Advanced seminar in Economics - Ekaterina Zhuravskaya (PSE)

User-generated internet content changes traditional-media news when reporting is dangerous. Online posts by first-hand witnesses change the extent, tonality, and content of traditional-media news on conflict. Using variation from local internet outages, we show that there are more stories about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on US TV, when ordinary users have access to the internet in the conflict zone. Furthermore, these stories are more emotional and focus on civilians’ suffering rather than the US foreign policy or elections. The results suggest that Web 2.0 shifts the content of traditional news from information by war gatekeepers to information from ordinary people.