Date of Award

2-2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Digital Journalism (MADJ)

First Supervisor/Advisor

Wambui Wamunyu

Second Supervisor/Advisor

Joyce Omwoha

Department

Graduate School of Media and Communications

Abstract

Globally, media companies have been grappling with declining revenues. Content is the primary good they sell to consumers; the main way they make revenues. Yet as technology has changed in recent times, the consumers’ habits have changed, and so have the ability of media companies to make money out of the content they produce. The focus of this research was the evaluation of content selection based on two websites: Citizen Digital and Tuko websites. The study sought to identify the top stories of each website and find out the nature and type of the content offered by the websites and their editors’ selection criteria for content. It also sought to establish the value audiences got from consuming website content. The research was anchored on the Uses and Gratifications theory and the Theory of Disruptive Innovation. It employed content analysis, interviews and focus group discussions to achieve the study objectives. The research found that the two websites had a variety of subject categories designed to target different user needs, with Tuko having a wider variety than Citizen – though the latter had developed non-news content separately. Tuko’s content was dominated by stories on entertainment, local news, and relationships, while most of Citizen’s was mainly news. The choice of content by producers for Tuko was primarily on revenue-generation potential, while Citizen was geared more towards the growth of mass but diverse audiences. That affected what consumers felt about content, with Citizen’s audiences seeking more diversity while Tuko consumers seeking more depth and credibility. The study recommends that the two websites anticipate user needs and work around solutions for them before it becomes critical, as well as consider producing more practical, non-news content and find ways to monetise it. It also calls for better integration of multimedia content to enhance content consumption without interfering with navigability. In all, the study recommends that Kenyan online websites can infuse value in their content by combining the strengths that came out of the evaluation of each of the two websites.

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