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Recreational use of MP3 players, cell phones, computers and/or video game units is on the rise among today’s students. This article helps teachers integrating economics into their classrooms plug into this M2 frenzy. It identifies numerous high-quality resources with economic content that are readily available in the media at relatively low costs to Kindergarten-12 teachers and their students. Student preferences for different types of media guide the choices of content in economic education described here. By using the revealed preferences of the students, teachers can be more successful at engaging students in advancing along the economics learning curve. Hopefully, their engagement will spill over and entice students to learn more outside the classroom.

This chapter interrogates the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on print newspaper industry in Zimbabwe. COVID-19 affected the global economy due to various lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed by governments in attempt to stop the spread of the virus. This severely affected media houses, especially newspaper companies that depended on sales as their potential customers stayed home. The pandemic came against the backdrop of constant changes affecting the print media industry. Digitalisation and the resultant fragmentation of the audiences affect the way audiences consume media products. Against this milieu, this chapter investigates how these changes affected or shielded media houses from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two leading newspaper companies in Zimbabwe, Alpha Media Holdings and Zimbabwe Newspapers Group (1980) Ltd are used as case studies. The chapter deploys both the critical tradition to the study of media economics (political economy of the media) and the theory of the firm to argue that the traditional economic model of depending on casual sales for survival is outdated. The chapter documents the adverse effects of the pandemic on journalism practice highlighting how the impact was more pronounced in the privately owned newspaper companies than in government-controlled ones.

In our studies of daily newspapers and news websites in small and medium-sized cities in Brazil, we view these enterprises as firms endowed with specific strengths and weaknesses reflecting the characteristics of the localities in which they operate. In addition, we use references from urban geography and the industrial economy to investigate their structure, conduct, and performance. This chapter presents our observations about the structure of these firms and the journalistic business in non-metropolitan cities of the State of Rio de Janeiro. The results point to greater consolidation of newspapers, despite their traditional way of operating; the low performance of news websites and their restricted source of revenue; and the existence of a potential regional market little explored by these media.

The purpose of this paper is to pose questions about quality indicators, describe the fields of reference of communicators and the instruments currently being used in quality assurance of journalism, especially in Germany.

Due to their relevance to the questions being posed in media ethics, the paper deals with the meaning‐conferring functions of media offerings and with reasonable expectations toward media courses that prepare young communicators for their field of occupation.

This paper reveals that a more in‐depth involvement with constructivist epistemologies can impart to the media students a particular understanding of the dimensions of ethics, norms, law and the associated sets of rules.

This paper is focusing on the latently present, meaning‐generating aspects of the media, just not discussing them in terms of “effects” including their measurability, but in terms of reception and epistemology, underscoring the responsibility of all related communicators.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Olympic audiences utilized Twitter to follow American National Governing Bodies (NGBs) during the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.

Guided by economic demand theory, the researchers sought to explore whether factors such as the content of social media messages, athlete’s performance, event presentation, scheduling, and TV broadcasting contribute to enhancing fans’ interests in following NGBs on Twitter during the Olympic Games. In total, 33 American NGB Twitter accounts formed the data set for this study. Each of NGBs’ Twitter data was collected every night at midnight from August 7 to 23, 2016. Data collected from each NGB account included number of followers, number of accounts followed, number of tweets, and number of “likes.”

Results of this study revealed that team’s performance and the number of tweets had direct and positive relationships with increasing the number of NGB’s Twitter followers on each competition day. The number of “likes,” however, had a significant negative relationship with fans’ interests in following NGBs’ Twitter.

The results of the study are expected to help Governing Bodies in the Olympic sports have a better understanding of fans’ social media usage.

The purpose of this paper is to examine recent developments in European policy debates concerned with whether governments should intervene in the digital intermediary marketplace to protect the public’s interest.

The paper discusses the public’s interest in the evolution of the digital intermediary marketplace, considers the economics and policy literature on the case for policy intervention in the market dynamics of digital platforms and examines the extent to which policy makers in Europe are catching up with changes in the market for digital platform services.

It is argued that policy-makers need to broaden the evidence base upon which they consider whether policy intervention is needed beyond economic analysis. This is essential to ensure that the European digital intermediary marketplace develops in line with economic, social and cultural goals.

The case is made for measures to ensure continuous and integrated monitoring of developments in the digital marketplace based on economic indicators and evidence on the diversity of media content.

Suggestions are made about the need for innovations in the way policy makers develop the required evidence base for their decisions.

The paper draws attention to the need for proactive policy making based on a consideration of economic, social and cultural goals to ensure that digital intermediaries are held accountable.

The paper provides a multidisciplinary perspective on the dynamics of the digital intermediary ecology and assesses the extent to which the European digital market strategy provides an integrated initiative that is likely to be implemented.

The potential for e-commerce is limited by a trust deficit when traders do not interact in a physical, bricks-and-mortar context. The theory of information richness posits that equivocal interactions, such as ones requiring trust, can be facilitated through communication media that transmit multiple cues interactively. This study aims to examine the potential of information-rich virtual worlds to reduce this trust deficit compared with more traditional Web-based e-tailing environments.

Rather than focusing on stated intentions, the authors adopt an experimental approach to measure behaviour. Participants receive performance-related financial incentives to perform trust games in different information-rich treatments that represent three retail environments: a physical environment representing bricks-and-mortar trade, an electronic environment representing Web-based online retailing and a virtual environment representing virtual world retail.

The authors find that the two dimensions of trust significantly differ between the treatments. In particular, as hypothesised, both trustingness and trustworthiness are higher in the virtual than in the electronic environment. However, contrary to the hypotheses, physical trade is not associated with greater trust than virtual trade.

The authors extend previous research by demonstrating how the information richness of the virtual world interface can promote e-commerce by deepening trust between trading partners. This research also complements existing work that approaches product and service interfaces through the lens of servicescapes.

The findings also contribute towards the development of services marketing practice and the design of e-commerce environments.

Much of the work in this space considers purchase intentions and attitudes around trust, whereas this study looks at actual trust behaviour in the virtual space.