"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper.
Half never voted for president. One hopes it is the same half." -- Gore
Vidal[i]
Where people get their information from is of course
dependent on the media landscape (see section on The Media Landscape Today). However, there are other factors at play,
such as people’s personal preferences, work location and routines, overall
trust in news sources as well as general media literacy. For example, a study
conducted by Altai in 2010 in Afghanistan found that only 13% of the population
turned to the printed press for information.
This low percentage was a result of literacy levels and access.[ii]
Sixty-eight per cent of the sampled population listened to radio however, a
decline from a previous Altai study in 2005.[iii]
The same study found that men and women had significant variations in TV and radio
usage patterns during the day. More men
tended to listen to the radio in the early morning, compared to women. More women listened to the radio in the
evening.[iv]
As another example, a study in 2012 in Nigeria found that while radio usage was
generally the same in rural and urban areas, and that 4 out of every 10
respondents said they listened to the radio on their mobile phones within the
week prior to the survey, more urban residents watched TV in a given week
than residents.[v]
These are the kinds
of various breakdowns that distinguish one country’s media usage from another,
and affect media usage during elections.
In addition to, and in some instances instead of,
electronic or print media, direct personal communication remains greatly
important in election campaigns and processes. French-speaking Africans have
invented a term that encompasses much of this style of information
dissemination: radio trottoir or "pavement radio". This includes word
of mouth dissemination by way of community “information gatekeepers” such as elders
or market vendor, as well as voter/civic education ‘face-to-face’ sessions
between EMB (or NGO) personnel and community members. It also includes public
political meetings addressed by candidates and door-to-door canvassing by the
candidate or party activists, as well as leaflets and posters produced by the
parties or candidates. In industrialized countries with extensive electronic
media, these methods have declined dramatically in importance. Elsewhere,
however, political meetings and personal contact with the candidates remains
important. The reasons for this importance is usually a combination of access
to media, low media literacy, trust in media, as well as culture and
tradition.
Yet,
even in these instances, the media still have an important role in
communicating political information. Even when rural communities do not have
direct access to independent media, the information generated by the press will
still go into general circulation and may reach the rural voters at some stage.
“Information gatekeepers” may themselves rely on media as a source of news and
will therefore pass on what they glean from the press. Therefore, although word of mouth may be the
direct source of political information in some instances, the media will likely
contribute importantly to the mass of information in circulation.
Audience analysis is often quickly out-dated however, as
preferences and access change so rapidly in today’s media environment. For example, a study conducted in 2010 by The
Pew Research Center, found that more while the vast majority (92%) of Americans
use multiple sources to acquire information on national and international
events (“on a typical day”), and Television remains the most important of those
sources, more individuals now look to the Internet (61%) more commonly than
radio (54%) and (non virtual) newspapers (50%).[vi]
A similar study in 2008 by the same organization found that there was an almost
two fold jump in Internet news consumption, from 24% to 40%, in just one year.[vii]
As another example, a survey conducted 2009 shows that the
number of Internet newspaper readers was, at the time, almost the same as the
number of offline newspaper readers in Jordan, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. In Egypt, the number of online newspaper readers was 50%
compared to the 34% of offline newspaper readers. Furthermore, “…the number of
users who turn to online platforms to create their own diet of news, rather
than rely on editors’ selections, is only expected to grow. The number of Facebook users alone, about 17
million in the Arab world, have already surpassed the 14 million copies of
newspapers sold in the region.”[viii]
Yet, general news consumption does not always translate cleanly
into election-related news consumption specifically. For example, a report issued in 2006
exploring global audience reaction to and affinity for political campaign ads
found that, in general they are not popular.
…political advertising is the
most derided form of political communication. Its form, the highly condensed
commercial-type slot, is often said to be trivialising; inevitably butchering
complexity and reducing politics to clever tricks (Qualter 1991: 151). It is
criticised as deliberately anti-rational, designed to play upon our weaknesses
as cognitive misers (Pratkanis and Aronson 1991), with a host of devices to
elicit a quick and easy emotional response…Iyengar and Prior (1999) found US
ads were much less well liked than normal commercials; product ads were
‘generally truthful and interesting’, while political ads were ‘dishonest,
unappealing and uninformative’. The British PEBs seem hardly to fare better;
the standard introduction, ‘there now follows a party election broadcast’, is
commonly greeted by mass channel-hopping (Scammell and Semetko 1995). At the
2001 general election just 35% of respondents in campaign tracking poll claimed
to be at all interested in them.[ix]
While
popularity of political advertisements may be low, there are indications that
people turn to specific media for their general election information. The impact of social media on voters’ choices
is the latest area of intense research focus.
One study found that of the 82% of U.S. adults who are social media
users, 51% will use social media to learn more about the candidates of the U.S.
presidential 2012 elections.[x]
What is difficult to
ascertain of course, is to what degree this ‘learning’ actually changes vote
choices. In other words, it is difficult
to gauge the extent to which media influences an election results, A myriad of
research exists on media’s influence of voters’ choice, some of it
contradictory and furthermore, it is difficult to distil the influence of
election related media from other socio-political media coverage. In other words, one argue that the impact of
media content on elections cannot be easily separated from the impact of other
media content, as it all works together to shape perspectives, opinions and
habits. What is important to bear in mind is the uniqueness of each election in
each context. This further underlines
the need for thorough audience analysis and media mapping within each electoral
context so as to fully comprehend the nuances of voter behaviour in relation to
issues such as media access, trust, history and slant. A thorough understanding provides a
foundation for remedying unbalanced media terrains, shaping voter information
and education, ensuring transparency, and influencing political campaign
strategies.
Gore Vidal Quotes”, goodreads, accessed August 23, 2012, http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5657.Gore_Vidal
[ii] “Afghan Media in 2010, A Synthesis,” report by Altai Consulting (funding
by USAID), (2010), 101 - 102
[v] “Nigeria Media Use 2012” Gallup
and Broadcasting Board of Governors, accessed August 23, 2012, www.bbg.gov/wp-content/media/2012/08/gallup-nigeria-brief.pdf
[vii] “Internet Overtakes Newspapers as News Outlet” The Pew Research Center, December 23
2008,
http://www.people-press.org/2008/12/23/internet-overtakes-newspapers-as-news-outlet/
[viii] Jeffrey Ghannam, Social
Media in the Arab World: Leading up to the Uprisings of 2011, (Washington
DC: The Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA), 2011),12
