Posts

Technologie positive, stress

Can technology combat chronic stress?

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Stressors in individuals can occur on a regular basis, especially in uncertain contexts such as the current health situation. To prevent a state of stress from becoming chronic and causing mental health problems, approaches involving positive technologies could help people to improve their resilience. Anuragini Shirish, a researcher at Institut Mines-Télécom Business School, describes her work on this subject.

Why is it important to reduce stress in people in general?

Anuragini Shirish: According to the latest estimates in 2017, 792 million people worldwide are diagnosed with mental health problems, 284 million and 264 million of whom reportedly suffer from anxiety and depression respectively. The physiological state of chronic stress is a major risk factor for the development of these diseases. Avoiding – or at least limiting – this state of chronic stress in individuals could therefore significantly reduce the risk of developing these diseases and improve their living conditions in general.

How do people develop a state of chronic stress?

AS: We have made great strides in our understanding of the mechanisms that induce stress. Stress was formerly thought to be caused by repeated exposure to stressors, but now – especially in light of evolutionary neurobiology theories – stress is generally considered to be a default response to dangerous situations, which is inhibited by the prefrontal cortex when people perceive a sense of security. The recent “Generalized Uncertainty Theory of Stress” states that stress originates from a feeling of permanent insecurity in individuals.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic influenced individual and collective situations of chronic stress?

AS: The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a general feeling of insecurity in many aspects, including one’s own health and that of one’s loved ones, financial stability and job security. Many people have been affected by situations of chronic stress, which has led to a significant increase in mental illnesses. Uncertainty and stress drive people to seek out responses. However, the information they find is sometimes inadequate and may even be dangerous at individual and collective levels. It is therefore important to consider how to guide these responses, especially in the context of the pandemic.

Are you suggesting the use of technology to reduce stress in a holistic way?

AS: “Positive” technology sets out to improve individual and collective living conditions. In this case, such technology can be designed to improve people’s mental states. There are several types of positive technology, many of which now consist of mobile applications, which means that they can be made available to a large portion of the population.

In concrete terms, what technological tools could help to reduce stress?

AS: This is precisely the purpose of the analysis we are seeking to provide. We have defined three types of stress-response behaviors. Certain behaviors may be favored, depending on the individuals concerned and the context.

“Hedonic” behavior seeks to reduce stress through an immediate distraction. The aim is to enjoy a brief moment of pleasure. Positive hedonic technologies provide a very rapid response to stress. Examples include video games and television series. However, their stress-reducing effects are generally short-lived. Such solutions are of fleeting benefit and generally teach people very little about how to limit their future stress.

“Social” behavior reduces stress through social interaction. Its effects last longer than hedonic behavior because people can share their emotions, help and advise each other with regard to common goals. However, the benefits remain temporary. During lockdowns, meetings of friends or family by videoconference were examples of how social positive technology facilitated responses to individual and group stress.

“Eudaimonic” behavior is related to the search for meaning and purpose. It is based on the principle of personal growth and development and helps to develop a better response to stress over time. This type of behavior is also the most difficult to master, as it requires a more substantial investment in terms of time and energy, and we would like to see positive technology increasingly used in this area. Facilitating access to eudaimonic behaviors could promote better ways to combat stress and mental health problems on the societal level.

How does a positive eudaimonic technology work?

AS: Positive eudaimonic technologies may be based on different approaches. For example, many current applications provide support for meditation, whose mental health benefits are now widely accepted. Applications related to a learning process involving personal achievement can be considered as eudaimonic technologies. We can also develop technologies for initially hedonic or social purposes, in order to facilitate access to them, which may then be used for eudaimonic purposes in a subsequent phase. The recent Heartintune application is an example of this type of approach.

What are the prospects for the development of positive technologies at the societal level?

AS: Various types of positive technologies already exist, and our next challenge is to promote their development and widespread use in order to boost resilience. We believe that the best way to do this is to use technology to promote more eudaimonic behaviors.

This could be a particularly important issue to raise at the World Health Summit in Berlin at the end of October 2021, which will focus on issues including the potential contributions of innovations and technology to the resolution of health problems.

