Quantifying the still limited reach of blogging and social networking

Tuesday, 21 June 2011 05:57

Written by Danilo Araña Arao

As a journalist, I agree that the blogosphere and social media are good sources of leads for stories to write. Some of the better-written blogs are even sometimes quoted by the so-called traditional media. As regards social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, I’m sure you’re aware that there are well-researched status updates and tweets that provide fresh data or analyses.

In other words, we could learn from some blogs and social media accounts. But unlike some people who have declared the eventual “death” of print, TV and radio as a result of the convergence of new media (of which blogging and social networking are part), I prefer to take a more pragmatic, level-headed view as regards the influence of blogs and social media in particular and the Internet in general.

Yes, the Internet is popular but is not as ubiquitous as we think (or, at least, not yet). Latest data from Internet World Stats (internetworldstats.com) show that out of 6.9 billion people living in this planet, only 2.1 billion of them are Internet users. This simply means that only three out of 10 people worldwide are Internet users (given that the global Internet penetration rate of 30.2 percent).

In the case of Asia, the Internet penetration rate is lower at 23.8 percent though it’s noticeable that the growth rate of Internet users in this continent grew by 706.9 percent from 2000 to 2011. This rate is higher than the global growth rate of 480.4 percent during the same period.

As regards the social networking site Facebook, latest data from socialbakers.com (formerly facebakers.com) show that there are 704,139,500 Facebook users worldwide. It must be stressed, however, that there are individuals who have more than one Facebook account and that some accounts are not necessarily real people.

There are reportedly 166,499,480 Facebook users in Asia, for a penetration rate of 4.3 percent. It must be kept in mind, however, that the wide development gap in Asian countries has resulted in unequal levels of access to the Internet in general and Facebook in particular. For example, Brunei and Singapore have the highest penetration rate in Asia since 53.61% and 52.66% of their respective populations use Facebook. China, believe it or not, has the lowest penetration rate in Asia with a mere 0.04% of its population as Facebook users.

These figures give us an idea of the still limited reach of blogging and social networking, and the Internet for that matter. You can even argue that the popularity of certain aspects of new media (e.g., blog entries and tweets of celebrities) do not happen on their own but are sometimes facilitated by coverage of the so-called old media (television in particular).

If we would analyze the trend in television programming, comments from social media like Facebook and Twitter are integrated into the content. Even news and public affairs programs have adopted this trend as they show feedback coming from cyberspace, sometimes even in real time.

It is in this context that the limited reach of the new is complemented by the well-established scope and influence of the old. In practice, the Internet does not compete with the traditional media as they find a way to complement each other.

While the use of new technologies is most welcome in the so-called old media, what still proves to be necessary is the age-old practice of gatekeeping where the media practitioner separates the chaff from the grain, so to speak. This is the only way a responsible journalist and media worker could carefully select sources of information from the vast universe called cyberspace.

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