Social networks are an ‘existential threat’ to the media, says UNESCO

The pull of audiences and content from social networks and other Internet giants in recent years has allowed them to capture the bulk of advertising revenueso that the professional media have been displaced and they suffer an “existential threat”, according to UNESCO.

In a report on global trends in freedom of expression and media development between 2016 and 2021 published this Thursday, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) explains that in the last five years the advertising income of newspapers has been reduced by half and they now account for just 5% of the total, compared to 21% in 2010.

The share of the internet giants in that period has risen from 17% to 54%. This double trend, which has intensified during the pandemic, brings header closures and job losses. Two thirds of the journalists who are still in the job feel less safe since the covid-19 shock began.

Newspaper circulation was already on the decline since before the coronavirus arrived, but in 2020 there was a real collapse (13% compared to the previous year) and after a technical rebound in 2021 (+2.3% ), further declines are expected this year and the following.

Social networks unseat the media

That worldwide print run has gone from 552 million daily copies in 2016 to 474 million in 2021, while social network users rose from 2.3 billion to 4.2 billion in the same period.

As if that were not enough, this crisis of the economic model of the media occurs in a context of “erosion of press freedoms”, according to UNESCO, which illustrates it with the fact that in at least 160 countries in the world there are criminal laws that criminalize defamation.

Since 2016, regulations have been approved or modified in 44 countries to regulate Internet content that, due to its “too imprecise” formulation or because of the “disproportionate punishments” that they contemplate, “threaten freedom of expression and freedom of the press online”.

The authors of the study also refer to the risk they pose to the “information as a common good” erroneous content and disinformation, favored by the reduction of trust in the media and the growing presence of social networks in the daily lives of millions of people.

Because Internet companies often act as vectors and accelerators in its diffusion. According to an investigation by the Fondazione Bruno Kessler, in September 2020 alone, more than a million messages circulated on Twitter with accurate, unreliable, or misleading information related to the pandemic.

Regarding the safety of journalists, UNESCO indicates that 400 were killed for their work or while carrying out their work from 2016 to the end of 2020 (455 to the end of 2021), compared to 491 in the previous five years.

It also shows concern about the “impunity” surrounding these murderssince only 13% of those registered since 2006 can now be considered judicially resolved.

Record number of journalists imprisoned in 30 years

If what is observed are the professionals who have been imprisoned, in 2020 it reached 274, the highest number in a single year in the last three decades.

Expulsions of foreign correspondents and attacks on journalists reporting on protests are frequent. Between January and August 2021, UNESCO was aware of this type of action in coverage of demonstrations, protests and riots in at least 60 countries from all regions of the world. Since 2015, at least 13 journalists have been killed in those coverages.

Another new and growing trend is that of “massive online violence against journalists”, and that disproportionately affects women who do this job. Of the 625 women journalists who responded to a survey on that issue, 73% said they had experienced online violence during their work.

For the organization, this situation requires governments to take action in three key areas to support the economic viability of independent media; develop the “media and information literacy” of citizens”; and promote regulations in support of “the production of free and pluralistic news.” (I)