Media Monitor: Opinion power of important Swiss media declining
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.
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" before. It did so on behalf of the Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM).
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%, for 20 minutes 12 percent. 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 New Zurich Newspaper increased by ten percent, YouTube and Instagram by three and seven percent respectively. The reach and therefore the opinion power of the short video app Tiktok increased by 69% - although still at a low level overall, according to the study.
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
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 online had overtaken television as the most influential media genre for the first time (Werbewoche.ch reported). (SDA/swi)
