Political economy of media vis-a-vis elections
Titus Mbuya | Monday April 22, 2024 06:00
It goes without saying that 2024 is an important year for Botswana because of the forthcoming general elections. Batswana will be going to the polls in the next six months or so to elect a government of their own choice which will be in charge of running the affairs of the country for the next five years.
As the campaign season begins in earnest it is important that media practitioners do not lose sight of what print media can, and cannot do, in the age of digitisation. Print media is experiencing market failure, globally. If public policy interventions are not put in place to protect this “public good” this vital sector that provides alternative sources of information for a vast majority of audiences will face extinction. Elsewhere in the world, for example, Australia, Canada, and currently South Africa, the competition commissions of those countries have intervened to get to the bottom of the problem with the view to turning the tide.
The print medium has always been strengthened by the various technological advancements that have taken place since 1440 when Johannes Gutenberg invented the first printing press in Germany. The printing press was to the 15th century what the internet is to modern-day society. Gutenberg’s printing press, just like the internet, democratised information in the most profound way. Before the invention of the press, the Bible, which was the most popular book at the time, was only accessible to the clergy and that gave them a lot of power over everybody else. With the invention of the press the Bible became accessible to all and sundry.
Likewise, the Industrial Revolution, which started in 1740 in Britain, was also good for print because it spurred economic growth. The Industrial Revolution increased the overall amount of wealth and distributed it more widely than had been the case in earlier centuries, helping to enlarge the middle class. New machines, new power sources, and new ways of organising work made existing industries more productive and efficient.
More recently, print benefited from the Information Age, also known as the Third Industrial Revolution, which began in the mid 20th century to the turn of the 21st century. The technological advances that took place during this period have had a significant impact on the way information is processed and transmitted. Over the last two decades, technology has transformed the entire value chain from content acquisition through production to distribution.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution, in particular, which was ushered in at the turn of the millennium, enhanced print media in terms of optimising operational efficiencies, as well as delivery and distribution, but most importantly shored up the fortunes of print because ICT’s in particular promoted, and facilitated global economic growth and prosperity.
The information Age ushered in digitisation which became ubiquitous with the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. From the perspective of print, however, while digitisation is a blessing it is also print’s worst enemy. It is a double-edged sword that cuts both ways. It is a blessing because it complements print by giving its content wider reach but also enables print to engage with readers through digital platforms.
That notwithstanding, digitalisation has also canibalised print. Newspaper sales have declined to unprecedented levels and it doesn’t look like the trend can be reversed.
Through their dominance of the digital media space the so-called Big Tech companies, namely, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp), Alphabet (Google and YouTube), Alibaba, Amazon, and Tik Tok, have plundered print media of virtually all the advertising revenue that they used to enjoy, thus decimating what has been print’s cash-cow for the last 150 years.
This year more than half of the world’s advertising budgets (51.9%) will be gobbled up by the five Big Tech companies. For the first time that sum will exceed US$1,000 billion. Between 70-80% of online budgets in the West already end up with Google and Facebook. None of these companies is a publisher or media house in the traditional sense. They do not generate news content. They aggregate it from different sources.
The irony of this is that the Big Tech companies are using content from the same print media to take their business away from them without compensation (or pay them a pittance at best), and as result print is on its knees, financially.
I believe that the picture that I have just sketched is important for us to appreciate what we can do, or what we cannot do, in carrying out our mandate as print media especially during an election year like this one due to the precarious situation that print media finds itself in. It does not help to be in denial, because if we continue on that course then we will not be able to extricate ourselves from this mess.
Needless to say that newspapers like The Monitor and Mmegi continue to play an important role in elections. The last five years in Botswana have been very busy from a party-political point of view, with new parties being formed, and existing coalitions crumbling while new ones emerge.
However, for me, the dispute between the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) and the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) over deployment of Madibelatlhopho has been the main highlight of the current election cycle and it has potential to be a game-changer in the conduct of elections in Botswana going forward. I have no doubt in my mind that you have your work cut out for you.
You will agree with me that newspapers, no longer play as pivotal a role in elections as they used to in the past, say 10 years ago, because, whether we like it or not, the media landscape has transformed completely with the advent of social media, and now Artificial Intelligence (AI). I should hasten to say that the decline of influence of newspapers is not a reflection on the quality of their content, or lack thereof.
Social media has taken the sting away from print media. Unlike in the past when newspapers broke stories, social media is now ruling the roost albeit in a perverted manner. Stories are broken in real time on Facebook, YouTube, Tiktok, and X. As things stand, newspapers come after the fact and give the backstory and insights and endeavour to make sense of the news.
Unfortunately, the average modern reader does not have time for lengthy, detailed stories because there are too many things competing for their time and attention. The allure for instant gratification in the era of social media privileges events over processes and treats everything as a fleeting moment. The drastic decline in newspaper sales is the result of a combination of all these factors. And this is a reality that newspapers or print has to grapple with.
I am making these observations to challenge you, that even as you engage in this exercise – training as part of your preparations to cover the elections- which is crucial, you should be awake to the fact that you can not only focus on print, because it is fast becoming a medium of the past. It is not called legacy media for nothing! The world has moved on with digitisation.
New methods of sustaining print’s relevance must be explored through articulating what print does best to digital platforms seamlessly. I cannot prescribe to you how to do it. You must find a formula to do it because the requisite tools are available to yourselves. You just have to be more innovative and creative to make them work for you.
The latest technology, AI is also a blessing and a curse to print. It is a blessing in the sense that we can generate, process, and package what would otherwise be large, and complex data instantaneously with much less resources from our workstation in the newsroom or from the comfort of our homes.
We must embrace this technology because it is the future. When used responsibly, AI can be a powerful tool for journalists. It is also true that, AI poses a threat to journalism because as we have already seen elsewhere, it has led to job cuts and retrenchments in the newsroom. But most importantly, AI can jeopardise the readers’ access to reliable information. It relies on information that it searches on the internet and it cannot distinguish between reliable and unreliable information, therefore its content can be based on disinformation or misinformation.
The role that print media plays in elections coverage in Botswana cannot be overemphasised. The public still look up to established media houses for reliable news and information whether it is politics, business, sports, etc. Unlike social media, the content in newspapers is generated by professionals. Unlike social media, newspapers are accountable to their readers, and hence they verify their content before they publish it.
In conclusion, as we always say this time of an election cycle, the “silly season” that precedes the elections is already upon us. As journalists we don’t want to join the political class in their impertinence. And how do we do that? By not descending into the arena, because once we do that then we are bound to take sides. We want to be as neutral as we possibly can by not entering the fray.
Granted, individual journalists belong to their own parties, but we can be professional and subject our bias to our profession’s code of conduct. Otherwise readers will not trust us. I have gone through many election cycles in my life as a journalist. And I have seen it all. I hope it does not become too obvious this time round which party or parties our newsrooms are rooting for.
We should treat all parties equitably. Stories must be balanced. And let us play the ball, not the man (or woman). By this I mean that journalists should avoid the temptation of maligning candidates that they do not like. Instead, journalists should engage candidates on their policy positions and election promises and make this election an issue-based one. Let us rise to the top, be the adult in the room and, leave the mudslinging to social media!