Dawn of a Demographic Revolution
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“My bottom line is that demographics are changing in this country dramatically. Technology is changing dramatically. Willingness to hear progressive media is increasing dramatically,” says Larry Irving, former Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information at the U.S. Department of Commerce. “There is a certain window of time to make something long-lasting.”
Effects of Diversity
“Independent, progressive journalism doesn’t understand that progressives are speaking past Black and Brown audiences, but are dependent on Black and Brown votes,” Irving says. “They are condescending to these communities, afraid of these communities, and are not supporting and building in these communities. The reality is that five to ten years from now Browns and Blacks are going to make up more than 50% of the vote.”
Attitudes about diversity are changing in the United States. “There is a lot less concern among the younger generation about the racial divide,” says Irving. “For some Black Americans it’s important that the media they access is Black. But for younger people who want Black perspectives, it doesn’t have to be from Black people all the time. Black is one of the things they are—they have grown up in a diverse world. Some of the walls we’re seeing now are crumbling.”
Shifting demographics create both challenges and opportunities for content producers: Different groups use media in different ways. Irving notes that for Latinos, Facebook, MySpace and SMS texting drove greater adoption of technology. Furthermore, according to a 2008 Pew Research Center study, African-American Internet users are 18% more likely to watch online video than white Internet users and 15% more likely to have a profile page on a social networking site such as MySpace or Facebook. In terms of gender differences, for instance, women tend to watch network TV news (particularly morning programs such as the Today show), while more men watch cable TV shows. It is insufficient for a publisher to simply make content available anytime, anywhere on any device. They must also customize content for different audiences on different devices.
Effects of Millennial Generation
“I’m concerned that independent media organizations are not figuring out how to tap into the next generation of news consumers,” said Erin Polgreen of The Media Consortium (TMC). Young people (born between mid 1980s to early 1990s) are leaving print and television news, and for a long time incumbent organizations believed that they might eventually come back. “In spite of the increasing variety of ways to get the news, the proportion of young people getting no news on a typical day has increased substantially over the past decade,” according to a 2008 Pew Research Center study. “About a third of those younger than 25 (34%) say they get no news on a typical day, up from 25% in 1998.”
Nevertheless, the Millennial Generation’s members are world-changers with strong democratic values, which indicates that they are interested in information about the world around them. Don Tapscott, who authored the 2008 book, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing the World, explains: “This is the first generation to come of age in digital age. They have enormously strong values—they care a lot. It’s not true about this being the ‘narcissistic me’ generation. Civic engagement in U.S. has been growing decade-to-decade and is currently at an all time high, and it has turned into political action. This generation is going to change the world.”
If independent media can experiment with bold new ways to engage audiences, they may tap a new generation of users that will transform the world and how the news is reported. “In the progressive community, (young) people will have the more universal POV, and also be the ambassadors for their communities,” Irving says. “Don’t expect progressive media to have a direct path initially. They need to find trusted voices inside the community that can help create the echo chamber.”
For more information about globalization and its effects, download Vol. 2 of The Big Thaw.
This blog is an excerpt from The Big Thaw, a guide to the evolution of independent media, written by Tony Deifell of Q Media Labs and produced by The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets. Learn how your organization can use this report. For more information and recommendations from the study, click here.
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