The Impact of Social Media on Traditional Media in Tanzania: A Case of Tanzania Standard Newspapers Limited (TSN) and Mwananchi Communication Limited (MCL) Newspapers.

John, Irene Kokwijuka (2020) The Impact of Social Media on Traditional Media in Tanzania: A Case of Tanzania Standard Newspapers Limited (TSN) and Mwananchi Communication Limited (MCL) Newspapers. Masters thesis, The Open University of Tanzania.

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Abstract

This study investigates the impact of social media on traditional media in Tanzania, particularly, Tanzania Standard Newspapers (TSN) and Mwananchi Communication Limited (MCL). This study has four specific objectives: Firstly, to observe how TSN and MCL incorporate social media with traditional media; secondly, to scrutinize the strategy used by TSN and MCL to merge social media into traditional media production; thirdly, to investigate the impact of social media on TSN and MCL traditional media production; and lastly but not a least, to examine readers’ perception on the impact of social media on traditional media in TSN and MCL. This research employs descriptive research design by using both qualitative and quantitative methods to collect and analyse data. The study draw on self- administered questionnaires to obtain information from 250 respondents thus includes readers of TSN news outlets namely, Daily News, Habari Leo and Spoti leo, and readers of MCL news outlets particularly, the Citizen, Mwananchi and Mwanaspoti. The study also employs purposively and simple randomly sampling to interview and investigate key informants from TSN and MCL. The researcher also used observation method to collect and analyze data about the impact of social media on traditional media in Tanzania. The findings of this study revealed that both TSN and MCL have incorporated social media with traditional media by introducing electronic media outlets such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and website for electronic newspapers known as e-papers or m-papers. Both TSN and MCL use various strategies to ensure sustainability of traditional newspapers in the stiff competition brought by digital technology in the media market. The strategy includes introducing online media to support the newspapers, using breaking news as tips of stories for traditional newspapers and developing it in detail in order to influence readers to buy and read full incidences in the hardcopy of newspapers. This also makes traditional newspaper more reliable by sticking to the media ethics. The findings shows that social media has positive impact on traditional media because it is very interactive and easy to get customers’ feedback about products and services of traditional media. The findings indicate that social media opened a media platform for the audience to discuss various issues and provide feedback to the sender, which enhanced traditional media. That social media has created Netizen and blogosphere instead of public sphere, which are normally used to discuss public issues in the traditional media. The findings also shows that social media has negative impact on traditional media; it affects media market business due to the decrease of newspaper speculation and advertisement space. The findings shows that newspaper readers had shifted from analogue to a digital society as all of 250 respondents said they were using smart phones to read news every day. The findings revealed that 60% of respondents agreed that social media enabled them to get news, even if they did not have money to buy newspapers. This study recommends that all media professionals should be trained on how to reach and establish two-way communication with their audiences using social media news outlets. Since all respondents preferred to get news in detail, TSN and MCL might introduce e-papers of which price would be affordable to enable youths to get access to these e-papers or m-papers.

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