Comparison of Publishing and Consumption Patterns in Greek Media Websites

Evangelia Avraam,Charalampos Dimoulas,Andreas Veglis

doi:10.3390/journalmedia3010011

Evangelia Avraam, Charalampos Dimoulas + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia3010011

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Abstract

The web publishing strategy of media organizations is a very important factor in their success. The aim of the strategy is to cover their audience’s news article consumption needs, but is this valid? In order to address this question, this paper compares data from two studies, namely a study that explored the publishing patterns of the top 22 Greek media websites and a second study that focused on web news article consumption habits. The results indicate that there are various deviations between the compared data, and thus the study concludes that Greek media organization publishing strategy is not aligned with the audience consumption needs. The identified discrepancies have to do with the published news articles after 14:00 during weekdays as well as the news articles that are available during weekends. Additionally, it seems that media organizations publish a very limited number of articles on specific thematic categories that the audience is interested in reading. Specific actions were also proposed in order to alleviate those deviations and thus improve the readability of the media organizations.

Highlights

The digitalization of media companies began in the early 1980s and was steadily accelerated with the introduction of the internet and its services
This paper attempts to investigate whether media organizations’ publishing patterns are compatible with audience’s consumption patterns and if there are deviations, to propose any necessary adjustments that need to be made in order for a media organization to optimize their publishing strategy and increase the dissemination of their news and their revenues
The available data include the average number of articles published per day of the week and the consumption rates that state the probability of consuming news on each day of the week

Summary

Introduction

The digitalization of media companies began in the early 1980s and was steadily accelerated with the introduction of the internet and its services. Media companies have gradually transformed into multichannel organizations, offering alternative dissemination channels (www, RSS, web-push notifications, mobile apps, social networking, microblogging to name some of them) (Veglis 2012), while struggling to retain their traditional publication channels (Lawson-Borders 2003). In this way, they were able to approach different audience groups that possess distinct news consumption characteristics and are not employing traditional media channels (print, radio, and TV) (Avraam et al 2021a; Taneja et al 2012). If that is a temporary change, it remains to be seen

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