about information before viewing reduces the desire to experience it, whereas higher information uncertainty increases chance of purchase.

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