Opinion power of important Swiss media declining, according to study
Published: Friday, Dec 1st 2023, 13:40
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Well-known Swiss media brands and social media platforms such as the TV station SRF 1, "20 Minuten" and Facebook lost a lot of reach and therefore opinion power in the past year. The "Neue Zürcher Zeitung", YouTube, Instagram and Tiktok were able to make gains. These are the findings of the latest Media Monitor Switzerland.
According to the study published this week, the television channel SRF 1 lost 19% of its opinion power compared to the previous year. The decline for Facebook was 13% and for "20 Minuten" 12%. The French-language SRG TV channel RTS 1 and the German channels ARD and ZDF also lost shares in the double-digit percentage range. The same applies to watson.ch.
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung increased by ten percent, YouTube and Instagram by three and seven percent respectively. The reach and thus the opinion power of the short video app Tiktok increased - according to the study, still at a low level overall - by 69%.
Overall, the cumulative opinion power of all 176 media brands and social media channels analyzed decreased by just under seven percent in 2022 compared to the previous year. As large brands in particular suffered from this decrease, the gap between larger and smaller media brands has tended to close. This is "a good sign for diversity of opinion."
Traditional media continue to crumble
For the sixth time, the Zurich-based media and communications research and consulting company Publicom examined the performance of the media in shaping public opinion in Switzerland and presented the results in the "Media Monitor". It did this on behalf of the Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM).
In the latest report, Publicom also writes that a multi-year comparison shows a shift in opinion power shares away from the traditional media types of print, radio and TV towards online and social media.
"This means that ever larger parts of the opinion market are increasingly moving away from the direct sphere of influence of Swiss media promotion." Digitization and the associated, primarily age-related changes in media use must become the focus of politics, regulation and business.
Last year, Publicom reported that, for the first time, online had replaced television as the most influential type of media.
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