I attended this Jordan Media Survey event the other day and I’ve been looking over the results of the survey which you can read for yourself here (PDF). While I think the polling sample was too small, there are a few unique results that I wanted to sum up in bullet points. Radio now outranks all other modes of news, including the daily papers, magazines, and even JTV. I wish the survey did something more extensive on online newspapers and websites, including blogs. New media is growing in importance, and numbers should be assessed now for future reference. As for the results, it really begs the question as to whether reading is dying in Jordan.
– 56.9% listen to radio
– 51.8% read any publications
Of those that do read:
– Daily: 58.2% are Males, 41.8 Females.
– Monthly: 67% are Females, 33% Males.
– Only 42.8% read the daily newspapers, with the highest number going to Al-Rai, 28.9%, followed by Al-Ghad 15.2%
– Despite differences in gender, age and educational backgrounds, West Amman and East Amman read the daily papers at about the same rate, with the former being only slightly higher than the latter.
– People will read Al-Ghad and Al-Rai mostly for political news, and Al-Dustour for sports and economic news.
Since we’re all flustered with the amount of ads in the dailies, the survey asked readers what ads they remembered seeing:
– The highest amount, 18%, said brands, with Zain, Orange, Umniah and banks ranking respectively. The second highest, 12.8%, was real-estate.
– Usually read columnists include, Fahed Al Fankek, followed by Ahmad Al Zoubi, Al Qallab, Rakan Majali, Masarweh, Samih Ma’ayteh.
The most interesting part about the survey results was that they were not able to gauge the level of readership of the English language magazines due to the fact that the aggregate statistics they gathered all combined didn’t provide any percentage points. So I wonder how many .0 % should be for the English magazines readers .00000000000%.
Side bar note: Nas, are you sure that you are pursuing the appropriate career path?
They can’t just simply ignore online media! Hello, it’s the Internet age! I read Al-Rai and Al-ghad on daily basis but can’t remember how many years passed since I bought one! And I’m sure lots of people do the same..
Radio now outranks all other modes of news, including the daily papers, magazines, and even JTV.
news ?? that was fourth with 10.4 unless you consider al-wakeel as news :S
plus they didn’t even touch on televised media at all, so saying that its even out ranks JTV is a bit of a stretch for as we know televised media is the foremost method of news acquisition in jordan, unless you have statistics to contest that.
the main pattern that i could draw from the survey was that Jordanians have short attention spans and are far too forgetful to draw any conclusions from reading or have much of a loyalty for a writer. hell the majority doesn’t find those annoying commercial text messages annoying, hell they don’t find spam annoying either 😛 jordanians are certainly a different breed
reading al rai should not be considered reading, i would call it conditioning and programming
It is an expected thing, studies have also shown that older people are the ones who actually buy and read newspapers while younger people stick to other sources of information.
Hatem: in our case, it’s not about how many are reading but “who” is reading. as for me, when i need career advice you’ll be the first person i’ll contact.
bambam: i agree with you. like i said, i think the sample was too small and not over a long enough period. but i also think that based on purely observation, people do read dailies more than they watch JTV, whose viewership has declined in recent years due to satellite programming.
Markus: I agree, but it’s good to check the pulse of the state on issues.
If we are a nation that doesn’t read, how on Earth are we going to succeed? My friend just got back from the Republic of Congo which was suffering from a civil war, and the first thing he noticed was that everyone reads there, and we are talking about a very primitive country.
I personaly only read the offcial government controlled papers to know who died, what job offers are out there and how good are the writers are lying in their daily columns!
I get the other infromation from the Internet or reading books and magazines,,,,,did i mention blogs as well 😉
When was it alive laish ?
I do most of my reading online, but I still subscribe to al-ghad to combat toilet boredom – no offense intended to al-ghad, but it’s really very skimpy, and most of it is obituaries.