Factsheets

Changes in Third-Party Content on European News Websites after GDPR

DOI: 10.60625/risj-r2ex-7248

This factsheet compares the prevalence of third-party web content and cookies on a selection of European news websites one month before and one month after the introduction of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).   To understand how news organisations may be adapting to the new privacy framework, prominent news websites in seven countries (Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the UK) were analysed during the months of April and again in July 2018.  

While there is no change in the overall percentage of pages from news providers which contain some form of third-party content (99%) or third-party cookies (98%), we find a 22% drop in the number of cookies set without user consent and an observable decrease in third-party social media content.

Published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

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More on:

Platforms and social media
Business of news
Media regulation
Spain
Poland
Italy
Germany
United Kingdom
France
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Meet the authors

Dr Timothy Libert

Dr Timothy Libert is a former postdoctoral research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. His research focuses on privacy-compromising information flows on the web, and he is the author of the open-source software platform webXray.... Read more about Dr Timothy Libert

Dr Lucas Graves

Dr Lucas Graves is Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He was the former Acting Head of Research at the Reuters Institute. He is a communication scholar and former magazine journalist who studies how news and... Read more about Dr Lucas Graves

Prof. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is a Professor at the Department of Communication of the University of Copenhagen and a Senior Research Associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Before leaving Oxford in 2024, he worked at the Institute,... Read more about Prof. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Authors

Dr Timothy Libert

Postdoctoral research fellow

Dr Lucas Graves

Research Associate

Prof. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Senior Research Associate