More are reading news, but few make comments

Over the end of year festive season, Daily Monitor’s letters page took a hiatus as did a few other features, leisure and op-ed pages. Because many readers go up country for holiday and many offices close, the newspaper traditionally shrinks in pagination so as to balance the reduced readership and the cost of production and distribution. 

One of our ardent readers, John Kavuma, however had issue particularly with the letters page (in print and online) being suspended because it took away space the public use to engage with the news.

He wrote: “I am revisiting the issue of the online Daily Monitor stale letters that I raised last week… I renewed my subscription but you still have the same old letters yet I am always interested in that entire OpEd section.”

Why is the letters section so important in a newspaper?
As I wrote in my column last year, “…letters page was perhaps the liveliest space in the newspaper because of the diversity of perspectives it carried every day and the ease with which it could be read.

The letters were short, interesting, informative and sometimes quite provocative. Daily Nation letters page even had a citizens’ complaints column delivered with humour, ‘Cutting Edge’ by the ‘Watchman’.” (See: “Is ‘letters to the editor’ a dying newspaper page?” Daily Monitor, February 10, 2023).

Sadly, importance on the letters page has greatly diminished, and so is feedback in the media. This explains why only Mr Kavuma sounded the bell about the missing page. Even in terms of dynamism, today’s letters page is drab, often with one or two long opinion articles labelled “letters” and a few titbits.

The first death knell of the letters page was the audience migration to consuming news online where they could comment on stories in real-time as they read. Thus the comments section at the end of each story online became one of the most engaging. It was full of comments, counter-comments and debates. In fact letters ‘editors often picked some comments here for publication in the newspaper.

Editors also moderated the conversation, deleting offensive and libelous comments.
The arrival of social media in the late 2000s, particularly Facebook and Twitter (now X) effectively killed this engagement on news websites. The conversations shifted to the social media platforms where news media followed the audiences, sharing their stories and people in turn re-sharing and commenting.

Even this is now dying! According to a recent study by the Reuters Institute, “Smaller proportions of the public are participating with news actively (22 percent via posting and commenting), while growing numbers either participate reactively (31percent via reading, liking, or sharing) or simply do not participate with news at all (47 percent),” reads the June 14, 2023 report titled, “Unpacking news participation and online engagement over time” by Dr Kirsten Eddy.

Talking face to face about news and events in public spaces (bars, restaurants, offices, etc) that is the most widely reported form of news participation, stands at 32 percent according to the report.
The research was conducted in various news markets (46 countries) across the world. In Africa, three countries – Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa – were featured.

News avoidance is believed to be one of the factors creating more passive news consumers. News avoidance in turn is driven by the content that predominates the media – bad news, violence, negative stories, gory stories (Gaza, Ukraine,sinking migrant boats, epidemics, etc). Thus many news consumers simply wish away the news and withdraw their engagement.

Does this mean less civic engagement?
Apparently, the report also found that while public engagement with news on social media and news websites has reduced, more consumers are sharing comments or news directly on private messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram. So what explains this?

“It is difficult to fully explain these trends, but research suggests segments of the public may now avoid publicly sharing or participating in news because they perceive online debates as toxic. This may be worsening as relatively smaller numbers of (often more male, more partisan, and more motivated) people take up most of the active news participation, and many in the middle appear to be increasingly wary of publicly engaging with news and politics online.”

In short, internet has created opportunities for greater news reach and technically easier audience engagement but its inherent toxicity undermines talking about news.

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