Thais would rather watch the news than read it, but only just

One morning in one household (a fictional family), the grandfather listens to the morning news on television over coffee. His daughter watches short news clips on her phone while waiting for the bus. His grandson reads a news summary a friend posted in a LINE group. All three learn the same story, and none of them gets it from the same place.

For any agency that has to communicate with the public, this picture raises a hard question. With a limited budget, should you make a video, write an article or record audio?

Television has not gone away, and news is what people watch most online

In April 2024 the National Statistical Office and the NBTC asked 9,000 Thais aged 15 and over where they get their news. Television still led at 74.7%, followed by Facebook (57.5%), LINE (30.4%), websites (25.8%) and TikTok (20.3%) [1].

A separate nationwide survey of 31,500 people in October 2024 found that on free online platforms, news is what people watch most, at 64.2%, ahead of drama series (62.4%) and variety shows (57.3%) [2].

Watch, read or listen

Asked how they prefer to get news online, Thais in the Reuters Institute's 2023 Digital News Report said watch (40%), read (38%) and listen (22%) [3]. In the same year, 64% said social media was their main gateway to online news, while only 7% went to news websites directly [4].

As we see it, how close watching and reading are is the most important finding here. Dropping text to make only videos is about as risky as making only text. And since most people find news through social media, what is easiest to pass on tends to win: a short message can be pasted into a LINE group, a short clip can be shared, and a long document usually stops at the page where it was posted.

Three ways to tell one story to many kinds of audience

1. 1

   One story, two formats

   Every important announcement should come as a clip of under a minute for people who prefer to watch, and a message of no more than three lines for people who prefer to read and pass it on, both built on the same facts.

2. 2

   Plan for the television screen

   Television is still a news source for three in four people. Make clips that local news programmes or the agency's own channel can reuse: clear stills, large text, and a story that stands on its own.

3. 3

   Let a trusted person do the talking

   Whether video or audio, have the person who actually handles the issue speak. The closeness of a real voice is what makes people watch to the end and share.

Reading this data with care

The data here come from different surveys. The 2024 National Statistical Office and NBTC surveys are nationwide and include people who are not online. The 2023 Reuters Institute data come from an online survey that mainly reflects internet users and are now more than three years old (at the time of writing Statista had no newer data for the question on preferred format), so treat them as a signal of direction. All sets allowed multiple answers except preferred format, where respondents chose one.

Do not choose; tell it in full

The answer to whether to make a video, write or record audio is to make one story that can travel in several forms. People in the same household take in news differently, and so does an agency's audience.

If your organisation is deciding which formats to use for an important story, the Center of Excellence in Communication Innovation at Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Communication Arts would be glad to talk and share what we have learned.