Online media highlight communications challenges

A visit to any one of the big online news sites in South Africa will show quite plainly how messages are partially or completely misunderstood. So much so that it is small wonder that so much advertising is wasted on TV, radio and in newspapers and other print media, by consumers missing the point or just simply not getting it. Research has shown that roughly 20%of all advertising not only doesn't work but also acts negatively on the brand it is supposed to be promoting.

Disconnect

One of the best places to study this disconnect between medium and consumer is in the opinion section of an online news site.

Just looking at reader responses to columnists will show that:

• The majority of readers do not read an entire item.
  
• More than half leap to conclusions after only reading a few paragraphs.
  
• A large proportion read between the lines and draw wrong conclusions.
  
• Preconception play an enormous role.
  
• The majority of respondents react to certain keywords and read things like "racism" and " political partiality" into the most innocuous of comments.

The most immediate conclusion that comes to mind after examining the responses to these posts is that an extraordinarily high percentage of human beings misread what they see. And there is no reason that this does not also apply to TV, radio, newspapers and magazines.

Fables from fickle facts

The interactive nature of online publishing demonstrates the fickle nature of communications. It proves the age-old contention that human beings are not natural communicators. Not by a long shot.

Another indicator lies in the continuing development of so-called "infomercials" on television, a form of advertising that has been well-researched in terms of what it takes to get a message through to a consumer. The success of infomercials is able to be judged directly by the number of sales generated.

Repetition is key

And this research has shown that in spite of those often five-minute long infomercials appearing to be insanely repetitive and almost looking as though they are aimed at consumers with single figure IQs, what they actually tell us is that it takes that amount of time and that amount of repetition to get a product message across properly.

It has also been found in research that in terms of public speaking, audiences are only able to remember four points made in a speech.

What all of this adds up to is a challenge for news media editors, marketers and politicians. That more often than not the consumer is either going to misunderstand the most simple of messages or, more likely, leap to a wrong conclusion before having absorbed the complete message.

Communication lies not in the medium or the message but in the creativity and simplicity of its packaging.