News Media’s Tabloidization
What needs to be done? Detaching completely from digital platforms is definitely not a realistic option. What needs to be done is changing how the national media industry builds independence relative to digital platforms
On 4 Nov., 2021, the public was shocked by the deaths of actress and model Vanessa Angel and her husband in a fatal accident on the Nganjuk toll road in East Java.
For days the incident was a central topic of media coverage. Day after day, that fateful event caused pressing public issues to lose out on media coverage. It seemed that the press was racing to mine ratings, clicks and page views from the news about the incident.
The death of a popular actress definitely deserves publication, even more so with the fatal accident behind it. However, did the news have to be as intense and extensive as that? Should news traffic and page views trump considerations of journalistic quality and publication worthiness? Is it morally acceptable that "celebrity journalism" should drown out public journalism?
The quality and worthiness of the news is an issue in this case. The day-to-day news about Vannesa Angel's fatal accident was actually similar but not the same. The news sources used were more or less the same, the point of view of the news was similar, the aspects explored were also not much different. This similarity or resemblance appeared over and over again for days.
Instead of reporting the incident proportionally and emphasizing its relevance to the public interest, the media tended to zoom in on the grief of Vanessa's friends and family and the public's curiosity. The media seemed to be irreverent to the victims’ families and were excessively eager to chase news traffic.
Disruption in numbers
The increasing pressure of technological disruption has made mass media more short-term oriented. They tend to exploit targets that are easy to achieve instantly and quickly – low-hanging fruits. They are driven to pursue the quantity of news rather than the quality of the news, exploiting sensation and popularity rather than responsibly applying the principles of public journalism.
eMarketer data shows that in the 2019-2023 period, Indonesia's digital advertising spending grew by and estimated two times. Advertising spending on print, radio, and magazines tended to stagnate or even decline. Television advertising spending is expected to continue to grow. This data confirms that there is indeed a shift in supremacy from conventional media to digital media. Which digital media is it?
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Indonesia's digital advertising structure provides the answer. In general, digital advertising is divided into five types: search advertising, social media advertising, banner advertising, video advertising and classifieds advertising.
In the 2020 digital advertising spending map of Indonesia, compiled by Statista, the proportions were: search ads (38 percent/US$559.7 million), social media ads (30 percent/$443.9 million), banner ads (18 percent/$275 million), video ads (11 percent/$158.8 million) and classified ads (3 percent/$44.2 million). Search ads, social media ads and video ads cumulatively accounted for 79 percent of Indonesia's total digital advertising spending in 2020.
It is through these three main areas that global digital platforms dominate national digital advertising. According to Statcounter data in May 2021, Google's search engine market share in Indonesia was 7.99 percent. It is evident that Indonesia's search advertising spending was controlled by Google, while Facebook has been growing to such a scale of business to dominate social media advertising in Indonesia.
According to Statcounter, Facebook's market share in Indonesian social media in 2021 reached 77.35 percent, reinforced by Instagram's market share of 3.13 percent.
Data from eMarketer also shows that YouTube penetration was 80 percent of the total exposure to video content in Indonesia in the 2020-2021 period. Video ads in Indonesia have mostly been absorbed by YouTube, which is a subsidiary of Google.
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Opportunities for the Indonesian mass media to have a slice of the digital advertising cake are left at the level of banner ads and classified ads. However, today's banner ads are dominated by programmatic schemes. The Pubmatic 2020 report shows programmatic advertising contributed around 75 percent of total banner ads in Indonesia. This means that only 25 percent of the total national banner ad spending in Indonesia was received by the mass media directly from advertisers.
Programmatic advertising can be described as an automated, online, latent and fast buying and selling system of advertising inventory facilitated by intermediary companies, such as DSP, SSP, Trading Desk, Ad Exchange and Agency.
In programmatic advertising, the mass media only get 26 to 39 percent of the value of advertising transactions. The rest, 61 to 74 percent, goes to the intermediary companies. They are the controllers of programmatic advertising intermediary technology. They are the ones who negotiate with the advertisers and unilaterally determine the profit-sharing value for the mass media. They are generally also subsidiaries of Google and other global platform companies.
With such an advertising structure, global platform companies completely dominate digital advertising spending. Around 70 to 80 percent of Indonesia's national digital advertising spending is controlled by Google and Facebook. Thousands of national and local mass media divide up the remaining advertising cake.
“Shareability” paradigm
Engaging in digital advertising is actually the same as playing into the rhythm of the game that is unilaterally determined by the digital platform. So what has happened is an increasingly acute dependence of conventional media on global platforms as controllers of the content distribution and digital advertising ecosystem. The media chases page views because that is the "iron law" in the ecosystem. Determining which news will be disseminated or facilitated by the monetization process by digital platforms always refers to the parameters of the number of likes, clicks, comments and/or shares attached to the news. Journalistic quality and worthiness come second. In the current era of search engine optimization, news will be judged based on “shareability” as the parameter.
This shareability parameter is the foundation of the programmatic advertising mode developed by the digital platform. Recently, programmatic advertising has continued to grow amid the decline of direct advertising. The problem is, programmatic advertising encourages media managers to pursue as much traffic as possible. Shareability becomes a paradigm. The news presented by cyber media is primarily intended to generate the largest possible number of clicks, shares, comments and reader interactions with the content.
In this context, the term clickbait journalism was born, which refers to the trend of spreading bombastic, sensationalist news titles that do not match the facts presented in the body of the news. News headlines are primarily intended as bait to lure reader clicks.
What happens next is the trend of tabloidization of the media space as reflected in the case of Vanessa Angel. Celebrity news can dominate the media space for days. Public issues are often discussed in a vulgar, sensational or controversial manner. Efforts to pursue clicks are more dominant than efforts to discuss solutions to overcome common problems.
It is becoming more and more common to find that media reports care less about the content’s appropriateness, as they are overwhelmed by the push for traffic. Even in newsroom, journalists are starting to share roles with content creators whose main task is to create content that can generate the highest possible page views.
The revenue from programmatic advertising, when viewed in the short term, indeed contributes to the media. For media managers, programmatic advertising is like passive income. Without having to negotiate with advertisers, without bothering to maintain the quality of the news, the ads will come by themselves, as long as website traffic is high. However, in the long term, media managers should be aware that the greater the programmatic income, the less control the media managers have over the businesses they run. How content is produced, what the qualifications are and how content is distributed and monetized are all controlled by digital platforms.
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The greater the dependence on programmatic advertising, the more the media will rely on digital platforms. This is like a digital platform company ultimately determining the fate of the mass media.
"In the long term, the trend of dependence on programmatic advertising is a major defeat for publishers in controlling their business," Indonesia Digital Association chairperson Dian Gemiano said in a Press Council-hosted discussion, themed "Building a Sustainable Mass Media Model", on 4 Nov., 2021.
What needs to be done? Detaching completely from digital platforms is definitely not a realistic option. What needs to be done is changing how the national media industry builds independence relative to digital platforms. Excessive dependence on global platforms not only weakens the vitality of national mass media, but also has a negative impact on the quality of journalism more broadly. The trend of tabloidization of media coverage is an alarm for the civility of our mass media.
Agus Sudibyo, Press Council member, lecturer at ATVI Jakarta
This article was translated by Musthofid.