Antonin Counillon

livreurs de plateformes

Delivery riders seeking social protection

/0 Comments/in , /by

Cynthia Srnec, Sciences Po and Cédric Gossart, Institut Mines-Télécom Business School

“In the ideal world of the delivery platforms, we would say nothing, just smile politely, “Hello, sir”, “Goodbye”, get on our bikes, make our deliveries, never fall, never have an accident, never make a complaint […]. We used to pay you €5, now it’s €2.60, what are you going to do about it? On you go, chop chop! Make sure the food stays hot, ignore red lights, and don’t die please!”

This testimony from a young delivery rider illustrates the subordination that is central to an ecosystem in which algorithms call all the shots.

What needs to be done for these workers, exposed to various different risks? What do they need in terms of social protection?

These questions are very much central to the debate around the planned finance law for social security for 2022. First proposed back in September, its aim is to improve social protection for self-employed workers, but the improvements put forward don’t seem to factor in the mishaps which can befall delivery riders.

We asked them about their needs and the difficulties they face via an online questionnaire. 219 delivery drivers active in France during the pandemic responded, 15 of whom were interviewed.

The delivery riders who responded to our questionnaire are young (3 out of 4 are under 30 years of age) and don’t earn very much: half of them make less than €900/month before tax. Although half are logged on between 20 and 40 hours a week, they don’t get paid for time spent waiting on orders, which prevents many of them from taking on another job (for 60% of them, this is their only source of work). Before working as delivery riders, 37% were unemployed, this group most likely to have done this work for more than 3 years.

Their preferred mode of transport is push bike (37%) followed by electric bike (26%). Riders on push bikes earn less than the others (22% earn less than €900/month), while the majority of delivery riders who use another mode of transport earn slightly more.

The risks of the job

“I was hit by a pedestrian and broke my hand. I didn’t realise I had broken anything, and so I kept working. […] there are a lot of delivery riders […] who keep working with broken bones because they have to for financial reasons, or because they don’t have any social security allowing them to take time off to recover.” (Interview n°3)

This account illustrates the physical and financial vulnerability which affects many delivery riders. Only 31% of them have never experienced health difficulties as a result of their work. 70% have issues with traffic and parking, 61% have significant issues because of time spent waiting to be allocated a route, and 68% have significant issues because of time spent waiting for orders to be prepared. We don’t know exactly how many accidents have befallen riders or how many have died, but the delivery rider community is starting to come together to take action.

Are delivery riders treated properly?

The vulnerability of delivery riders depends on the risks they are exposed to and what protections they have in place (e.g. a salary, family health insurance, etc.).

According to our survey, the most vulnerable delivery riders (V4) are the most exposed and have the least protection (the unemployed, illegal immigrants, long-term delivery riders, etc.). These highly vulnerable delivery riders are part of the 32% who told us they did not have any social security coverage, and aren’t aware of all of their rights (25% of delivery riders who responded to our questionnaire didn’t know if they had any social security coverage). They generally don’t inform their employer if they have any issues (57% didn’t make the company aware about accident or illness). Among those who did, 61% were given no assistance, and what was on offer didn’t compensate for the lack of income as a result of them being off work:

“There’s no point. I knew full well that the self-employment benefits would cover nothing or practically nothing. I knew that the top-up health coverage policies with the platforms are very low-cost contracts, even extremely low-cost, and I knew there would be no point making a claim.” (Interview n°2)

A “dirty job”

The variable geometry of the vulnerability of workers doing this “dirty job” have to face is down in no small part to the “paltry” social protection they get.

This legal and institutional void benefits platforms, some of whom have been taken to court for off-the-books work.

In Spain the law was changed in August 2021 to make it that every delivery rider is considered an employee. This resolution to the precarity brought about through the gig-economy, a pressing social issue of our times, has support in France from unions and collectives of delivery riders, but also from the EU Parliament:

“The coverage, suitability and formal and effective transparency of social protection must apply to all workers, including the self-employed.”

Bear in mind that 97% of the delivery riders who responded to our questionnaire were registered self-employed.

Morgane Le Guern from the MGEN Corporate Foundation for Public Health contributed to this article.

