The Evolution of Media: Visualizing a Data-Driven Future – Visual Capitalist

In todays highly-connected and instantaneous world, we have access to a massive amount of information at our fingertips.

Historically, however, this hasnt always been the case.

Time travel back just 20 years ago to 2002, and youd notice the vast majority of people were still waiting on the daily paper or the evening news to help fill the information void.

In fact, for most of 2002, Google was trailing in search engine market share behind Yahoo! and MSN. Meanwhile, early social media incarnations (MySpace, Friendster, etc.) were just starting to come online, and all of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and the iPhone did not yet exist.

Every so often, the dominant form of communication is upended by new technological developments and changing societal preferences.

These transitions seem to be happening faster over time, aligning with the accelerated progress of technology.

Each new wave of media comes with its own pros and cons.

For example, Connected Media was a huge step forward in that it enabled everyone to be a part of the conversation. On the other hand, algorithms and the sheer amount of content to sift through has created a lot of downsides as well. To name just a few problems with media today: filter bubbles, sensationalism, clickbait, and so on.

Before we dive into what we think is the next wave of media, lets first break down the common attributes and problems with prior waves.

Before the first wave of media, amplifying a message took devotion and a lifetime.

Add in the fact that even by the year 1500, only 4% of global citizens lived in cities, and you can see how hard it would be to communicate effectively with the masses during this era.

Or, to paint a more vivid picture of what proto-media was like: information could only travel as fast as the speed of a horse.

In this first wave, new technological advancements enabled widescale communication for the first time in history.

Newspapers, books, magazines, radios, televisions, movies, and early websites all fit within this framework, enabling the owners of these assets to broadcast their message at scale.

With large amounts of infrastructure required to print books or broadcast television news programs, it took capital or connections to gain access. For this reason, large corporations and governments were usually the gatekeepers, and ordinary citizens had limited influence.

Importantly, these mediums only allowed one-way communicationmeaning that they could broadcast a message, but the general public was restricted in how they could respond (i.e. a letter to the editor, or a phone call to a radio station).

Innovations like Web 2.0 and social media changed the game.

Starting in the mid-2000s, barriers to entry began to drop, and it eventually became free and easy for anyone to broadcast their opinion online. As the internet exploded with content, sorting through it became the number one problem to solve.

For better or worse, algorithms began to feed people what they loved, so they could consume even more. The ripple effect of this was that everyone competing for eyeballs suddenly found themselves optimizing content to try and win the algorithm game to get virality.

Viral content is often engaging and interesting, but it comes with tradeoffs. Content can be made artificially engaging by sensationalizing, using clickbait, or playing loose with the facts. It can be ultra-targeted to resonate emotionally within one particular filter bubble. It can be designed to enrage a certain group, and mobilize them towards actioneven if it is extreme.

Despite the many benefits of Connected Media, we are seeing more polarization than ever before in society. Groups of people cant relate to each other or discuss issues, because they cant even agree on basic facts.

Perhaps most frustrating of all? Many people dont know they are deep within their own bubble in which they are only fed information they agree with. They are unaware that other legitimate points of view exist. Everything is black and white, and grey thinking is rarer and rarer.

Between 2015 and 2025, the amount of data captured, created, and replicated globally will increase by 1,600%.

For the first time ever, a significant quantity of data is becoming open source and available to anyone. There have been massive advancements in how to store and verify data, and even the ownership of information can now be tracked on the blockchain. Both media and the population are becoming more data literate, and they are also becoming aware of the societal drawbacks stemming from Connected Media.

As this new wave emerges, its worth examining some of its attributes and connecting concepts in more detail:

The Data Media ecosystem is just beginning to emerge, but here are some early pioneers we like:

Growth in data journalism and the emergence of these pioneers helps give you a sense of the beginnings of Data Media, but we believe they are only scratching the surface of what is possible.

In a sense, its easier to define what Data Media isnt.

Data Media is not partisan pundits arguing over each other on a newscast, and its not fake news, misinformation, or clickbait that is engineered to drive easy clicks. Data media is not an echo chamber that only reinforces existing biases. Because data is also less subjective, its less likely to be censored in the way we see today.

Data is not perfect, but it can help change the conversations we are having as a society to be more constructive and inclusive. We hope you agree!

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The Evolution of Media: Visualizing a Data-Driven Future - Visual Capitalist