Aggregators Make It Possible For Independent Voices To Be Heard In Kenya Tightly Controlled News Circuit
Aggregators make it possible for independent voices to be heard in Kenya's tightly controlled news circuit
Kenyans are obsessively interested in the news. No, literally, the Swahili greeting "Habari," which means "Any news?" in English, translates as "Any news?"
Every person has a favorite publication that they enjoy reading. Each publication, in turn, tells a distinct story.
In Kenya, data-driven digital media is displacing print media as the dominant form of communication. In a world that is becoming increasingly hectic and digital, media consumption is shifting. There is a new generation of news aggregators that are scrollable and swipeable, which are replacing the traditional morning newspaper and have the potential to completely transform Kenya's media landscape.
The origins of Kenyan media
In a country with a population of 52 million people, only a few formal media outlets publish print news. With an average cost of $0.54 per newspaper, keeping up with the news can be expensive.
Nation Media Group is the publisher of the Daily Nation. It is the most widely read news publication in Kenya, with a daily circulation of 200,000 copies.
Standard Group comes in second place, thanks to the presence of three subsidiary brands: The Standard newspaper, The Standard on Saturday newspaper, and The Standard on Sunday newspaper. More than a century ago, it began as a colonial newspaper devoted to reporting on British news. African editors took over the paper's management in 1970 and refocused it on local reporting, resulting in the publication's rebirth.
When it comes to finding diverse content and human stories in an increasingly digital society, news aggregators offer a new way for readers to do so.
Aggregators collect news from multiple sources and present it in one scrollable feed, using artificial intelligence to make the process easier for users. Indeed, the emergence of news aggregators has altered the global news industry beyond all reasonable doubt.
After the Agence France-Presse (AFP) sued Google in 2005, the company sought an injunction to prevent Google News from displaying the AFP's content, alleging that the site's photographs and articles were being reproduced in violation of the site's intellectual property rights. After two years of litigation, the American Federation of Press and Google reached a settlement and entered into a content licensing agreement.
Opta News is yet another digital news aggregator that is aimed squarely at African newsreaders and viewers. It's a member of the Opera technology family, and it's free. If the name Opay sounds familiar, it's because it was founded by Opera, which raised $400 million from Softbank Vision Fund 2 in late August. Opay is a payment service provider. The aggregator is based on a popular Chinese mobile application called Jinri Toutiao (which translates as "Today's Headlines" in English). In 2018, Opera News reached a milestone of ten million users in Africa, and the company plans to expand into Kenya in 2020, among other countries.
The artificial intelligence (AI) of Opera News, like that of other aggregators such as Google News and Flipboard, crawls the internet in search of new content. However, in contrast to other news aggregation behemoths, Opera News is focused on curating original, local, news-pulling stories from local media and cultivating a community of content creators who are compensated based on a set of metrics, including article clicks, in order to build a sustainable business model.
Gathering digital news in a world where the latest and greatest political stories are the only thing that matters requires a paradigm shift. In the world of news aggregation, changing the algorithm is as simple as changing the settings on your computer.
"A large number of people clicking this [and] our artificial intelligence picks up on this was the basis for some of the parameters we had previously established. As a result, those who do not abide by the law will be denied access to the highway "Anthory Ilari, Team Leader of Opera News East Africa, explained the situation.
Ilari discovered that this had a direct impact on the motivation of Opera News' content creators to cover more encompassing Kenyan stories.
The algorithm has been tweaked by Ilari's team to prioritize original, non-political content in the ranking system and feed, in order to address this issue.
When asked about the most popular articles on Opera News, trained journalist Albert Bittok, who contributes in his spare time, stated that those that dealt with human interest and other subjects such as politics, sports, and agriculture received the most views and payments.
It was discovered that 35% of the headlines on the Opera News app were non-political and focused on Kenyan celebrity gossip, according to the organization. However, political content dominated the recommended posts on the For You page, accounting for 70% of all recommendations.
Agitating aggregation
But news aggregators are not the be-all and end-all solution to the problem of diversifying Kenyan news coverage. Aggregators, like the majority of technological advances, have their limitations. The Acting Director of Wits University's Wits Centre for Journalism, Dr. Dinesh Balliah, believes the use of aggregators demonstrates a growing demand for "convenience in the global economy," but he believes that, as with print media, reliance on a single aggregator can be counterproductive.
She stated, "If news consumers are reliant on a single aggregator, they are not reading intertextually and are therefore receiving a single narrative." According to her, "Aggregators, such as social media platforms, must assist news organizations in order for them to remain viable."
It takes constant tweaking, learning, and development to keep up with the millions of clicks that take place every few hours in a world where news aggregation is the norm. As of 2020, Kenya had an internet penetration rate of 85 percent, with cell phones accounting for 76 percent of all internet access. Kenya's elections in 2022 will bring greater difficulty than ever before in content moderation, and the country's news aggregators will have to step up their game in order to compete.
