Is @malaysiakini losing their audience on Twitter?

Malaysiakini is one of the most popular news portals in Malaysia. According to the 2018 Reuters Digital News Report, the independent news portal ranks first in Malaysia with 44% of weekly usage by local readers, followed by The Star Online with 32% and Berita Harian Online with 24%.

 

 

According to data, the portal displays a consistent pattern of tweeting activity. On average, the portal made over 1,500 tweets per month from January to September 2019.

 

However, in August, it is observed that the page experienced an unusual decline in the number of tweets, being the only month with less than 1,000 posts.

 

 

Despite having a consistent presence on Twitter, the page suffered a decline in engagement over the past few months. @malaysiakini suffered a dramatic fall in retweets &mentions starting from the second half of the year with almost 9,000 difference between May and June.

 

Some issues covered from June to September are revealed to be of high interest such as Azmin Ali’s alleged sex scandal, live reports on Najib’s 1mdb trial and Zakir Naik among others.

 

 

While these issues are making headlines on Malaysia media, @malaysiakini became the direct target of the masses. As seen in the statistics, ‘top corner’ is the most mentioned & retweeted by the public from June to September.

 

The ‘top corner’ issue was about a tweet teaching Twitter users on how to block @malaysiakini account on Twitter.

 

 

Are Twitter users blocking @malaysiakini on the social media platform? Does it play a role in the decreasing traction of the news portal’s Twitter account?