Categories: Articles

Media Is Human

Have you ever really considered that one of the biggest shifts we have seen in the past decade is that media has suddenly become human?

It may seem obvious enough. "Of course media is human, just look at Blogs, Twitter and Facebook!" But, in fact, it’s not obvious. Media used to be fed to the masses by talking heads. Someone who was reading a teleprompter from a screen where the words were carefully (and politically) crafted by a team of producers, writers and editors. Foregoing that and looking at newspapers, even that content from the seasoned journalist was highly edited by “at least” one person (if not a handful as well). This is not a question of "all hell breaking loose" when anybody and everybody can publish content, but it is curious to think about how emotional media has become and how personal the people who create it are to us all.

How does a tweet make you feel?

In the old days, the best stories would leave their mark. Be they happy, sad, tragic or inspiring, it was something we talked about around the water cooler or discussed at the dinner table. We paid no major attention to the actual source who provided the content” they were simply the conduit for the story. Now, more often than not, the stories that strike a chord within us are happening to people we know (at some level or another). It’s amazing to think that as long as people are connected, all of that content does become media.

It’s something to think about.

Media is not created by someone else. It’s created by someone we know. Most of the people we are currently getting our media from we either know in person or are connected to online. Even those more traditional mass media journalists we’re more connected to than ever before. We’re learning and knowing more about them because we’re following them on Twitter or friending them on Facebook. They actually want us to follow them and learn more about them… the personal side.

Why does media becoming more personal and human make media better (or does it)?

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.