South Africa

We collected data from 12 news outlets on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube Shorts:
6 Print , 2 Digital , 2 Private broadcaster , 2 Public broadcaster .

Overall, these outlets published 1860 posts.

The median outlet published 0.8 TikToks, 0.5 Instagram reels, and 0.2 YouTube shorts per day.

Basics

Platforms shares

Platform	Active brands	Posts	% of brands	% of posts
TikTok	12	1044	86	56
Instagram	9	647	64	35
YouTube Shorts	8	169	57	9

Published posts

Outlet	Posts	TikTok	Instagram	YouTube Shorts	Content duplication (%)
BBC News	677	419	147	111	47
City Press	31	28	3	-	-
Daily Maverick	11	5	5	1	-
Daily Sun	82	43	14	25	28
eNCA	530	155	374	1	14
EWN (Eyewitness News)	23	22	-	1	-
IOL	249	175	67	7	10
Mail & Guardian	23	1	6	16	43
News24	58	21	30	7	5
SABC News	161	160	1	-	-
Sowetan	12	12	-	-	-
The Citizen	3	3	-	-	-
South Africa	1860	1044	647	169	26

Outlet analyses

Topics

Hard news

Outlet	Politics	Crime	War/ Disasters	Economy	Social Affairs
BBC News	21	27	35	14	23
City Press	14	16	11	11	12
Daily Sun	25	23	8	15	19
eNCA	33	49	17	26	27
EWN (Eyewitness News)	39	30	11	11	12
IOL	22	55	8	17	12
Mail & Guardian	72	21	16	20	16
News24	23	21	16	20	16
SABC News	34	34	21	17	18
Sowetan	35	36	13	17	25
The Citizen	21	19	14	13	14
South Africa	29	41	22	19	21
Overall	30	24	19	15	16

General/hybrid news

Outlet	Environment	Infrastructure	Science/ Education	Health/ Fitness	Culture	Sports
BBC News	7	6	11	8	5	5
City Press	4	6	5	7	10	4
Daily Sun	8	7	6	8	7	6
eNCA	7	6	7	4	3	3
EWN (Eyewitness News)	4	6	5	7	6	4
IOL	2	4	4	8	3	10
Mail & Guardian	4	5	5	6	6	4
News24	4	5	5	6	6	4
SABC News	3	6	4	8	6	7
Sowetan	4	9	6	7	6	5
The Citizen	4	6	6	7	6	5
South Africa	5	6	6	6	4	6
Overall	5	7	7	8	7	6

Soft news and promotion

Outlet	Entertainment	Celebrity	Lifestyle	Fashion	Food	Animals	Comedy	Ads
BBC News	15	10	8	1	2	4	2	1
City Press	57	20	6	3	3	3	20	3
Daily Sun	8	22	7	1	3	2	1	2
eNCA	6	3	2	1	1	2	2	4
EWN (Eyewitness News)	6	6	6	1	3	3	2	3
IOL	8	8	3	1	2	2	1	3
Mail & Guardian	5	6	6	1	3	3	2	3
News24	5	11	6	1	3	6	2	3
SABC News	6	4	4	1	2	2	1	2
Sowetan	6	6	6	1	3	3	2	3
The Citizen	22	15	6	1	3	3	2	3
South Africa	9	7	4	1	2	3	2	2
Overall	12	10	8	1	4	3	5	5

Platformization

Outlet	Video duration (sec)	Vertical videos (%)	Addressing the audience (%)	Calling for interactions (%)
BBC News	50	92	4	27
City Press	58	44	4	17
Daily Sun	94	91	8	27
eNCA	86	23	3	26
EWN (Eyewitness News)	45	30	4	17
IOL	101	48	4	58
Mail & Guardian	60	30	4	15
News24	57	87	4	40
SABC News	194	90	4	15
Sowetan	155	-	-	-
The Citizen	62	-	-	-
South Africa	85	79	4	28
Overall	80	76	5	24

Diversity

Outlet	Visible women (%)	Mean age	Age diversity (IQR)	Topic diversity (topics)
BBC News	42	32	15	12
City Press	28	34	13	4
Daily Sun	32	31	12	6
eNCA	28	34	16	8
EWN (Eyewitness News)	29	38	11	5
IOL	32	32	13	6
Mail & Guardian	26	29	10	4
News24	27	32	11	4
SABC News	32	32	13	7
Sowetan	32	35	16	6
The Citizen	29	33	12	5
South Africa	33	32	12	6
Overall	34	34	14	7

Note: Outlet-level results are empirical Bayes estimates from the respective analyses.