Understanding Media Consumption, Preferences, and Satisfaction of South and Southeast Asian Religious Online Media Consumers: The Case of Radio Veritas Asia’s Website

RELIGION AND SOCIAL COMMUNICATION VOLUME 23, NO. 2 (JULY - DECEMBER 2025)

ISSN 3057-0883 (ONLINE)

Author

Kasmir Nema and Andrea May C. Malonzo

Abstract

The way people communicate, gather, and process information continues to evolve in response to new communication technologies. With the rise of the internet and digital media, the use of traditional media platforms, such as radio, decreased. Radio Veritas Asia (RVA), a non-profit Catholic radio station, transitioned from shortwave broadcasting to a digital online format to address the decline in its radio listenership. With these changes in RVA, this study aimed to understand the media consumption patterns, preferences, and satisfaction levels of religious online media consumers in South and Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, with a specific focus on their engagement with the Radio Veritas Asia website. Through online surveys, the study found that media consumption patterns, preferences, and satisfaction levels vary moderately across the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. The frequency of religious content consumption, such as news about the Catholic faith and daily Gospel reflections via the RVA website, ranges from three to seven days per week. While the internet offers multimodality—encompassing textual, visual, audio, and audiovisual formats—there remains a strong preference for written text among South and Southeast Asian audiences. Satisfaction levels were consistently high across all areas. This satisfaction is influenced by RVA’s digital platform’s characteristics, its usability, and its content, which effectively address the cognitive, emotional, and social needs of the audience.

Keywords

media consumption, media satisfaction, media preference, religious media, religious online media

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Pages 426-450

DOI: https://doi.org/10.62461/KNAM050325

Submitted: Mar. 17, 2025; Accepted: May 03, 2025; Published: Jul. 1, 2025

© 2025 The authors. This is an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).