Media is no longer the pulpit for a few hundred hired voices but rather it is a conduit for hundreds of millions of would-be authors, DJs, promoters and entertainers. From Facebook to Foursquare and Groupon to Google Buzz our world has gotten ever smaller and demanding of our time and energies. Online and wireless interactions between friends, acquaintances and even strangers have transformed how
media is delivered and experienced. Newspapers, magazines, television, film, music and radio are each trying to make themselves relevant in this burgeoning social arena of the Web – forced now to confront a world where the consumer is in control and in higher demand than ever. It’s a place where social is the word, and viral has nothing to do with disease. Here advertisers are forced to re-imagine sales strategies to take advantage of an expanding and clamoring social sphere. Nontraditional forms of promotions, marketing and content creation are rapidly replacing traditional fair. Socially driven businesses have become a benchmark for new ideas, and media companies anticipate a world where sought-after images and words are born of the consumer rather than the professionals. So how is media (newspapers, magazines, television, radio, etc) coping with this loss of control. And where does that leave us as a business culture? The course will explore social media philosophies and technologies to better grasp the new social reality. In the context of our readings and discussions, students will be asked to visualize the industry 5-10 years from now and draw conclusions about how the social consumer and visionary entrepreneurs can best serve the market as it continues to reinvent itself.
