Justin Kistner

Traditional media vs. industrial media

I’ve been caught in the difficult position of trying to explain what I do more times than I care to recall. I tell people I work in social media, which almost always requires an explanation. For years, I’ve put social media up against “traditional media” as a point of reference. That comparison has been the source of confusion at best and an argument at worst. I knew the juxtaposition of social media with “traditional media” wasn’t working, but how else could I explain it?

Ethan Bauley got myself and a few others to think about it again about a month ago. I just posted the summary of what turned into a month-long, email conversation about What is Social Media?, which I posted on the Voce Nation blog. In a follow up post called The biggest irony on the Internet, Ethan shared some economic perspective from Yochai Benkler, which has convinced me to stop using the phrase “traditional media”:

At the core, my contention is that if we’re going to call some media “social”, there has to be some apropos name for “non-social” media. A lot of people go on and on about “traditional” or “broadcast” or “mass” media but that’s more wishy-washiness as far as I’m concerned. I’m looking for something much more clinical.

I always look to a higher power when parsing issues like this, and so I’ll cut myself off and pass the torch to a genius work from someone who figured this all out years ago: the introduction of Yochai Benkler’s seminal book on network-based communications technologies, The Wealth of Networks.

As far as I’m concerned, Benkler defined social media in that book, except he speaks in terms of “the network information economy” and “the industrial information economy”.

In the network information economy, it’s cheap to communicate; ownership of the tools to communicate are broadly distributed in the population at large. The vast majority of the population has the capacity to communicate to large audiences (e.g. they own a computer connected to the Net and can make a blog on Wordpress, which has the capacity to be read by billions of people).

Social media = “network information economy”

In the industrial information economy, communication is expensive; ownership of the tools is concentrated among a few commercial entities that can put the capital together necessary to purchase printing presses, television cameras, FCC-licensed spectrum, etc.

Both of these economies can co-exist at the same time. But their economics are very different, and that calls for different business designs for the firms that play in them.

Ladies and gents, I give you: “social media” vs. “industrial media”.

Boomers and Xers can now step out of Gen Y’s shadow

When asked what I do for a living, it was the Boomers and Xers that I ended up in an accidental argument with the most. By contrasting social media with “traditional media”, I was essentially saying that “traditional media” was no longer relevant, which made them feel like I was saying they were no longer relevant. They correctly and intuitively knew that wasn’t true. And so did I! Neither of us were capable of having an intelligent discussion about it, because *I* had incorrectly framed the discussion from the beginning by using the term “traditional media”. They knew that the art of relationship building, quality writing, networking, etc. hadn’t changed. Really, the only thing that has changed is the distribution model. Media has moved from creation by the few to creation by the many. That didn’t change journalistic ethics. It didn’t change how to write a good story. It didn’t wipe out networking or media social skills. It *did* change access to the business and the types of models that were profitable. It was an economic shift, which is why it makes sense to me to describe the differences between social media and it’s counterpart in economic terms.

Kara Swisher is someone I see quipping about the differences between journalists and bloggers from time to time. While snarky at times, I think she’s right to point to differentiators like journalistic integrity (something bloggers are starting to embrace), grammar skills (some bloggers like Zeldman are using old-school style guides), and networking skills (I’m talking in-person friends, not Facebook buddies) to mention a few. I think using the term industrial media allows her and her many colleagues to regain their foothold as top media professionals. The shift in the distribution model has made media participation more accessible, which has many implications on the business model. However, it hasn’t changed the rest of the skills required to be a top media pro.

What do you think about the usage of traditional media vs. industrial media?

09/25/2008 social media