Declining Institutional Control and Affiliations
Filed under: 
Many people today do not depend on institutions in the same way. This has forced media organizations to compete in a more decentralized, open environment. “There is this weird state of disconnect between existing structures and openness,” says Katrin Verclas, co-founder of MobileActive. “Open networks are where things are evolving; yet media organizations are not. There’s not a lot of pro-activeness but a lot of reactiveness.”
Acting Free of Institutions
“People are increasingly acting on their own, free of institutions. They are taking distinct actions on distinct issues online. If I was concerned about an issue in the past, I’d start an organization, open an office, get a bank account in order to organize letter-writing campaigns, do outreach to Congress. But, today, I might start a Facebook group and draw awareness without ever opening an office or a bank account,” says John Bracken of the MacArthur Foundation.
Civic engagement, for example, can no longer be measured by formal affiliations (a basis for past research). In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam claimed a decline in “social capital” by pointing to declining participation in civic organizations. Today, however, affiliations may even be higher—they are simply happening in more informal and decentralized ways. In fact, some research has shown that online social networks have actually increased social capital in many new ways.
The implications for institutions are significant: their relationship with constituents is more casual than what was previously acceptable, traditional organizational hierarchies are flattening, and network effects are amplified independently of institutions. Twitter has succeeded, often in spite formal institution, because of its open platform. The government of Iran couldn’t even shut it down.
Don Tapscott, author of Growing up Digital, says that every institution faces a fundamental transformation. “People can now self-organize like never before. Young people have at their fingertips the most powerful tools, to find out what’s going on, to organize collective responses. Every institution in society is going to be naked and if you’re going to be naked, you better be buff.”
Readers Not Tied to Publishers
Today’s online users, particularly casual newsreaders, increasingly receive news from direct referrals and links from their social networks. Only approximately one quarter of casual newsreaders, who comprise most of Americans, say they trust a few news sources more than others. In contrast, two- thirds of hard-core newsreaders feel that way, which indicates the value of trustworthy sources remains high for at least a small segment of consumers. Furthermore, people increasingly consume news from multiple sources. A 2008 Pew Research Center survey asked news consumers to list their most frequented online news sites. The results mostly included portals and TV news sites, yet revealed considerable fragmentation across the board. Only eight websites were mentioned by more than 2% of respondents. Only Google and Yahoo! increased their perceived trustworthiness as news sources, compared to the center’s 2006 survey.
As a result, publication-centered news may continue to face greater challenges in turning readers’ fragmenting attention into a steady return of visits. Michael Hirschorn went as far as saying that, “The Internet has done much to encourage lazy news consumption, while virtually eradicating the meaningful distinctions among newspaper brands.”
The new rules of online engagement, according to Verclas, mean that there will be no central control. “It mutates and adapts; it’s flexible and agile,” she says. “We have no idea in the media how to do this. With the principles of decentralization, profits go away.”
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.
Leave a comment