NEWSTROLOGY: We do not present news, we predict them!
Our media start up innovative idea
Knowing what the future holds is like revealing some kind of mystery. At all times, people were curious about it. However, it is not easy to find future forecasts that would be based on reliable sources and expert opinions. This is why the world requires Newstrology.
Challenges
According to a Reuters report in 2022, 38 percent of the world’s population tends to avoid news. People do that because, according to them:
· News is untrustworthy (only 42% believe the opposite).
· The presented information is not valuable.
· News is usually of a negative color and negatively impacts consumers’ moods.
Furthermore, we conducted interviews with 18- to 55-year-olds from Greece, Germany, and Lithuania who consume news daily. Interviewees were asked what they thought about how news is presented nowadays and what they thought was missing. 85% of those polled stated that the news they receive is usually one-sided and exaggerated. Most of the interviewees, also, stated that they tend to avoid news (especially political) because they make them extremely sad, and it affects their ‘’mental health”.
Current news showcases that the world is going mad, so it’s difficult to be positive about it. Nonetheless sometimes you see great stories about amazing people doing incredible things, so maybe the future it’s not going to be so bad after all. All in all, the Reuters report and interviews brought us the realization that the world is in huge need of news that would be presented without overemphasis or bias, and one can find at least minor positivity there.
Spotting white spaces
Talking about the latter, we started thinking of something that usually brings people hope. And we remembered that hope that the current situation will probably change in the future is one of the most powerful positive forces that is pushing people forward. Thus, the solution was clear: we had to create a project whose main aim would be to present future scenarios. And to do it in as realistic and reliable manner as possible. And try to color our predictions with bright colors, or at least provide advice on how people individually or collectively can influence and eventually change the proposed future prognosis.
Moreover, using the concepts of future and hope, we want to create an alternative space for news avoiders. We want to turn their discouragement and avoidance of today’s news into encouragement and engagement of future news.
This idea captured our attention for one more reason. Nowadays, we can hardly find some news platforms that would give some predictions for the, for instance, endings of some events; usually, their goal is to present current events in the world.
Competitors
The use of future scenarios and future methodology are embraced to the fullest mainly from academics and public policy, the European Foresight Platform (EFP) for example. Mostly of the news websites that we searched are referring to technological and scientific achievements that will improve the future. In some cases, they have alternative content and stray into science fiction and literary scenarios. Some other websites are referring to the far future (2300, etc.) based on scientific studies, but as good as interesting they are, they look futuristic, and they don’t affect humanity immediately. On the other hand, those that are also newsworthy and refer to current news fall into the category of explanatory journalism, rather than future scenarios.
More specifically we present some of our competitors:
• BBC Future, fields of planet, family, etc.
• The Conversation, environmental issues, planets
• Wired, a site (and magazine) that brings interesting topics and commentary to the world of technology and its impact on society.
• Sciencedaily, scientific information with 500 different topic categories
• Steinmulle, they don’t renew their contact casually. Just information about future studies
• Feneu courses, Programs about European policy making
• Rss, updates and insights on decentralized technology and its impact on the future.
• Singularity Hub, chronicles technological progress by highlighting the breakthroughs, players, and issues shaping the future
• E&T Magazine, a world leading professional organisation sharing and advancing knowledge to promote science, engineering, and technology across the world.
• Future Timeline, timeline of future predictions. Mostly a futuristic website.
Based on the above statements, we believe our main competitor is the magazine Wired because it has the future element that we need for our media start up and connects it to today’s word problems. But we will differentiate ourselves in three ways:
· Wired mentions how technology is changing every aspect of our lives — from culture to business, science to design. We won’t use technology as our main category that will compose our other categories. We will create a news media that has specific categories (science, social –environmental issues & politics).
· Our future time will be 5–7 more years distant than Wire’s Magazine
· Our media start up will be based on audiovisual content.
Value Proposition
Thus, starting by the problem of news avoidance we tried not to look on the present but, on the future, creating a white space for those who need hope and news encouragement. Technological and scientific development won’t be our main issues, as most similar websites. We will share knowledge though audiovisual content not articles. And that is the way we created our Value Propostition.
Diving deeper into the concept of Newstrology
The core idea would be to provide the audience with some probable theories of how our lives will look in the near and far future, what impact current events may have on different sectors in a couple of years. The key objectives are going to be politics, culture, and science.
The project will seek to answer three major questions:
1. What should we expect?
2. What effect will it have?
3. What could be the safest path to escape the probable situation from the perspective of sustainability and return to future normality?
To address the issues raised above, Newstrology will:
· provide trustworthy future scenarios (will present sources and at least two opinions on one topic)
· will use a calmer, more realistic tone of communication
· emphasize more positive prospects (e.g., how deadly diseases could be treated in the future, which planets we will be able to turn into possible homes, and so on) or provide advice on what everyone can do to change certain negative predictions (e.g., the ending of the war in Ukraine, climate crisis, and refugee crisis outcomes).
· develop audiovisual content for YouTube and its website, as well as conduct annual research using foresight methodology.
Audiovisual content
We will record audiovisual interviews with experts from the fields of politics, culture, and science discussing probable future scenarios for specific current events, global situations, or in general, human life in the future. These videos will be uploaded to Newstrology’s YouTube channel and web page. We will also share short cutouts from the full videos on the project’s Instagram and TikTok.
Research
We have a goal to establish and maintain a strong relationship with institutions and professionals in the science, technology, and culture sectors. By collaborating with them and using foresight technology, we will be able to perform large-scale annual research on specific topics in the fields of science and culture, providing a broader picture on one specific future forecast related question.
Community
Our aim is to create a community by asking what topics interest people the most, what questions about the future they have on social media and then giving the answers. We will, also, do that by preparing posts stories on those topics, providing extra content for Patreon fundraising platform and having live interviews).
Audience/ Market Segments
Our audience will be 18–50-year-old people who keep up with the news from the internet & social media, who search in the depths of things and are curious to learn more about the world. We want to include not only young ages who are mostly keen on the internet, but also adults who use the internet and social media for their information.
After the process of the interviews to 18–50-year-old people, we were pleased to find that our idea is intriguing because they are curious to know what the future holds and how life will look like for the next generations and how much different it is going to be from ours. The balance of positive and sad stories/news, a more accurate representation of what life really will, is the perfect content for them. Some also, told us, that our startup media is “a great solution because with a different and fresh point of views they can make other news avoiders to be more active about their society”.
Moreover, after creating our personas it was clear to us what our target groups are:
• Social activists
• University students
• Teachers
• Educated people
• Journalism & Marketing sector
• Policy makers
• Scientists / academics and technology sector workers
Finally, our key partners will be other media channels, professionals of the fields of science and technology and people from public policy sector. Key resources will be human resources (interview host, experts to interview, cameraman), people responsible for social media and we page, people responsible for annual research), gadgets for recording interviews, money, place for the interviews. Our revenue streams include private and/or public funding (as a kick-off), cooperation with partners who are interested in our research, subscribers, Patreon fundraising platform, advertisement (that matches our values), once a year a live event. Our cost structure includes website development up to 3.000 euros, server rent up to 1.000 euros (annually), digital studio (facilities/equipment) up to 30.000 euros, wages up to 1.400 euros/person/month (VAT and other taxes included), social media advertisement up to 5.000 euros (annually).
Professor: Ms. Betty Tsakarestou
Team and editors: Grigoria Ziaka, Elizabet Berzanskyte, Tsolias Panagiotis
