By Raksmey Meas

Raksmey Meas, assistant lecturer at the Department of Media and Communication at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, reports that Japan’s catastrophe involving the recent earthquake and subsequent tsunami has yet again taken center stage in the world media’s attention.

 

Particularly in Cambodia, news related to Japan and its disaster racked up on front pages for more than a week following the initial shock on March 11^th.

 

Regarding the focus of Cambodian media on this tragedy, news angles seem to be anything on the updates of the situation – death toll, possible nuclear explosion and rescue efforts, etc.

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Facebook and Twitter are well established tools of the trade for many journalists but less so in countries such as Uganda. However, the recent elections may well have changed that. In a guest blog post, Ruth Aine a journalist from the Radio station Power FM in Kampala, describes the rise of social media during Uganda's recent elections.

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Radio and TV audiences today don’t just want to be spoken to by broadcasters; they want to join the discussion. They want to share their views and stories, and modern communication tools like mobile phones, digital cameras and the internet give them that opportunity.

 

Broadcasters who do not grasp this fundamental change in communication behavior may soon find themselves bypassed by social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

 

In order to stay relevant, radio and TV stations have to find new ways of integrating the audience into their programming. On the simplest level, this can be done by taking letters and e-mails from the audience seriously. A next level can be call-in programs, which center on listeners’ concerns, questions, comments and experiences.

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