Digital Disruptions: The Changing World of Media & Content Consumption

By

Ngozi Okpara, Ph.D.

nokpara@pau.edu.ng

Digital Disruption

Digital Disruption

• Radical digital innovation and its wider systemic effects – commonly referred to as digital disruption – are attracting substantial attention among researchers and practitioners

​

• While practitioners and scholars agree on the general framing of digital disruption, its precise meaning and relation to other prevalent concepts in the digital innovation discourse remain unclear

​

• There is a limited understanding of how digital innovation triggers the dynamic processes that may generate digital disruption

​

​

​

​

Digital Disruption 2

• Definitions

​

• 1) The rapidly unfolding processes through which digital innovation fundamentally alters historically sustainable logics for value creation and capture by unbundling and recombining linkages among resources or generating new ones - Skog et al. (2018)

​

• 2) …changes facilitated by digital technologies that occur at a pace and magnitude that disrupt established ways of value creation, social interactions, doing business, and more generally our thinking - Sullivan, and Staib (2018)

​

​

Digital Disruption 3

• 3) …change that occurs when new digital technologies change customer experiences, business processes, and business models, thereby changing how value is cocreated - Bolton et al. (2019)

​

• 4)… the alteration of a domain-specific paradigm due to the digital attributes of an innovation – Baiyere and Hukal 2020

Digital Disruption 4

• Based on the diverse explanations and perceptions of digital disruption there is a need to establish the type of digital disruption in focus

​

• We can perceive digital disruptions across a variety of contexts

​

• Digital disruption in relation to the changing world of media & content consumption

Digital Disruptions in Media…Consumption

• Video streaming/web-based video (Podcasts, webcasts, movies, TV shows, and music videos are common forms of streaming content. )
• Smartphones
• Email
• Online references and encyclopedia
• Personal computers and hand-held devices
• Etc.

​

The Changing World of Media

The Internet

• The Internet has changed the way we produce, consume, and experience nearly all of the media

​

• Today the very act of consuming media creates an entirely new form of it

​

• The social data layer tells the story of our likes, what we watch or share, who and what we pay attention to or engage with, profile, etc., and our location as well

​

• These numbers, percentages, and statistics provide actionable insights concerning our production and marketing strategies

​

• This social data layer reveals so much about our behavior that it programs programmers as much as they program us

​

​

​

Implications for Social Data…

• Real-time web consumption statistics on all contents and posts—and learn how to craft content to best command an audience
• Readouts that give an in-depth analysis of audience behavior, interest, and sentiment
• This could be a clear indication that the audience is interested in what the producers are creating
• Etc.

Other Implications

• With smartphones and other devices, we are connected to screens and virtually to friends worldwide, but we may forfeit an authentic connection to the world. Essentially, we become alone “alone together” with others

​

• Marshall McLuhan (1968) saw the potential for this, years ago when he observed that augmentation leads to amputation, the medium is the message and global village pattern (i.e. the occurrence of the world's culture shrinking and expanding at the same time due to pervasive technological advances that allow for instantaneous sharing of culture)

​

• In the past, one could turn the media off—put it down, go offline. Now that’s becoming the exception, and for many, an uncomfortable one

​

Other Implications 2

• We are almost always connected to an Internet-enabled device, whether in the form of a smartphone, fitness monitor, car, screen, etc. (cf. Big Data and IoT)

​

• We are augmented by sensors, signals, and servers that record vast amounts of data about how we lead our everyday lives, the people we know, the media we consume, and the information we seek
• The media, in effect, follows us everywhere, and we’re becoming anesthetized to its presence.

Media Content Consumption

Media Content Consumption

• Media content consumption explains how the audience reads, views, and/or listens to information and data created by and related to your production, business, and marketing
• With ever-increasing devices, platforms, and content, we can understand how our content consumers get the most value out of the content we create

Types of Content Consumption

• With different devices and platforms, content consumption has evolved into 5 distinct types

​

• Focused content consumption

​

• Multi-input content consumption (often referred to as dual consumption)

​

• Information snacking consumption (also referred to as snackable content)

​

• Content binging

​

• Time shifted content

Changing Media Consumption

• In a single decade (2011-2021), the way we consume media has shifted dramatically
• Everyday mobile use has skyrocketed, underscoring the move away from offline media

​

• On average people open their smartphones 58 times a day – (Cohen, 2022)

Conclusion

• Digital disruption describes the change that happens when new digital technologies, services, capabilities, and business models affect and change the value of the industry's existing services and goods

​

• Your audience chooses how to consume content, information, and data based on their physical context and available device

​

• In today’s over-saturated media environment, create content to meet your audience’s needs and wants

​

• To succeed, offer the content format that allows them to consume in the way they choose via their choice of device

​

Conclusion 2

• Transform and distribute content across formats, platforms, and devices to enable readers to consume your information when, where, and how they wish (otherwise, they will move on to what they consider to be better and more accessible content to achieve their goals and fulfill their needs)

​

• The bottom line, digital disruption means change, and that can be good and bad

​

​

​

Recommendations

• Today’s world requires the acquisition of many new individuals and societal knowledge and skills to enable citizens of all ages to access, select, understand and make … responsible use of information and of different kinds of media, both professional and user-generated, on all kinds of channels and distribution or communication platforms - Council of the European Union (2020/c 193/06)

​

• Disruption should be based on innovations, values, and morals that can uplift human life and dignity and not merely for planned obsolescence

​

• Responsible production and consumption (cf. media literacy and critical thinking) of media content are key issues we need to take into consideration in order to navigate the often invasive and obnoxious media environment

Thank you!