Coalition SEGA held Panel Discussion on "Youth and Media"

Youth are not sufficiently

represented in national media. They are mainly informed by social networks, and less by television, radio and print media. This was stated at the Panel discussion "Youth and Media", held on 22.06.2018, in the premises of the European University RM, organized by  Coalition of youth organizations SEGA within the USAID-supported Civil Society Week.

One of the most famous Macedonian young YouTubers, Marko Markovic, who has 95,000 followers, said the lack of media content for young people is one of the main reasons why they are more likely to use the Internet and social networks as a source of information and refuse to use the traditional media like television , and especially radio and newspapers.

- I notice that YouTube is the main source of entertainment for young people from 5 to 20 years. The biggest reason that these social networks dominate more than the traditional media I think is due to several factors, such as speed of receiving and checking the information ... For example, in the morning people get up in pajamas and is able to check the latest information on their phone that may have occurred abroad or in our country, Markovic pointed out in a panel discussion "Youth and the media".

Uploading videos on YouTube by young people from Macedonia, as he said, has developed over the past two years, although it has been popular in the world for ten years.

The panelists concluded that apart from the fact that the young people are not sufficiently represented in the media, there is almost no interest in their involvement and cooperation with the media.

Vesna Mikic-Bozinovska, editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Vecer, said that the data placed in the newspapers were checked and reliable, unlike those that are being posted online.

- The situation with the print media is bad, and our biggest enemies are social networks, Facebook, Twitter ... It's true that newspapers are more read by the older ones, but we also try to offer content that will be interesting for the youth. Most often, young people are more interested in texts related to scandals than economic analyzes or political issues, said the editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper  Vecer Vesna Mikic-Bozhinovska.

She added that the daily newspaper "Vecer" always tries to offer content that will be interesting for reading.

According to the research carried out by the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services, as many as 47% of the citizens think that in the television programs, it is very rare to talk about the problems of the youth from 15 to 29 years of age or to make them  participate in the programs, and very rarely present themselves as active or interested citizens.

Sašo Bogdanoski said at today's panel discussion that youth is the only category for which the Internet is the most important source of information. All other age groups are most often informed by television. The youth, he said, are almost never informed by the press or the radio.

According to the professor at the EURM Law Faculty, Viktorija Kafendziska, the media influence the young people, especially on the formation of public opinion. It is therefore necessary to hear what young people want to see, read and hear.

- The myth of old and new media should be broken. Each medium is a message and every medium influences the opinion of youth and the general public opinion, said Professor Kafendziska, adding that young people should be especially careful when posting content on the Internet because their opinions can be misused.

The panelists  discussed the prevalence of content intended for young people on national television stations and radio stations, the news and entertainment content for young people, the language in which they are shared  publicly. A special part of the discussion was dedicated to the challenges faced by young people on the Internet, including security threats, lack of privacy, and exposure to violent content on the Internet.