Online media overview: Morocco

ESSENTIAL FACTS

> Over half the population has Internet access and a quarter benefits from 3G services.
> The 20 February Movement ushered in a new constitution and new press code, ensuring press freedom and the legitimate status of the online media.
> Despite this progress, arrests and "soft repression", particularly in the form of administrative pressure or the cutting-off of funding, still take place.
> The pure player sector has experienced dramatic growth, with over 500 news websites that include many small local media.
> Numerous pure players are of mediocre quality and are involved in re-publication, plagiarism or yellow journalism.
> Paper-format dailies in Morocco are largely now outmoded, except for Akhbar Al Yaoum, with its alyaoum24.com website.
> The economic, technical and cultural environment in Morocco appears to be compatible with subscription-based online media, but to date there have been few ventures into that area.

News websites to watch:
Goud, Le 360, H24 Info, TelQuel, Yabiladi.

METHODOLOGY

Each country file starts with four indicators to illustrate the environment within which the online media are evolving:

• Internet penetration level, according to the 2013 figures from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU)
• Online advertising revenue per Internet user per annum, for 2015, according to Arab Media Outlook projections cross-referenced with the ITU statistics
• The 2015 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters without Borders
• The Freedom of the Net 2014 Index, compiled by Freedom House

The above four indicators are represented graphically in the four quarters of a "sonar" screen, in which the coloured area is proportional to the absolute value (in the case of Internet penetration level) or relative value (in the case of word press and Internet freedom scores and for advertising revenue) across the sample for the eight indicator countries.

A table then lists the five principal news websites most visited in that country, in accordance with the Alexa platform ranking.

For each of these news websites we indicate the following:

• The website URL
• The number of Likes on its Facebook page
• The number of its followers on Twitter
• The type of news website: