I’ve long said a downside to digital media versus “old” mass media is the loss of a commonality to user experience. “Did you see the front page of the newspaper” once meant everyone read and was talking about the same big article, but not an endless cloud of personalized filters makes such an experience impossible.… Read More »
For most of the 20th century, mass media (newspapers, magazines, books; then broadcast news) was the “transmission vector” through which current public ideas spread. People shared a common basis of information, typically framed in a paradigm understood by the audience. I tend to call this idea the “shared front page” effect, as in “Did you… Read More »
By Matthew Stanton, Metromemetics LLC (first posted 11/14/2004) A three-tiered way to look at commercial mass media websites. Audience Tier One: USERS The people in this tier generally act like consumers: they want to most value and satisfaction they can get for the least amount of cost. They want to find information, save money, save… Read More »
A Four-Part Checklist for Creating Successful Web Designs By Matthew Stanton, Metromemetics LLC (first posted 10/12/2002; revised 09/28/2003) Designers tend to label their target audiences by each mediums’ method of delivery. Newspapers and magazines have readers, radio has listeners, television has viewers – all passive activities. The World Wide Web differs in that its audience… Read More »
The Cambridge University site takes a look at the meme fad in modern culture. An interesting point is often overlooked however. There is an oft-omitted fact about the origin of internet memes: that they are not what the term was originally intended to mean. Tracing back the evolution of the term is a gateway to… Read More »
Vice takes a look at how politically funded memes affected the U.S. Presidential election, and how that experience is changing future tactics in information warfare. Memes appear to function like the IEDs of information warfare. They are natural tools of an insurgency; great for blowing things up, but likely to sabotage the desired effects when… Read More »
Another overly optmistic pundit on news consumers willingness to pay for content? Or call for “patron” support? It’s a question that comes down to a single word: capacity. Long-time media watcher Merrill Brown pointed recently to the drained ability of American news companies to adequately report on the administration that takes power today. “There are… Read More »
The Reuters Institute for the Study Of Journalism (part of the European Journalism Observatory) looks at implications from the global move to the political right (Trump, France, Germany), new communication channels, the decline in influence and money among traditional media companies, and the rise of machines themselves as gatekeepers of information. Publishers see the rise… Read More »
The Pew Research Center has release its first set of 2017 revisions on internet technology fact sheets. Internet Broadband Fact Sheet http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/ “When Pew Research Center began systematically tracking Americans’ internet usage in early 2000, about half of all adults were already online. Today, roughly nine-in-ten American adults use the internet.” Mobile Fact Sheet http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/mobile/… Read More »
Reminder on designing for low (but not lowest) common denominator… The 4 Levels of Technology Proficiency * “Below Level 1” = 14% of Adult Population * Level 1 = 29% of Adult Population * Level 2 = 26% of Adult Population * Level 3 = 5% of Adult Population * Can’t Use Computers = 26%… Read More »
Why has the New York Times Company dropped from $2 billion in annual ad revenue during the early 2000s to about $600 million today? According to Jeff Desjardins at Visual Capitalist: Physical circulation of The New York Times and other newspapers is dropping rapidly. Traditional display ads aren’t particularly effective, and are part of the… Read More »
Good summary featured on TheConversation.com… What causes one meme to replicate more successfully than another? Some researchers say that memes develop characteristics called “Good Tricks” to provide them with competitive advantages, including: 1. being genuinely useful to a human host; 2. being easily imitated by human brains; and 3. answering questions that the human brain… Read More »
Interesting bit of navel gazing in this piece, given that NYMag float within and did not look far outside its own East Coast bubble. In interviews with more than 40 journalists and media figures and in a survey of 113 of our peers, we heard much about deals cut with anonymous sources, the pressure for… Read More »