Media consumption
The main source of news from the political sphere in North Macedonia is television, according to the latest survey done by the International Republican Institute, IRI, in 2023.
In the survey, which allowed for multiple answers, 73 per cent of respondents declared that they primarily get information through TV. The survey notes a decline in this trend compared with 2020, when 80 per cent of respondents said they got their political news through television.
These numbers are understandable; of a total of 600,000 households in North Macedonia, according to the State Statistics Office, as many as 96.3 per cent own a television.
The second most common source of news, according to the IRI survey, is the internet.
Out of all respondents, 38 per cent answered that they get information via the internet or via internet portals. Among other things, the trend towards the internet becoming an increasingly dominant source of information is a result of the fact that, according to the State Statistics Office’s data for 2022, 88.6 per cent of households have internet access. Additionally, two-thirds of households (69.1 per cent) own a personal computer or laptop, and as many as 87.8 per cent have a mobile phone.
A similar trend is shown in the survey conducted by the Agency for Electronic Communications, AEK, in 2023. According to this, 98 per cent of respondents own a smartphone on which they can follow information portals and web editions of traditional media. The same survey revealed that as many as 92 per cent of respondents use the internet on their smartphone.
A very small number of respondents stated that they get information from newspapers and radio – 5 and 3 per cent respectively.
There are four daily newspapers in North Macedonia, three of them in Macedonian and two in Albanian. Their circulations have been decreasing for years. The newspaper with the largest circulation, Sloboden Pecat, prints an average of 7.000 copies per day.
In addition to Macedonian Radio, the radio that is part of the public service broadcaster, four more private radios also broadcast informative program on a statewide level.
