Translation and Subtitles: Abir Kopty – Freie Universität Berlin
According to a newly published research, internet is considered the most used tool for following the news among Palestinians. Internet penetration have reached 2 million users in Palestine. More than 85% of them rely on Social Media to follow the news and 68% rely on the news websites.
Around 30% of the Palestinian public follow the news on TV. The newspapers and radio are the least favorable by Palestinians, where radio listeners are around 25% and Newspaper readers are around 20%.
Which media tools you use to get the news and information?
- I use is the internet the most because I am mostly on my laptop or computer. I surf the Palestinian, Arabic and international news websites including the Social Media. I do listen to the radio whenever I am driving.
- Internet.
Why?
Easy. You do not need to go to the shop to get the newspaper. You can directly visit any website anywhere any time to get the most updated news, unlike the newspapers that publishes news that happened ten hours ago. As for the internet, you get the news of few hours or even minutes ago.
- My time and work is linked to internet, I might spend my whole day on the internet. I could look at news, entertainment, study or work, everything through internet.
- You can say 95% of the time is spent on the computer and 5% on TV. TV became a secondary tool. TV is becoming a tradition just to bring the family together but this even fading because everyone is preferring to be with his computer.
- I do not watch TV that much. Sometime during the holidays, I watch some news of certain events but otherwise I do not use it for news.
- Part of our tradition is when there is a newspaper at home, one could look at it. But no one is committed to go and buy the newspaper for news.
Few years back, we used other mediums to get information, these mediums, such as the newspapers, are dying now. Even flyers, which is used to inform people about certain events, are being replaced by events on Social Media which is more effective. Social Media is also taking a different role, where it is becoming a better tool for documentation and also organizing calendars for events. We also can notice that people are using Social Media for live streaming, people bring a new way to talk about a new story or issue. Now we have different people that talk in different ways about their problems, ambitions, ideas, and the reality they live in.