Deploying Blockchain Technology for monetizing Political journalism

Internet and digitization lower transaction and marginal costs and thereby impose three major economic challenges on publishers struggling to monetize online news: (1) increasing supply of political journalism, (2) decreasing willingness-to-pay for online news, and (3) growing reporting bias and more fake news in political journalism. Only recently, the rise of blockchain technology allows for applications around cryptocurrency, smart property, and smart contracts to address some of the issues around online journalism. At the forefront of these efforts is Civil, a new, blockchain-technology-based journalism platform. This exploratory study develops four propositions on how blockchain technology may help publishers monetize political journalism in the online world and juxtaposes them to case anecdotes from the Civil platform. We conclude with a presentation of the further stages of this research project in particular, and opportunities for future research around the impact of blockchain technology on political journalism in general.

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