Cynthia Srnec, postdoctoral researcher, Sciences Po and Cédric Gossart, Professor (permanent, full-time), Institut Mines-Télécom Business School

This article has been republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Pharmaceutical industry

Caring for the population or one’s earnings? A dilemma for marketers in the pharmaceutical industry

/0 Comments/in , /by

Loréa Baïada-Hirèche, Institut Mines-Télécom Business School ; Anne Sachet-Milliat, ISC Paris Business School et Bénédicte Bourcier-Béquaert, ESSCA École de Management

The pharmaceutical industry is rocked by scandals on a regular basis. Oxycodon, for example, has been massively distributed in the United States despite being a highly addictive opioid analgesic, and has been implicated in some 200,000 deaths by overdose in the United States since 1999.

Closer to home, it took more than 15 years for Servier Laboratories’ Mediator to be withdrawn from the market, even though its prescription as an appetite suppressant, outside its initial therapeutic indication, caused numerous victims, including 2,000 recorded deaths. The outcome of the trial in March 2021 highlighted not only the responsibility of doctors, but also that of the laboratories producing these drugs, as was also the case for Levothyrox, manufactured by Merck.

These different scandals are merely the visible manifestation of the constant tension generated in this sector between the pursuit of profit and its fundamental health mission. The marketing professionals who are responsible for promoting medicines to patients and doctors seem particularly concerned by this ethical conflict which can cause them to question their real mission: is it treating or selling?

In the course of our research, we set out to discover how marketers in the pharmaceutical sector perceive this quandary and how they deal with it.

Economic interest but a health mission

The ethical conflicts encountered can lead marketers into situations of “moral dissonance”. This refers to occasions when people’s behaviors or decisions conflict with their moral values. Because it brings into play elements which are central to people’s identity such as their values, moral dissonance can generate significant psychological discomfort, giving rise to guilt and affecting self-esteem.

The people affected will then engage in strategies designed to reduce this state of dissonance, which are mainly based on the use of self-justification mechanisms but may also include changing their behavior or seeking social support.

To understand the attitudes of pharmaceutical marketing professionals, we conducted in-depth interviews with 18 of them, which revealed that these individuals are beset by ethical conflicts of varying severity, most of which relate to decisions that are of economic interest but lead to their failure to fulfill their health mission. This may involve potential harm to patients, infringements of regulations or breaches of professional ethics. Conflicts seem to affect people more intensely when the choices have major impacts on patients’ health.

The Servier affair – a turning point

Our series of interviews revealed that three strategies are employed in an effort to resolve this conflict. The first strategy is to minimize the ethically sensitive nature of the issue, which means burying one’s head in the sand, ignoring the conflict or forgetting about it as quickly as possible.

For example, one respondent explains:

“I wouldn’t say that pharmaceutical industry is whiter than white, either. There have been cases like Servier, of people who were dishonest. But that’s not the case for most people who work in the industry. They are happy to work in an industry that has made a positive contribution to society.”

According to these professionals, there is no conflict between the health and economic missions: making a profit is a way to finance medical research. This perspective makes pharmaceutical companies out to be “the main investors in health”.

In addition, they point out that their practices are very tightly regulated by law. Several respondents point out that Mediator was a landmark case:

“There is no longer a problem because everything has been regulated. Problems caused by conflicts of interest such as the Servier case are over, they can’t happen anymore. There truly was a before and after Mediator, it really changed things.”

Unable to ignore the media-driven attacks on the pharmaceutical industry, they defend themselves by denouncing the media’s role in stirring up controversy, the headlines that seek to “create a buzz” and the “journalists who don’t have anything better to write about”.

In contrast, other respondents are well aware of the risks that the marketed product poses to patients. However, they claim to be taking these risks precisely for patient’s sake. This is how the rationale for doubling the doses recommended under the regulations for children with serious pathologies is justified:

Like heroes

“Even if it’s a product that is dangerous, potentially dangerous, and on which you don’t have too much hindsight, you tell yourself that you can decide, with the chief scientist, to support the doctors doubling the doses because there’s a therapeutic benefit.”

The emphasis on acting in the patient’s interest is disturbing because it leads marketers to conceal the economic dimension of their activity and to present it as a secondary concern. However, doubling the doses does indeed increase the sales of the product.

