Who Are You? Alternative Identities and New Values of Consumers in the New Media Market
“You – Yes, you. You control the information age. Welcome to your world.” In 2006, not long after Facebook launched, Time Magazine selected “You” as its Person of the Year, to critical argument and international attention. In fact, such forward-looking quotation symbolized the start of revolution in the age of emerging digital media. Furthermore, it foresaw the identifiable shift of media users from mere consumers to active contributors and co-producers of content.
The digital evolution of content production and the comprehensive platforming across the cultural industries have incorporated users into a networked system where we not only obtain but also distribute and produce products in the market context. While media’s approaches to their target audiences diverse significantly regarding to the business models, market strategies, industrial values in which they operate, users are highly valued in general. Just as what the business market strategies we’ve learnt (e.g., Michael E. Porter’s Five Forces, Blue Ocean Strategy, The Business Model Canvas) take into account, acquisition and retention of customers, customer services, customer relationships, etc. are key to the success of a business. As a result, it is likely that user-discourse-led production turns out to be the alternative trend in the media ecosystem, such as TikTok where viral challenges are user-driven and can significantly influence pop culture and even commercial decisions.
Fundamentally, in the news industry, the connectivity between content platforms, advertisers and users is embedded in the framework of media market, where products flow unidirectionally from platforms to end-users with advertisers moderated. However, user-generated contents (UGC), widely found across new media sites as well as platforms, construct a far more comprehensive interaction throughout the transaction. That is, a mass of consumer disclosures is now potential to channel the markets both spatially and temporally: these continual cumulation of information spread through horizontal convergence of platforms, which then facilitates consumer intention and interaction data to accelerate multiple methods of engagement.
Moreover, given that UGC breaks down the boundaries between the professional and the amateur, consumers’ identities are now multifaceted in certain extend that professionalism of media content is gradually diluted. For instance, on Facebook, the delivery of news and public affairs goes through interpersonal communication and is partially dominated by freelance editors, we media, stakeholders, and so forth. To elaborate more, the readiness and affordance of information can encourage one’s sense of relevance and resonance, boosting further engagement in content cooperation. The broad market base of news consumers undergoes segments with different needs and problems in this way, in the meanwhile, Facebook’s the touchpoint that generate and deliver new values. As everyone could be equipped with the power of “prosumer” (Toffler, 1980), users’ negotiating tensions with the platforms should be awarded as they turn into digital labors who are exploited regarding what they contribute. Classification and recognition referring to user participating in these processes may introduce a user-centric analytical scope and practical application on collaborating media ecosystem.
Finally, yet importantly, the surge in databases and information sources empowered by Web3.0 is crucial for media users in terms of media literacy. The ever-changing Internet has brought us to a stage in which cognitive surplus and fragmentation of time coexists, prompting a craze for new media and technologies in a structural, rather than an individual, level. Questions such as what should be seen and how to adopt have arisen as a major proposition, highlighting the production of norms, beliefs, and cultures across the globe. More specifically, evaluation of misinformation is needed more than ever in such a post-truth age. In addition, markets that create, distribute, incorporate contents might have to stress on monitoring with a refined censorship.
In short, the diversity of users’ identities reconceptualizes and reshapes the correlation of market framework. As more and more users take further steps into the media sphere, the top-bottom approaches with the notion that “platforms as dominators” seems to fail on meeting new demands on user experiences and may then be disrupted. Notably, these issues reciprocally influence the nature of user commodities formed and affect how the platforms create value from their user bases.
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