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| Ratatata... |
Posted
on 21-Sep-01 03:35 AM
Today's edition of "Nepal's Top Newspaper" Nepali Times (NT) contains a one column result of the Weekly Poll right on it's front page that is run on the web portal Nepalnews.com, run jointly by NT and the Mercantile Group. The same poll used to be run by Kantipur Publications but the i don't know why the fellas must have stopped doing that.
However, today's poll (that has appeared for the first time on NT) has not mentioned the total number of voters in the poll and have only presented the result in a percentage format.Furthermore, if you logon to that site, you can see that there are only about 300-900 responses to that poll every week. Which means that Himal Media is directly trying to portray such a minimal participation as the opinion of the entire nation.
I also believe that we had a huge discussion on this Kurakani about how accurate our web polls run by publications can be. At least, the one that used to be printed by Kantipur at least gave out the total number of web voters no matter how low the participation was. Now, the NT behaviour is making me believe that the intension to mislead the public opinion, which many had expressed then, might actually be true.
Can anyone please forward this to the NT people so as they can improve printing the results of the web poll soon. I just wish I had the scanner to paste the web poll printed on today's edition for all of you guys to see.
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| ashu |
Posted
on 21-Sep-01 04:16 AM
Unlike their technologically enlightened counterparts in the West who stand ready to hire techies for computer things they do not understand themselves, Nepal's editors do NOT understand the sheer DECENTRALIZED power of this GLOBALIZED (and that's a very good thing!) Web to act as an influential medium of mass communication in the 21st century.
The Web is now what radio was 50 years ago, and, studies show that all things being equal, more people today spend more time visiting Web sites than
reading printed newspapers.
This changing nature of mass communication was brought home in so many ways to many print editors in the West by upstart AOL's (new media) stunning billion-dollar-plus acquisition of 70-plus-year-old Time-Warner (old media) last year.
You are right: Visitors here have already debated, very intelligently, the
validity of these opinion polls. The Nepali Times folks could have learnt
a thing or two from the related GBNC discussions. Soon, editors who continue
to dismiss Web discussions and the Web as a whole today may find themselves out their jobs in coming years.
oohi
ashu
ktm, nepal
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| Bhatatata... |
Posted
on 22-Sep-01 12:11 AM
One more thing I have noticed in that WEB POLL is that it accepts your vote everytime you log on to that site from your computer, i.e the system is fixed in such a manner that it does not mention "You have already voted" unlike the KOL Poll, no matter how many times you just enter the Nepalnews poll (even if just to see the results).
Hence,
(1) Anyone who wants to divert the result could do so according to his desires.
(2) It is always a selected group of people who keep loggin on to that site and keeps voting again and again. Therefore, the number of partiipants would keep on shooting higher and higher no matter how low the actual participation.
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