Let’s look into what Reuters Digital News Report 2022 observes about the Indian journalistic environment. We’ll focus on the key observations and findings in this blog. Keep reading to look into trends and what’s working for the industry this year.
India, in 2022 has achieved an internet penetration rate of 54% which is both impressive and in need of evolution. The media industries are diverse in the country and tend to cater to the extremely diverse population by having publications in many different languages. Each and every little locality in the country needs a hyperlocal attention only on the basis of just language, for starters. The pandemic adversely affected the country and this led to media organizations banking on advertisement revenues for a long time. The Industry is quickly developing to make up for that COVID lag.
The mainstream media continues to shine this year as well with NDTV 24*7, India today and BBC news being the most popular offline brands. Bigger dailies like Hindustan times, Times of India and the Hindu continue to be highly recognized amongst the english speaking communities. The pandemic saw a lot of sensationalized stories on news channels - these also include the infamous prime time debates.
What’s interesting to note is that legacy publishers are facing a strong competition from digital-first brands that encourage independent journalism.
Reuters Digital News Report - 2022
This is promising for a lot of smaller publishers out there. While legacy publishers are seen banking on advertisement revenues - going so far as to use 6 pages straight of display ads, online counterparts have been banking on nonprofit revenue models as well as being fully driven by subscriptions and donations.
The digital market saw an overall growth of 29% in 2021 with ads and subscription revenue growing at 29%.
Reuters Digital News Report - 2022
The Indian media industry is also heavily focused on mobile-first content as over 72% access content through their smartphones today. Social media also has a huge impact on this. According to the sample, over 53% of people consume news on Youtube and over 51% through Whatsapp - popular social media platforms. While these platforms have added to the virality of the content, they also sadly aid to misinformation that a lot of news media houses have had to actively work against.
Many social media platforms, like Facebook, have come under intense scrutiny after investigations relieved that the platform had pushed polarizing content that influenced the mass resulting in lower trust in the media.
India dropped its position in the World Press Freedom index by eight places since last year, standing today at 150. The rising tensions in the country and the frequent internet bans have caused significant damage to the press and public. In order to deal with the situation, the Supreme court of India has set up a committee to better regulate press activities - the result of which remains to be seen.
Here are some positive trends in news consumption