Comparing influence of alternative and main stream media in Singapore

Using the web traffic data from Alexa (here), I examine the relative influence of the alternative media (AM, reporting Opposition political views) vs the main stream media (MSM) in Singapore.

My conclusion is that the relative online influence of MSM to AM is somewhere between 4:3 (MSM at weakest) and 7:3 (MSM at strongest).

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Speculation on the Netizens

After mulling over the numbers, I offer here a speculative breakdown of the electorate into Netizens (referring to netizens who are interested in socio-political issues; they are overwhelmingly pro-Alternatives) and non-Netizens.

Though the internet penetration rate in Singapore is 77.82% (here), I think only 30% of the electorate read English language MSM/AM online. Of these, 1/3 read AM. We define Netizens to be these AM readers, who constitute 10% of the electorate.

(There are thus 235,000 Netizens. Of relevance is the fact that Nicole Seah has 103,800 likes at 6:30 pm on May 21, 2011.)

85% of the Netizens (10% of the electorate) and 35% of the non-Netizens (90% of the electorate) voted for the Alternatives.  Thus 40% of the entire electorate voted for the Alternatives. (0.1x0.85+0.9x0.35=0.4)

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The two graphs (above) show the global daily reach (user numbers) and pageviews over the last month (April 18-May 19) of :

• the most popular main stream media site: Channel News Asia (CNA),
• the main alternative news-and-opinions sites: The Temasek Review (TR) and The Online Citizen (TOC), 
• the most popular Alternative Parties online: The Workers' Party (WP) and the SDP.

The following table gives the Alexa data for the last month.

PV=pageviews. The percentages are global percentages. CNA has a greater presence outside Singapore than the other four sites, and its Singapore percentages should be somewhat lower (but not significantly, I suspect) than its global percentages.  Reach* and PV* are reach(%) and PV(%) scaled to make the CNA figures 100.

	reach (%)	reach*	PV (%)	PV*
CNA	0.03590	100.00	0.00139	100.00
TR	0.01530	42.62	0.00046	33.09
TOC	0.01114	31.03	0.00028	20.14
WP	0.00570	15.88	0.00015	10.79
SDP	0.00400	11.14	0.00010	7.19

If the main stream media (MSM, represented by CNA) reaches 100 people online, then the alternative media (AM, represented by TR)  reaches 42.62 people.

Scenario 1

If all 42.64 people who read TR also read CNA, then only 57.36 (=100-42.62) people out of 100 are exclusive MSM readers.

In this case, the relative influence of MSM to AM can be crudely estimated to be 57.36% : 42.64%, or about 4:3.  In other words, among the online Singaporeans, 4/7 are exclusively MSM readers, and 3/7 read AM as well as MSM.

Scenario 2

In the other extreme, if no CNA reader reads TR, and no TR reader reads CNA, then the relative influence of MSM to AM can be estimated to be 100.00 : 42.64, or 70.11%:29.89%,  i.e. 7:3.

In conclusion, the relative online influence of MSM to AM is somewhere between 4:3 (MSM at weakest) and 7:3 (MSM at strongest).