Paradoxically, referring to the patient’s well-being in this way can actually serve to endorse unethical acts, while sometimes enabling the marketers to present themselves as heroes who work miracles for their patients. One of them justifies his actions in this way:

“Our product was very beneficial to patients; everyone was grateful to us… First there were the health professionals who told us ‘Our patients are delighted, their cholesterol levels are really low, it’s great’ and then there were the patients who testified that ‘My doctor had been forcing me to take cholesterol-lowering drugs for the past three years and I was always in pain everywhere… I’ve been taking your products for two months now and not only is my cholesterol level low, but above all, I’m no longer in any pain whatsoever.’”

Their way of presenting their profession sometimes even makes them out to be acting as caregivers.

In the final strategy, some respondents note that the notion of profitability takes precedence over the health mission, and express their mistrust of the discourse developed by other sales professionals:

“Money has become so important these days, and I get the impression there is hardly any concern for ethics in the organizations and people marketing the products.”

The disillusionment of these marketers is such that, in contrast to the cases mentioned above, they can no longer find arguments to justify their marketing actions and reduce their malaise.

“I was not very comfortable because I felt like I was selling something that could possibly hurt people or even be fatal in certain cases. I was feeling a little guilty actually… I was thinking that I would have preferred to have been marketing clothes, or at least untainted products.”

The only way out of their dissonance seems to be to avoid problematic practices by changing jobs, companies, or even leaving the pharmaceutical industry altogether.

Training and regulatory affairs

What is the solution? It seems difficult to make recommendations to pharmaceutical manufacturers in light of the doubts about the real willingness of top management to prevent unethical behavior by their employees when such behavior is adopted in their economic interest.

However, highlighting the existence of moral dissonance and the psychological suffering it inflicts upon workers should cause them concern. Studies show that these phenomena have negative consequences such as loss of commitment to work and increased staff turnover.

This is especially true in the pharmaceutical industry, which is involved in a noble cause – health – to which the respondents generally remain strongly attached.

Externally, an ethical dimension should be more systematically integrated into marketing training, especially in specialized health marketing courses.

Moreover, although the law has been tightened up, particularly after the Mediator affair, this has not prevented the emergence of new scandals, particularly in new markets such as implants. To protect citizens, the public authorities should therefore be paying more attention to para-medical products, which are currently subject to less restrictive regulations.

Loréa Baïada-Hirèche, Senior Lecturer in Human Resources Management, Institut Mines-Télécom Business School; Anne Sachet-Milliat, Lecturer and Researcher in Business Ethics, ISC Paris Business School and Bénédicte Bourcier-Béquaert, Lecturer and Researcher in Marketing, ESSCA École de Management

This article has been republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article (in French).

Fake News

A real way to look at fake news

/1 Comment/in , /by

The SARS-CoV2 virus is not the only thing that has spread during the Covid-19 pandemic: fake news has also made its way around the world. Although it existed even before, the unprecedented crisis has paved the way for an explosion of fake news. Anuragini Shirish, a researcher at Institut Mines Télécom Business School, explains the factors at play in this trend and how it could be limited in the future.

Why has the pandemic been conducive to the emergence of fake news?

Anuragini Shirish: At the individual level, fear and uncertainty are psychological factors that have played an important role. People have several fears that pertain to safety of their lives and that of their families, jobs, resources leading to unexplained uncertainty about both the present and the future. As a response to this situation, people try to make sense of the situation and understand what’s going to happen to reassure themselves, from both the health  and economic point of views. To do so, they look for information, regardless of how truthful it is.

How do individuals seek guidance in an unpredictable situation?

AS: The main sources of guidance are institutional resources. One of the important resources is the freedom of the media. In countries like India, the media can be influenced by politicians and people tend not to trust it entirely. In Nordic countries, on the other hand, the media focuses on being as objective as possible and people are taught to adhere to objectivity. When trust in the traditional media is low, as may be the case in France, individuals tend to seek out alternative sources of information. Freedom of the media is therefore an institutional resource: if people have confidence in the strength and impartiality of their media, it tends to lower their level of fear and uncertainty.

Another important resource is the government’s measures to increase economic freedom perceptions. If individuals believe that the government can maintain job security and/or their sources of income throughout the pandemic, including periods of lockdown, this also helps reduce their fear and uncertainty. In countries such as Brazil, India and the United States, this has not been the case.

