3.9 Where do people get their information?

 

"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.