Statistics of media penetration

Numerical statistics on media presence can be obtained from the CIA World Factbook:

“Broadcast media: 10 major TV networks of which only one, Television Nacional de Peru, is state-owned; multi-channel cable TV services are available; in excess of 2,000 radio stations including a substantial number of indigenous language stations (2010)” (CIA)

According to the same source, Peru has about 9 million Internet users among its 30 million population.

A good analysis of usage of television in Peruvian political campaigns is presented by Taylor Boas (2005). He quotes some studies on spread of television and population’s reliance on it:

“Ninety-four percent of Peruvian residents and 91 percent of those in the next to-lowest socioeconomic bracket had a television at home as of 1997 (Nájar 1999, 360).

For nearly two-thirds of the population, television remains the medium most frequently consulted for information about current events, as well as the most credible source of information (Tanaka and Zárate 2002).” (Boas 2005)

As well, Boas’s study looks at comparative analysis of TV representation of different candidates in 2000 and 2001 elections. Given that most of TV channels in Peru are privately owned, their air time and image of the candidates can be biased towards the candidates who are closer to the owners of the channels, the social elites. That was the case in 2000 with the reelection of Fujimori who controlled most of the media and took over 80% of total air time. However, as he didn’t participate in 2001 elections, the TV channel owners were not as biased towards the favorite candidate and statistically gave almost equal coverage to the top three candidates (Boas 2005). Unfortunately, I didn’t find a more contemporary study.

There are a few studies of usage of Internet in Peru. Holmes (2001) provides an account of cabinas públicas – public access Internet outlets that contributed the most to the growth of Internet users population in Peru. A later study by Salzman and Albarran (2011) takes extensive use of Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) surveys data and gives more up-to-date figures for Internet usage in Peru. However, according to their figures, only about 27% of population uses Internet. Self-reported usage of Internet to read news in that study is 0.44 out of scale 0-3 (0 is never using, 3 is always using). Not surprisingly, there are positive correlations between general usage and news usage of Internet with such factors as wealth, bigger cities, higher education, general political knowledge and interest and consumption of other news media. There is a slight negative correlation of Internet news reading with trust in other media.

Given this landscape of media usage the most effective mass media for political campaigning is television. It’s been successfully utilized in the successful presidential campaigns, as detailed in Boas (2005). The same study also tells of extensive usage of types of campaigning less mediated by technology, namely personal visits of the candidates to target populations and mass meetings.