English speakers get more information on YouTube than French speakers according to Canadian data from the Digital News Report, but this habit could be linked to a greater supply, believes Professor Colette Brin.
Photo : George Milton – Pexels
FRANCOPRESSE – In a fragmented media environment, where the consumption of news in various forms of video is increasingly popular, production remains complex and difficult to adopt by small news rooms.
“The younger we are, the more we like short videos, but it’s still a trend that we see in the population,” notes Colette Brin.
Photo : Julien Cayouette – Francopresse
“I think that [YouTube est] a promising platform for everyone because it is the platform that reaches all age groups,” notes full professor and director of the Center for Media Studies at Laval University, Colette Brin, citing the latest investigation Canadian Digital News Report (DNR).
According to the data extracted by the professor, YouTube remains the only social network – classified as such by the authors of the research – which reaches people under 35 and over 35 in equal numbers.
The rise in popularity of videos has been observed for several years, driven by technological tools that facilitate their production and publication, continues Colette Brin.
Also read: Federal elections: uncertainty over funding for French-speaking media
Limited resources
“We have our YouTube page, Le Moniteur Acadien TVwhich is currently inactive [depuis environ 1 an]. If we find the talent to do it, we will,” assures the general director of the newspaper. The Acadian Monitor, Jason Ouellette.
“Video requires a little more effort and specialized equipment which requires a minimum of expertise that we don’t have on our team.”
In Ontario, the newspaper The Traveler would also like to add this tool to his arsenal. “It requires an investment. It is in our projects, but we are trying to develop other projects which will allow us to have the means to acquire the human resources and the equipment to make video,” mentions its editor-in-chief, Mehdi Mehenni.
Bridging the scarcity
French-speaking media that can launch into video often do so as part of special projects, with dedicated funds.
“The world really appreciates the fact that we go into communities and do video reports,” says Jean-Philippe Giroux.
Photo : Julien Cayouette – Francopresse
Upon his arrival in Nova Scotia, the editor-in-chief of Nova Scotia Mail, Jean-Philippe Giroux noticed that the Acadian accent was very little present on the Internet. Even less that of young people. Consultations in the province’s French-speaking communities also revealed that Acadians were poorly represented in the media sphere.
“We agree that a newspaper is writing,” he emphasizes. We have the responsibility to write in standard French. Video is a way to meet their needs and represent these languages; represent what is special about Nova Scotia.”
A video reporting project was thus born and the chain The newspaper’s YouTube now has nearly 115 clips. The longevity of the production is not assured, however, because the videos remain difficult to finance and monetize.
Blocking Meta also deprived the newspaper of platforms where their content was popular.
Read: French-speaking newspapers after a year of blocking Meta
Join young people
In the Yukon, the newspaper l’Aurora Borealis is setting up a video project in collaboration with young people in order to increase its presence on the social networks they use.
“It is a project both for developing readership, but also for professionalizing young people in digital journalism.”
For the second year of what Maryne Dumaine calls the Laboratoire de l’Aurore boréale (LAB), the opposite will be done: content produced online by and for young people will be integrated into the paper newspaper in creative formats, again by young people, so “that the rest of the community sees how young people get their information and how young people interacted with the newspaper,” she says.
Colette Brin encourages this type of experimentation. With increasingly young newsrooms, which know the codes of video, media written in a minority environment could occupy more of this space, according to her.
This is a niche where we can try to invest, depending on the means we have. There are ways to do quite original things with relatively few resources.
— Colette Brin
Be cross-platform
The printed version of the Northern Lights is still very popular in the Yukon, says Maryne Dumaine.
Photo : Christian Kuntz
Jason Ouellette, also general manager of Radio Beauséjour, is aware that multiplatform content is “the future of information.”
An opinion partially shared by Maryne Dumaine: “I think it’s complementary. Video can become an excellent support, but will never replace information, at least for our Francophone Yukon community.”
Revenues should be there for the videos, nuance for his part Jean-Philippe Giroux.
Yes to video, but not to the detriment of writing, insists Mehdi Mehenni. “There are things that video cannot report. There is the behind the scenes, the description of the atmosphere, the feelings of the people. There are certain things that the camera cannot capture in an event and which can still be presented in writing.
“I also think that it is the mission of a newspaper to raise awareness among young people so that they do not abandon writing and reading,” he adds.
Type: News
News: Content based on facts, either observed and verified first-hand by the journalist or reported and verified by knowledgeable sources.
Grand Sudbury
ntttttttttntttttntttttnttttt”,”body”:”ttttnttttntttttttttntttttntttttnttttt”,”footer”:””},”advanced”:{“header”:””,”body”:””,”footer”:””}}”,”gdpr_scor”:”true”,”wp_lang”:””,”wp_consent_api”:”false”};
/* ]]> */
