How digital impacts experience — and why it matters.
Hey, internet user! I’m Cat, a communications campaigner interested in communication in its varied forms. In the communications profession, we have solid reason to drive toward a more sustainable business future. At the centre of communication is cause; so qualitative research, with evolving open-ended, people-centered tools and methodologies, is a way we might do so.
With digitisation, there are new challenges to communications strategy and research that it is important to bear in mind in building reputation.
When we don’t know something, it’s instinct to seek information that will answer our question. Yet what today’s more omnipresent, largely unchecked technologies make clear is that learning is happening all the time; and not all of it is in our control.
Controversial ‘prophet’ of the communication landscape and experience, Marshall McLuhan, in the 1960s claimed media are extensions of our senses, that transform our environment and affect all that we do. He distinguished between visual channels, including books, newspapers, bulletins that were experienced one at a time, and oral media including the televisual and digital space that are experienced as pervasive and all-at-one.
“The world has become a computer, an electronic brain… And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside.”
Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man
Today’s hyper-engaged online communication happens at light-speed, with rapid-fire push-button wars, wide social networks and so-called reality television. With oral media, the spoken word is the prevalent mode of communication and we are more driven by instinct: McLuhan warns, with oral media,
“Terror is the normal state… For in it everything affects everything all the time”.
Now, lowered awareness of distinctions between channels is evident with communication campaigns powered by many datasets. The annual USC Annenberg Global Communications Report drives home this message more than ever before, finding that increasingly neither impact nor pace of change of communication technologies is perceived by its users.
Of the participating 1583 public relations practitioners, 62% predicted future consumers will not be able to distinguish between the source of information: whether it is written by a reporter, shared by an influencer, or paid for by a brand. Of that same sample, 55% believe that consumers of the future will not be able to detect whether content has been manufactured by a machine, and neither will they care where the content they consume is coming from.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed more than just how online, loose clickable interests can be funnelled into targeted campaigns. It shows how the traditional business model has been flipped on its axis: now, campaigners are the consumers and the audience are the products. Yes, Facebook is free; but only free because it offers great value to people who want to sell ads on it.
McLuhan cautions oral media users that,
“Unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence.”
For communications campaigners, online media presents new ground to grapple with. On the one hand, constant learning can take place, and we can collaborate and create blended campaigns. On the other, we can and should show respect and caution about how data is being used, and prove that we can prioritise tools responsibly.
The point is, online media can be participatory — not just one-way. This also means that today, more than ever before, there is also the counter realisation: to be constructive, learning includes unlearning. Sometimes seeking distance from technology is key to tapping into different sources of knowledge.
