Originally Posted by
James
As if to prove my earlier lamentation (posted to my Facebook stream), News24 has just issued a press release lauding their web traffic highs thanks to the tragic death of Reeva Steenkamp and the tabloid-style frenzy of reporting that followed. A cursory mention was given to the president's 'State of the Nation' address.
"A breakdown of News24 stats for South African browsers on the day records 570 000 Unique Web Browsers with 4.2 million Page Views; 385 000 Unique Mobile Browsers with 2.9 million Page Views, and 282 000 active application users clocking 1.2 million sessions. The top read story of the day was ‘Oscar Pistorius shoots girlfriend’ which had 502 000 web page views and 213 000 mobile page views."
Jannie Momberg, News24’s Editor in Chief, went on to punt the stability of their platform under the increased load... A tragic death is apparently a great way to test your system; another positive outcome for News24 in the wake of this sad story.
Finally, perhaps most ghoulish of all, News24's digital media sales agency, The SpaceStation, took the opportunity to pitch to advertisers, citing the above-mentioned stats and stability.
Not to diminish the tragedy of Steenkamp's death, but when will South African's care this much about issues that greatly affect everyone in the country on a daily basis? When will everyone take to social media and weigh in with heavy opinions on what's right and wrong when it comes to the leadership and governance of the country? Where are the daily hundreds of thousands of outraged comments, tweets, and shares about the crumbling infrastructure around us; the failure of government to deliver basic services; the blatant extortion and corruption that has become the norm? Shouldn't we strive for this sort of public engagement on such topics?
If we could all engage with as much passion on these issues as the water-cooler talk of whether Oscar did it or not, perhaps we might shift the general social consciousness toward positive change?
I'm just going to level up my cynicism stats in the meantime.
