TEMPO.CO, Yangon - On a blazing Sunday afternoon, on the outskirts of this country’s financial capital of Myanmar, thousands of people made their way to a football field, filling up the streets and almost putting the traffic to a standstill. Mostly wearing red shirts that they paired with longyis, they eagerly waited for the arrival of the National League of Democracy’s (NLD) Aung San Suu Kyi, who was making this one of her last stops before the country went to the November 8 polls.
By the time Daw Suu Kyi appeared, many were drenched in sweat, and sand was covering feet and bottoms, as well as up many nostrils. But there was an enthusiastic roar once the crowd caught a glimpse of the slight NLD leader, the cheers dying down only when she began to speak.
"Let us join hands in this elections," she said. "The development for the country is important and everyone is needed.”
Among her audience was 19-year-old Wyine Myat Noe Maung, who would vote for the first time in Myanmar’s 2015 elections, said to be the country’s first free polls in 25 years. There was no perspiration on the teenager’s brow and back, however, and her feet, bottom, and nostrils were sand-free. After all, she was at home in Yenkin Township several kilometres away, watching everything at the rally unfold on her iPhone.
"I would have loved to be there, but my mom advised me against attending it," the third-year English Language student at Dagon University said. And while her iPhone’s screen sported a nasty crack, she said watching the rally on it was “just as good as being there”.
In all probability, she was not the only one feeling one with Suu Kyi’s adoring throngs at the rally, even if they were actually somewhere else. These days, more and more Myanmar people are getting their news fix – including live coverage of events – via their smartphones, which have become rather ubiquitous here. It’s a trend that has not gone unnoticed among the Myanmar media, so much so that all the major publications now have an online presence.
"These days priority is for online, as competition from other publications is strong and stronger,” said Aye Mya Kyaw, senior editor of 7 Day Daily, which is among the more popular news sources on the Myanmar Net. “And with the elections closing in, we have to focus online, we have to upload the latest updates.”
7 Day began in 2002 as a weekly journal and established its Facebook page and website (www.7daydaily.com) in 2010. Two years later it started producing a daily newspaper as well, but nowadays taking care of its online content is occupying much of the staff’s time. That’s because aside from competition from other media outfits who are also online, the likes of 7 Day have to watch out as well for citizen journalists or even the garden-variety Facebook users who like to upload comments, pictures, or even videos of news events like the NLD rally on his or her own page.
This may not seem to be news in the Internet Age, where just about every media outfit everywhere has tried to go online, chasing an increasingly wired audience. In nearby Malaysia, for instance, at least a third of the country’s top 30 websites belong to news companies. Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the major dailies maintain websites as well.
What may be peculiar to Myanmar is the way many of its people access news online. In this country, going online means logging on Facebook, which is now the main source of news and information for many Myanmar citizens.
Based on the figures presented by the New York-based social media agency We Are Social in its “Digital, Social and Mobile in APAC (Asia and Pacific) 2015 Report”, in this country, the social medias (including Facebook) are used actively by seven percent of the population, or 3.64 million people. By contrast, Singapore has 91 percent of its population active on social media, Brunei 66 percent, and Malaysia 56 percent.
The same report, though, points out that the growth in the number of social media users in Myanmar over the past year is at an impressive 204 percent. (Interestingly, while Facebook is popular among the Myanmar population, the same cannot be said about micro-blogging site Twitter, which allows a limit of 140 characters. A Burmese character would require typing three to four Roman alphabet characters.)
Online media’s relentless pace
For sure, media outfits like 7 Day – and the telecom firms, obviously -- probably want every smartphone owner in Myanmar online all the time. For 7 Day’s Aye, one way to do that would be to have constantly fresh content. She also said that while they are careful in providing accurate and fair news in the Facebook posts, she and her editors try to their best to balance political news with general and entertainment news so as not to bore the readers.
Continuous updates during calamities, man-made and otherwise, or important events such as the elections (and even the campaign) are crucial as well. “For example,” said Aye, “during Suu Kyi's press conference, we sent two reporters and a photographer to cover the event, and during the press conference, we try and upload as much as possible."
"There were over 20 updates,” she said, “which included important points, short video clips, and pictures from the press conference."
By comparison, she said that 7 Day’s print version had only two stories encompassing the points posted by its staff on Facebook.
Interviewed days before the polls, Aye said that come election day, their reporters would be “sent to the important constituencies, and they would inform us about the percentage of victory won by the parties in those areas”. But she said this method of updating “close to real time” is carried out only during special events such as elections.
According to Aye, while 7 Day’s reporters have been uploading breaking news and information on Facebook since the 2012 by-elections, they are still trying to get used to the process.
Handling the Facebook page with another editor and two moderators as part of 7 Day’s Digital Team, Aye said that infographics for news pieces are occasionally tailor-made for Facebook page, and later published in 7 Day’s newspaper.
She said that pictures and articles are published in both the print version and on Facebook. But she noted that the former has limited space while the latter allows for more pictures and stories.
Making money -- not
Aye and the rest of her team’s efforts have apparently not gone for naught. According to Aye, 7 Day’s Facebook page now averages 100,000 hits daily and has more than 4.5 million followers – “the biggest in the industry”. The Prague-based social media-statistics monitor Socialbakers also puts the 7 Days News Journal on top of its list of the five fastest growing news outlets in Myanmar in terms of Facebook fans, crediting it with 4.728 million. Eleven Media Group has 4.585 million fans, it says, while The Irrawaddy (Burmese version) has 3.224 million, VOA Burmese Fan Page 2.364 million, and DVB TV News 1.716 million.
But all those millions do not necessarily translate into revenues for the media firms if the fans just stay put on the Facebook pages. Surprisingly, however, turning those hits into profits doesn’t seem to have occurred to 7 Day – yet.
“There is no specific plan to gain revenue (from the likes and views) from the Facebook page,” said Aye. “But perhaps we will try to look for a plan in the near future.”
At the same time, she hinted at a potential problem, pointing out, “With the increase of smartphones and Facebook users, where people can just read news online, it seems that the circulation (and sales) of weekly journals have been reduced.”
MIDO’s Htaike herself observed that in areas like Yangon and Mandalay, people would look for news via smartphones whenever print media are not available or accessible right away. The same may happen in the country’s ethnic areas once the data connectivity there improves, she said.
“For example,” said Htaike, “Telenor started its operations in Kayah State two months ago.” Kayah is the “most unconnected” region in Myanmar after the Chin State, she said.
Telenor also has plans to speak with other stakeholders from ethnic areas with armed groups sometime soon, according to Htaike.
Aye said that while news groups are not transparent on their current circulation numbers, it looked like “weekly journals are on a decline” based on the information from newspaper vendors.
"While there are those Burmese who still prefer to hold and read the newspapers, the young are engaged online through the smartphone," she said.
"But in my opinion,” Aye said, “it will take time to see any shift in media consumption among the people here.”
She said 7 Day Daily plans to focus on both print and online news for the next five years.
(This article, written by Bernard Cheah of the Malaysian Sun Daily, is produced for the 2015 Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) fellowship program raising a theme “Covering the coverage of the 2015 elections in Myanmar.”)
