The country’s Competition Commission has launched a Media and Digital Platforms Market Inquiry to scrutinise the distribution of media content on South African digital platforms.
The inquiry follows a complaint lodged by Publisher Support Services in 2021, an industry association representing several South African news publishers.
PSS has argued that the transition to digital news consumption and advertising has had a negative impact on news media businesses, with many seeing a decline in advertising revenue and an increase in costs.
The investigation will specifically assess how these markets affect the online presence and competitive stance of smaller news entities, such as community and African language news outlets.
It will also evaluate the variety of news accessible to the public; search engines, social media sites, video-sharing platforms, news aggregators, and ad-tech market participants will all be under scrutiny.