Legacy and Native News Brands Online: Do They Show Different News Consumption Patterns?. Issue 2 (2nd April 2016) - Arrese, Ángel
ABSTRACT: The distinction between legacy media and digital media has frequently been used to analyze the journalistic and commercial contrast between traditional media (offline) and new media (online). However, little research has been carried out on the degree to which legacy brands differ from digital native brands in the digital environment. Are legacy and digital native news brands associated with similar news consumption patterns, or do those patterns differ substantially? This work intends to give an answer to this question, taking as a reference the Spanish case. The underlying assumption of this study is the idea that legacy brands carry over into the digital world some of the consumption characteristics of their old products, which could differ greatly from those associated with new digital native products. While not in the manner initially planned, the study confirms the existence of small differences in those characteristics between groups of brands, but mostly related to journalistic factors, not marketing ones. These findings have important consequences for the branding of legacy and native news brands.