The era of mass media is giving way to one of personal and participatory media, says Andreas Kluth. That will profoundly change both the media industry and society as a whole.
The 22/4/2006 Economist has a "pull-out" survey of new media, by Andreas Kluth, The Economist's Technology Correspondent.
Among the audience, by Kluth, and It's the links, stupid - an accessible, realistic, and I felt authentic, piece about blogging - are freely available on-line. For the rest, unless you have a subscription to the Economist, you have to pay for access.
Sitting alongside the survey are 5 audio discussions, available for free download as MP3 files, as follows:
- Author interview, with Andreas Kluth, Technology Correspondent of The Economist (10 minutes, 4 MB) Play Download.
- Blogs as leading indicators, with David Sifry, Founder and CEO, Technorati (18 minutes, 8 MB) Play Download.
- The demand for everything, with Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired (33 minutes, 14 MB) Play Download.
- Wide world of wikis, with Jerry Michalski, Founder and President of Sociate (22 minutes, 9 MB) Play Download.
- From Gutenberg to Mcluhan to What's Next, with Paul Saffo, Director, Institute for the Future (26 minutes, 11 MB) Play Download.
The impression you get from the survey, and from the audio discussions, is that the penny really is finally dropping outside the "internet classes" that in the developed world citizens are becoming producers of digital content, rather than mainly being consumers of it.
Personally I find myself smiling wrily (smugly?) at this, having been heavily involved in 1996-1998 in a working group in Sheffield on the development of a strategic framework on the information society for the city. The strategic framework, which formed part of a much longer ICT strategy, contained as a strapline:
"Sheffield will help develop all its people to become producers as well as consumers in the ICT economy"
At that time it was an uphill struggle - basically we totally failed - to get the powers that be to accept such an approach. They tended to say things like "are you trying to tell me that everyone's going to turn into a javascript programmer...??". The document languished.
The Economist survey of New Media is not bad at all. There is a full section about podcasting. What I find a bit funny is that the article does no even mention mobile phones.
Podcasting (as it is today) requires PC (1500€) + Broadband connection (20€ / month) + MP player (100€). This is a lot of money for most people in the world.
A mobile phone costs 100 – 300 €. In addition to podcasting you can use your mobile phone for talking for your friends (great!). If we want “podcasting” - or maybe we will soon call it mobilecasting? - to be the way for citizens to produce digital content we should look for mobile phones.
Comment from Seb Schmoller. You are dead right Teemu. Perhaps a case of the Economist's "new media" left hand not know what its "economic development" right hand is doing, because there has been plenty of coverage in the magazine over the years about the beneficial impact of mobile phones on economic development, for example http://www.economist.com/business/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=4157618 and http://www.economist.com/printedition/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=3742817
Posted by: Teemu | 25/04/2006 at 16:05
In June, the Economist reported that Kluth's "Among the Audience" won the 2007 Mirror Award for the best subject-related series of articles. The Awards "recognise reporting, analysis and commentary that further the public understanding of the media industry".
Posted by: Seb Schmoller | 23/06/2007 at 09:43