Social Machinery

Only 13 percent of Internet users are willing to pay for news content online.  At least that’s one conclusion that emerges from UANA survey commissioned by the newspaper The Wall Street Journal.

 The survey, conducted by GfK International, was applied to 16,800 respondents over 15 years in 17 countries in the European Union and United States.  According to the study, 8% of all respondents would pay for content free of advertising and only 5% contained with ads.  Respondents were not asked specifically about news content but from a more general perspective to content like news, entertainment and sites like wikipedia

 According to the findings of the study 80% of respondents want open access to content, a 33% think that content must be  advertising-free and non-paid.  A 46% is willing to accept advertising if content is for free.

By country, Sweden (23%), Netherlands (20%), Britain (20%) and USA (17%) are more favorable to pay for the information on the web.

 The study was commissioned by The wall street Journal, property of Rupert Murdoch, in the middle of a polemic debate about the initiative of some media to start charging for their web content.  Murdoch said some weeks ago that he intended to ask Google to withdraw its articles from its search engine, while negotiating with Microsoft to incorporate its content to their search engine Bing using a paid model  are ongoing.

 Moreover, the study also provides findings about the influence of the networked society.  About half of respondents considered that social media have positive effects and one third think its influence is neutral to society.