Sunday, November 1, 2009

Media Must Adapt to Open Source Culture

The following article was original published on October 27, 2009 in the Technician:

Individuals born in the 1990's make up the most technology savvy generation of all time.1 They have grown up in a world where they are constantly connected, always communicating and sharing information freely. These aspects of our world are strikingly different from the environment in which newspapers, television and radio evolved. As a result, open source culture is undermining the effectiveness and financial stability of the traditional media industry.

The Internet originally began as a U.S. military project in the late 1960s.2 Starting with email, web technology was quickly adopted by public and private institutions. Although a degree of open source culture was present in the scientific and academic fields, it began to grow and flourish among users and developers of web technology. Rather than claiming software code as their own property, developers contributed to projects that solved complex problems. Apache, PHP, MySQL and WordPress were collaboratively developed and made available for free. Together these packages are enough to begin distributing your own content online. Add Shoutcast and you have an Internet radio station capable of being heard around the globe.

As a result of open source culture, traditional media companies, previously shaped by an environment of scarce information and expensive production and distribution methods, now find themselves in a new landscape where content is virtually unlimited and automatically disseminated. Explosive growth in user-generated content has put the media in direct competition with its consumers. "Professionally produced" has succumbed to "good enough"3 as consumers flock to Facebook to interact with their peers, post pictures of their homemade meals to Tumblr, upload incriminating videos from their phone to YouTube or coordinate protests on Twitter.

These online activities represent the crux of what traditional media companies must address: consumers of media are not just consumers, they are also producers.4 They are experts on their own circumstances and willing to share what they learn for the benefit of their community--just as software developers continue to innovate the very platform that has usurped traditional media models and empowered the average citizen.

Adapting to this new cultural context requires a revamping of the traditional media business model. If news and information are no longer scarce and have less value in the eyes on the consumer,5 where can value now be found? In my opinion, consumer demographics have more value than the content they consume. Advertisers can use this data to target ads more effectively and media can get a clearer view of their customers.

In addition, redefining the relative importance of privacy, objectivity and intellectual property are also important parts of adaptation. The media can look to many examples of how other industries are embracing the culture: OpenCourseWare in academia, FutureMelbourne in government and Creative Commons licensing amongst artists and musicians.

I expect open source culture to continue to spread. Traditional media companies will struggle, and perhaps fail, if they expect to operate as they have in the past. Regardless of the outcome, now is an exciting time to be involved in the media industry.

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