Lastly, there is the freedom of political expression, which gives individuals the opportunity to express and share their doubts publicly.  But in this case, it tends to foster the emergence of fake news. This is one of the findings of a study we conducted with Shirish Srivastava and Shalini Chandra from HEC Paris and the SP Jain School of Global Management.

How is the lack of confidence in institutions conducive to the emergence and dissemination of fake news?

AS : When people trust institutions, they are less likely to seek information from alternative sources. Conversely, when there is a low level of trust in institutions, people tend to react by seeking out all kinds of information on the internet.

Why and how has fake news spread to such an extent?

AS: In order to verify the information they obtain, people tend to share it with their acquaintances and close friends to get their feedback about the validity of the information. And due to their cognitive biases, people tend to consume and share ideas and beliefs they like, even when they’re aware that the information may be false. Fake news are generally structured to evoke a variety of emotions, leading to strong feelings such as anger, fear, sadness, which also helps it to spread more easily than information presented in a more rational or neutral way. 

Each country has its own characteristics when it comes to the emergence and dissemination of fake news, which also explains why an understanding of institutional resources is helpful to identify the factors that can explain the national level differences at play. The emergence  and dissemination of fake news vary widely from country to country: the inhabitants of a country are far more concerned about what’s happening in their own country. Fake news is therefore highly context-specific.

Where is most fake news found?

AS: The majority of fake news is found on social media. That’s where it spreads the quickest since it is extremely easy to share. Social media algorithms will also display the information that people like the most, therefore increasing their cognitive biases and their desire to share this information. And social media is the number-one media consumed by individuals, due to its ease of mobile access and connectivity available at several countries in the world.

Who creates fake news?

AS: It’s hard to understand the deeper motivations of each individual who creates fake news, since they don’t typically brag about it! Some may do so for economic reasons, by generating “clicks” and the revenue that comes with them. Almost half of fake news is generated for political reasons, to destabilize opposing parties. And sometimes it comes directly from political parties. Uncertain situations like pandemics polarize individuals in society, which facilitates this process. And then there are individuals who may just want to create general confusion, for no apparent economic or political motives.

How can we as individuals contribute to limiting the spread of fake news?

AS: When we aren’t sure about the validity of information, we must not act on it, or share it with others before finding out more. It’s a human tendency to try to verify the legitimacy of information by sharing it, but that’s a bad strategy at a larger scale.  

How can we tell if information may be false?

AS: : First of all, we must learn to think critically and not accept everything we see. We must critically examine the source or website that has posted the information and ask why. There is an especially high level of critical thinking in countries such as Finland or the Netherlands, since these skills are taught at high schools and universities, in particular through media studies classes. But in countries where people are not taught to think critically to the same extent, and trust in the media is low, paradoxically, people are more critical of information that comes from the institutional media than of that which comes from social media. Tools like Disinformation Index or Factcheck.org may be used to verify sources in order to check whether or not information is authentic.  

Is fake news dangerous?

AS: It depends on the news. During the pandemic, certain light-hearted fake news was spread. It didn’t help people solve their problems, but it provided entertainment for those who needed it. For example, there was a tweet that appeared in March 2020 saying that a group of elephants in the Yunnan province in China, had drunk corn wine and fallen asleep, amid the recommendations for social distancing.  This tweet was shared 264,000 times and got 915,500 likes and 5,000 comments. This tweet was later “debunked” (proven to be false) in an article that appeared in National Geographic. This kind of fake news does not have any harmful consequences.  

But other kinds of fake news have had far more serious consequences. First, political fake news generally reduces trust in institutional resources.  It doesn’t offer any solutions and creates more confusion. Paradoxically, this increases fear and uncertainty in individuals and facilitates the dissemination of more fake news, creating a vicious circle! Since it reduces institutional trust, government programs have less of an impact, which also has economic implications. During the pandemic, this has had a major impact on health. Not only because the vaccine campaigns have had less of an effect, but because people self-medicated  based on fake news and died as a result. People’s mental health has also suffered through prolonged exposure to uncertainty, at times leading to mental illness or even suicide. This is also why the term “infodemic” has appeared. 

Is social media trying to fight the spread of fake news?  

