Utilization of New Media by Traditional Media Companies in Indonesian Media Industry

Abstract: The rise of social media represents a new challenge to the traditional media industry. Some traditional media companies either shy away on the idea of utilizing social media to enhance their services, but many others actually embrace this as an opportunity to reposition themselves within the industry. This study tries to figure out the extent of the proliferation of social media by the traditional players. The research approach focused on case study methodology through quantitative and qualitative methods. Record analysis of social media utilization by the traditional media companies represented the quantitative method. As many as 483 media companies from radio, television and printed media companies were sampled, they are companies under twelve national media conglomerates and one largest independent media group in Indonesia. Availability and a few simple statistics of web sites and three most popular social media platforms were recorded. The interviews with three different media companies and observations represented the qualitative method. The purpose is to understand the background motives of the social media utilization. The study reveals that utilization of web sites and social media platforms by the traditional media companies is quite extensive. The result revealed that 72% media companies have a web site, and more than 90% have Facebook accounts. Twitter, while not as popular as Facebook, still has as much as 73.6% of sampled media companies joining the platform. YouTube is the lowest of the three platforms with 27.3%. Apart from the high adoption rate, the traditional media companies also actively participate in the conversation, especially for Facebook and Twitter. The interviews showed that the extent of digitalization is quite extensive. The three media have their own digital strategy, which involved integration with their traditional platforms, customer engagement and monetization. The utilization of web and social media platforms Indonesia in general, and by the traditional media were caused by some factors such as media democratization, rising number of middle class, good economic growth, and high mobile penetration among others.