Mobile media: A threat?

With South Africa being largely penetrated by cellular technology, accessing the news from one’s cellphone has become a popular development in the South African media landscape. One does not need the fanciest phone to do this either, it can be done by accessing 3G (the mobile internet) or by subscribing to an SMS news service. Peni Dodo speaks to South African experts in the media field to establish how this will impact more traditional forms of media in the country.

According to an article published on Reuters online at the beginning of this year, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions reached 3.3 billion users at the end of 2007. This is half the world’s population. Compared to older media, this shows an extraordinarily large growth of a medium in a relatively short time - cellular phones were introduced to South Africa less than two decades ago.

Inevitably, the media have caught onto this trend and now a fast, accessible and cheap version of the news and current affairs is available on one’s cellular phone, either by subscribing to an SMS service or by using 3G (the mobile internet). 3G stands for third generation, as internet-enabled mobiles are the third phase in mobile technology (analogue cellular and digital PCS were the first and second).

Matthew Buckland, former general manager of the website, Mail&Guardian Online, says South Africa has a high cellular phone penetration rate and this has poised mobile technology to be the mass media device of the future in South Africa.

Buckland says an example of this is the large online company Google announcing last year that it would make a “big mobile play” in South Africa. That’s not surprising on a continent that has more mobile users than fixed-line telephone users.

Professor Anton Harber, Head of the Journalism Department at Wits University, however, feels this won’t have a large impact on more traditional media forms. He says, “You will get only very brief, very quick news this way and will still need to go to other media to get more. I think it will add to the options available for news and information, but not displace anything else”.

Gregor Rohrig, New Media Specialist at Avusa Media, works with mobile applications for the media group. In an email interview, he said he too feels that more traditional forms of media need not see mobile technology as a threat but rather as an aid. “Traditional media forms won’t really be impacted since the traditional media forms offer a different type of content and experience. What needs to change, however, is the type of content being produced, since content for print, online, and mobile differs immensely due to the means (output) through which it is consumed.”

Other journalism departments, such as Rhodes University’s School of Journalism, are embracing this new media approach in their teachings. Guy Berger, Head of the Journalism School says, “As cellphones become more powerful and their screens get bigger, and as the mass media take on board the value of citizen journalism, so the South African public information circuit can extend across the digital divide.”

Part of the Rhodes project involves using cellphone power to cultivate citizen journalists among local high school learners. Over the next year, the cellphone journalism project will offer 80 senior scholars a chance to be part of the information loop by getting targeted news feeds on their cellphones. The content will be about local politics, school news, sports and entertainment, and emanate largely from the Grocott’s Mail newspaper and Rhodes journalism students.

Harber said in a telephonic interview that he expects this kind of journalism will strengthen the need for news agencies and that in the next few years these will boom. He also feels that larger media corporations in the country will have a role to play in this new media form. “What is important for an unknown new medium like this is experimentation with different kinds of content to see what works best, and it is the larger companies like Naspers which can do this.”

Rohrig too feels that mobile technology will stimulate the development of multimedia, as new mobile devices are all equipped to output video, images and sound. He also says the behaviour of mobile users is changing as users are no longer merely using their mobiles as phones but rather as media devices. He said in the interview, “The current and future mobile technologies are aimed at giving users rich-media experiences, which will definitely include the multimedia offerings of media companies. Newsrooms need to adapt to a new form of mobile reporting, which will be challenging since they will be focusing on three different content outputs: print, online (web), and mobile.”

It was previously thought that accessing news from your mobile phone was an elite form of accessing the news, but the opposite has proved true with the cellular phone market penetrating more than 90% of South Africa, according to OMD. Users don’t need the most high-tech, expensive phones to access the web. Screens are getting bigger and better. It’s getting easier and cheaper to surf the internet via cellphones. This has proven that mobile media cuts across the income gap, with the ability to appeal to both high and low-income earners.

But why is the mobile market so popular in South Africa? Rohrig feels the lack of internet connectivity has definitely played a major part in mobile technology being welcomed with open arms. “The barriers to entry to be online and consume media have previously been very high. This has resulted in people using their mobile phones to communicate and go online more, since nearly every South African owns a mobile phone. Mobile phones now offer a high value of entertainment, since they are completely customisable, and since they can output rich media,” says Rohrig.

This means that cellphone service providers may be set to dominate all aspects of the media landscape in the future.

Harber, however, is doubtful: “I don’t think it will affect the other media, as it only fills a very particular slot for quick, short news.” Rohrig makes it clear that news that is short is not automatically of a lower quality. “Content needs to be much shorter and to the point in comparison to content added to a print publication or a news website. This does not necessarily mean that the content will be of lower quality, the content will just be more concise.”

However, the question needs to be asked: Who owns the mobile market? Is it the service providers or the content providers? According to Ad Review, a supplement in the May 2008 edition of FinWeek, it would be a gross misperception to view cellphone operators as the only players in the market. The middle men involved in this technology are those that allow users of wireless technology to gain access to the internet, those that bypass the cellular operators by using Bluetooth technology, content providers and producers. According to Ad Review, “Control of this particular market will never rest with the media owner anyway, but rather with the consumers themselves”.

Although this medium has much hype surrounding it and the potential to change the face of the South African media landscape, more traditional forms of media need not worry. For the present, what is available on mobile is fast, quick and cheap news, which means one is still dependant on other media for in-depth
understanding and analysis.