AS: During the pandemic, content regulation by the platforms has increased, in particular through  UN injunctions and the gradual implementation of the Digital Service Act. For example, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are trying to provide tools to inform their users which information may be inauthentic.  The platforms were not prepared for this kind of regulation, and they generated a lot of revenue from the large volume of information being shared, whether or not it was true.  This is changing – let’s hope that this continues over time!

Read more on I’MTech: Digital Service Act: Regulating the content of digital platforms Act 1

What are the levels of institutional control over fake news?

AS: Control over information must be carried out through various approaches since it affects many aspects of society. The government can increase its presence in the media and social media, and improve internet security. There are two ways of doing this: through the law, by punishing the perpetrator of fake news, but also by increasing collective awareness and providing programs to teach people how to verify information. It’s important to put this aspect in place ahead of time, in order to anticipate potential crises that may occur in the future and to monitor collective awareness levels . However, the goal is not to control the freedom of media, on the contrary,  this freedom increases the contribution of independent media, and signals to the citizens that the government seeks to be impartial.

How can we improve people’s relationship with information and institutions in general?

AS: Individuals’ behavior is difficult to change in the long term: new regulations are ultimately violated when people see them as meaningless. So, we must also help citizens find value in the rules of society that may be put in place by the government, in order for them to adhere to them.

By Antonin Counillon

Digital Service Act

Digital Service Act: Regulating the content of digital platforms, Act 1

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Digital Service Act, proposed by the European Commission in early 2020, seeks to implement a new regulatory framework for digital platforms. Grazia Cecere, an economics researcher at Institut Mines-Télécom Business School, explains various aspects of these regulations.

Why has it become necessary to regulate the content of platforms?

Grazia Cecere: Technological developments have changed the role of the internet and platforms. Previous regulations specified that publishers were responsible for the totality of their content, but that web hosts were only responsible if flagged content was not handled adequately. With the emergence of super platforms and social media, the role of web hosts has changed. Their algorithms lead to more specific distribution of content, through rankings, search engine optimization and highlighting content, which may have significant impacts and contain dangerous biases.

What kind of content must be better regulated by digital platforms?

GC: There are many issues addressed, in particular combating cyber-bullying, disinformation and fake news, as well different types of discrimination. Today the platforms’ algorithms self-regulate based on the available data and may reproduce and amplify discrimination that exists in society. For example, if data analyzed by the algorithm shows wage gaps between men and women, it is likely to build models based on this information. So it’s important to identify these kinds of biases and correct them. Discrimination not only poses ethical problems: it also has economic implications. For example, if an algorithm designed to propose a job profile is biased based on an individual’s gender or skin color, the only important criteria – professional ability – will be less clear.

Read more on l’IMTech: Social media: The everyday sexism of advertising algorithms

What does the Digital Service Act propose so that platforms regulate their content?

C: The Digital Service Act seeks to set clear rules for the responsibilities that come with digital platforms. They must monitor the information distributed on their platforms, especially fake news and potentially harmful content. The goal is also to inform users better about the content and ensure their fundamental rights online. Platforms must also increase their transparency and make data about their activity available. This data would then be available to researchers who could test for whether it contains biases. The purpose of the Digital Service Act is to provide a harmonized legislative and regulatory system across all EU member states.

How can platforms regulate their own content?

GC : Another aspect of the Digital Service Act is providing the member states with regulatory instruments for their platforms. Different kinds of tools can be implemented. For example, a tool called “Fast Tracking” is being developed for Google to detect false information about Covid-19 automatically. This kind of tool, which determines whether information is false based on written content, can be complicated since it requires sophisticated natural language processing tools. Some issues are more complicated to regulate than others.

Are digital platforms starting to take into account the Digital Service Act?

GC: It depends on the platform. AirBnb and Uber, for example, have made a lot of data available to researchers so that they can determine what kinds of discriminatory biases it contains. And Google and Facebook are also providing access to an increasing amount of data. But Snapchat and TikTok are a whole other story!

Will the Digital Service Act also help regulate the internet market?

 GC: The previous regulation, the E-Commerce Directive, dates from 2000. Over time, it has become obsolete. Internet players today are different than they were 20 years ago and some have a lot more power. One of the challenges is for the internet market to remain open to everyone and for new companies to be able to be founded independently from the super platforms to boost competition, since today, any company that is founded depends on the monopoly of big tech companies.

