Review article
The actual reach of news portals – the relationship between readership, credibility and influence
Božo Skoko
orcid.org/0000-0002-4028-7128
; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Political Sciences
Nikola Vrdoljak
; Agency 404, Zagreb
Abstract
Internet media, especially news portals, are gaining increasing influence on a daily basis in the media and advertising market, as well as in public relations. However, their development is not accompanied by a satisfactory level of measurement of their reach. In Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, for the most part, they are compared and ranked according to unique users and page impressions, while still developing are monitoring of time spent on site, as well as socio-demographic data on users of specific content. The paper deals with the phenomenon of the race for as many “clicks” as possible, which enable more advertisements, and critically examines such an approach given that the number of website visitors does not provide answers to questions like – to what extent do we believe the published content, to what extent do we consider it credible, and what is the portal’s actual influence? The authors point to the one-dimensionality of the existing metrics since it arises primarily from the requirements of measuring due to advertising, that is, media planning and buying, therefore, there are insufficient values and information for a more complete assessment of their credibility and influence, including planning in public relations. Namely, the question remains open as to where to publish some media content if our goal for is to reach our target groups and influence their opinions and behaviours, given that this is not necessarily enabled by the most popular portal, but rather the one whose brand guarantees a certain content value to its own readers. The authors provide guidelines for the quality monitoring and assessment of news portals.
Keywords
internet; portals; readership; clicks; credibility; influence
Hrčak ID:
212439
URI
Publication date:
29.11.2018.
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