Journalism is associated with the fourth power in the country. At least this is how it should work, like a power that moves things towards prosperity and clarity. It should represent the media institutions – a power with informative and intellectual-qualitative impact on the society. Magenta Consulting tried to find out how the Internet users react to the media metamorphoses from the online environment, exclusively for the Republic of Moldova.
How should (not) be the online journalistic material
The aspects that bother the most in a journalistic article are the politicized topics and those interpreted through a certain political color, especially when the media institution belongs to a certain party or political person. Also bothering are the flashy headlines, grammar mistakes, subjects that are not well documented or treated superficially, advertising banners from the web, irrelevant subjects, reports about traffic accidents and publicity and advertorials.
The results of the survey show that Moldovans are bothered to the highest extent by the media subjects and materials which are politicized, 92% of the respondents recognized that they could not tolerate the political interpretations of certain media institutions. On the second place, with a score of 89% in the top of the most annoying approaches of online journalists from Moldova are placed superficial articles, which are not completely explained and leave the readers with questions. The third place is won by illiteracy, in other words grammar errors – 85%.
CAUTION! SHOCKING subhead!
YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE IT! Flashy headlines, about the shocking, abominable and horrible cannot be tolerated by 82% of the respondents. The uninteresting or irrelevant subjects brought into discussion by certain media institutions are not to the liking of three quarters of Moldovans – 75%. Neither the images nor publicity videos which float on the websites of media institutions are welcome, 73% of the interviewees proved to be bothered by the advertising. Less annoying, according to the opinion of Moldovans is the news about traffic accidents and advertorials, 54% for each one of them.
Worth mentioning is the fact that the majority of those who declare themselves bothered by such journalistic approaches are young people aged between 20 and 24 years old. Also a very high share is constituted by the category of respondents with higher education, out of 100% of the respondents with higher education, 88% have a negative attitude regarding politicized journalistic materials, headlines with exclamatory marks at the end, biased presented information or superficially treated, etc.
The Moldovans who have participated in this survey, which aimed to evaluate practices, attitudes and knowledge of the internet users regarding online journalistic products and was carried out by Magenta Consulting, have actually expressed the expectations they have when they consume media. It remains to be seen if the media institutions from the Republic of Moldova will take into consideration the request the public formulated through this survey.
Methodology: The survey was carried out by Magenta Consulting on a conventional sample. The data were collected in the period 02 – 27 February, 2015. The data were gathered from the questionnaires which were collected using the online survey platform www.sondaj.md