By Antonin Counillon

Data collection protection, GDPR impact

GDPR: Impact on data collection at the international level

/0 Comments/in , /by

The European data protection regulation (GDPR), introduced in 2018, set limits on the use of trackers that collect personal data. This data is used to target advertising to users. Vincent Lefrère, associate professor in digital economy at Institut Mines-Télécom Business School, worked with Alessandro Acquisti from Carnegie Mellon University to study the impact of the GDPR on tracking users in Europe and internationally.

What was your strategy for analyzing the impact of GDPR on tracking users in different countries?

Vincent Lefrère: We conducted our research on online media such as Le Monde in France or the New York Times in the United States. We looked at whether the introduction of the GDPR has had an impact on the extent to which users are tracked and the amount of personal data collected.

How were you able to carry out these analyses at the international level?

VL: The work was carried out in partnership with researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, in particular Alessandro Acquisti, who is one of the world’s specialists in personal digital data. We worked together to devise the experimental design and create a wider partnership with researchers at other American universities, in particular the Minnesota Carlson School of Management and Cornell University in New York.

How does the GDPR limit the collection of personal data?

VL: One of the fundamental principles of the GDPR is consent. This makes it possible to require websites that collect data to obtain users’ consent  before tracking them. In our study, we never gave our consent or explicitly refused the collection of data. That way, we could observe how a website behaves in relation to a neutral user. Moreover, one of the important features of GDPR is that it applies to all parties who wish to process data pertaining to European citizens. As such, the New York Times must comply with the GDPR when a website visitor is European. 

How did you compare the impact of the GDPR on different media?

VL: We logged into different media sites with IP addresses from different countries, in particular with French and American IP addresses.

We observed that American websites limit tracking more than European websites, and therefore better comply with the GDPR, but only when we were using a European IP address.  It would therefore appear that the GDPR has been more dissuasive on American websites for these users. However, the American websites increased the tracking of American users, for whom the GDPR does not apply.  One hypothesis is that this increase is used to offset the loss of data from European users.

How have online media adapted to the GDPR?

VL: We were able to observe a number of effects. First of all, online media websites have not really played along. Since mechanisms of consent are somewhat vague,  the formats developed in recent years have often encouraged users to accept personal data collection rather than reject it. There are reasons for this: data collection has become crucial to the business model of these websites, but little has been done to offset the loss of data resulting from the introduction of the GDPR, so it is understandable that they have stretched the limits of the law in order to continue offering high quality content for free. With the recent update by the French National Commission on Information Technology and Liberties (CNIL) to fight against this, consent mechanisms will become clearer and more standardized.  

In addition, the GDPR has limited tracking of users by third parties, and replaced it with tracking by first parties. Before, when a user logged into a news site, other companies such as Google, Amazon or Facebook could collect their data directly on the website. Now, the website itself tracks data, which may then be shared with third parties.

Following the introduction of the GDPR, the market share of Google’s online advertising service increased in Europe, since Google is one of the few companies who could pay the quota for the regulation, meaning it could pay the price of ensuring compliance. This is an unintended, perverse  consequence: smaller competitors have disappeared and there has been a concentration of ownership of data by Google.  

Has the GDPR had an effect on the content produced by the media?

VL: We measured the quantity and quality of content produced by the media. Quantity simply reflects the number of posts. The quality is assessed by the user engagement rate, meaning the number of comments or likes, as well as the number of pages viewed each time a user visits the website.

In the theoretical framework for our research, online media websites use targeted advertising to generate revenue. Since the GDPR makes access to data more difficult, it could decrease websites’ financing capacity and therefore lead to a reduction in content quality or quantity. By verifying these aspects, we can gain insights into the role of personal data and targeted advertising in the business model for this system.   

Our preliminary results show that after the introduction of the GDPR, the quantity of content produced by European websites was not affected, and the amount of engagement remained stable. However, European users reduced the amount of time they spent on European websites in comparison to American websites. This could be due to the the fact that certain American websites may have prohibited access to European users, or that American websites covered European topics less since attracting European users had become less profitable. These are hypotheses that we are currently discussing.

We are assessing these possible explanations by analyzing data about the newspapers’ business models, in order to estimate how important personal data and targeted advertising are to these business models.  

By Antonin Counillon