When you’re living in a time of transition — and, Lord knows, the mediasphere today is in flux writ large — it’s hard to see the trends that are taking shape. Part of the conversation, naturally, is shaped by the language we use to describe it.
When we launched Ourmedia in March 2005, our tagline read, "The global home for grassroots media." We used grassroots media because there was no better term for the creation of personal media and the sharing of it in a public space, which turns it into something more than an isolated media work. Even then, however, grassroots media had a sort of hippie-dippie ’60s flair to it. We sure as heck weren’t going to use the odious corporate speak "user-generated content." (You can always spot a marketer from the way he uses the term without irony.)
So what do we call this thing, which encompasses blogging, video and podcasting (but not old media).
While a few A-list bloggers (like my friends Steve Rubel and Doc Searls) have shunned social media or found it superfluous or otherwise wanting, the term seems to be gaining currency among the masses. I’ve never liked the term citizens’ media to describe this larger trend, because it describes just one facet of the phenomenon, connoting acts of civic engagement or responsibility, which doesn’t seem relevant when you’re publishing a video of your cat. (On the other hand, that more limited scope helps define the contours of citizen media a bit better.) The term independent media connotes news organizations that are not controlled by corporations. Participatory media is probably the most apt phrase, but it’s a mouthful and unlikely to catch on among the public. Citizen journalism is an even smaller subset of what’s happening with the trend of people creating their own media. And new media, to my mind, will always conjur images of news organizations online departments: Hearst new media, Salon.com or the New York Times on the Web.
Plunk these terms into Google and here are the results you get today (using quotemarks):
Social media: 8,060,000 English pages
User-generated content: 2,360,000
Independent media: 1,790,000
Our media: 1,600,000 (though many of these refer to critiques of our traditional media)
Personal media: 1,460,000
Citizen media: 696,000
User-created content: 288,000
Participatory media: 213,000
Grassroots media: 171,000
Citizens’ or citizens media: 117,000
Anyway, that’s the view from here in Silicon Valley. It’ll be interesting in a year or two to look back and see how these numbers have shifted.
Are there terms for this phenomenon that I’ve missed here?
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
This is a terrific question! Something that very much needs definition, much like our profession itself. Are we in digital marketing, interactive marketing, new media, online PR…? It's hard to keep up!
I would submit even using the word “media” as part of the term is restrictive. As you say, just because I post videos of my kids on YouTube doesn't make that news, and so I wouldn't be considered part of The Media. If you are using the word media as an alternative definition for content, then that makes more sense, but still it refers to the material, not the material's creator. I very much like your definition of the issue as being one brought on by the ability to take personal information/content/media and share it “in a public space.” If I had pictures from vacation in an album on my coffee table, that's not really media worthy. If I have video of a hurricane from vacation on YouTube, that very well makes the grade as being media worthy.
I really look forward to seeing this discussion unfold.
We call anything on the www where one can set-up a profile or avatar an “innernet”.
Hence, I often refer to my “innernets” in the plural, as I enjoy using several different profiles.
I think that increasingly, “channels”=the type of innernet, i.e., my blogging channel, my lifecasting channel, twitting, etc.
This is a terrific question! Something that very much needs definition, much like our profession itself. Are we in digital marketing, interactive marketing, new media, online PR…? It’s hard to keep up!
I would submit even using the word “media” as part of the term is restrictive. As you say, just because I post videos of my kids on YouTube doesn’t make that news, and so I wouldn’t be considered part of The Media. If you are using the word media as an alternative definition for content, then that makes more sense, but still it refers to the material, not the material’s creator. I very much like your definition of the issue as being one brought on by the ability to take personal information/content/media and share it “in a public space.” If I had pictures from vacation in an album on my coffee table, that’s not really media worthy. If I have video of a hurricane from vacation on YouTube, that very well makes the grade as being media worthy.
I really look forward to seeing this discussion unfold.
Hi J.D.
I think the term “Social Media” is fitting and has a nice ring to it. It encompasses all of the different facets of media into a nice little phrase. While the term blogging is o.k., I’m not that crazy over the term podcasting. IMAO-It sounds like an audio show by & for aliens. Citizen media sounds like we live in a quasi-communist state. MSM obviously would like to keep this phrase around to differentiate themselves from inferior source material. :-)
I just did a search on Google for “Social Media” and it returned 11,800,000. I also like “New Media” and that returned 73,100,000- not too shabby. I think both of these terms will have staying power. I much rather use these terms to explain the current trends. That’s just one man’s opinion…
Excellent discussion JD. I’m all for Social Media as the umbrella, and like many, have moved fully in that direction without looking back. In fact, each of the above terms still speak to specific forms of social media and are still appropriate when discussing particular channels.
There was some interested points in this post about the discussion that may be of help as well:
http://www.briansolis.com/2007/02/doc-searls-and-robert-scoble-on-whats.html
JD-
I think you pretty much covered it. It seems each term is related, yet has it’s own definition. The non mainstream media like blogs and podcasts, and video blogs are “citizen media,” yet creators are able to participate in the mainstream discussion with “citizen journalism” via sites like I-Report, U-Report etc. Additionally the mainstream feeds off of “citizen media” whenever a YouTube video is featured on the news, thus giving more exposure to “user generated content.” However you look at it, what is happening is a media revolution or evolution, that no one could have anticipated even two or three years ago. Then there are folks like myself and Jim Long (www.vergenewmedia.com) who are still a part of the mainstream, but believe that social media is a big part of the media’s future.
Thanks, Brian (and everyone else), I was looking for that earlier posting of yours and couldn’t find it!
All I know is this: We’re not going to decide this here.
Hey JD. Interesting question, however at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter.
English is one of those unique languages where we deal with synonym and representation every day: the same idea, concept or system can be communicated, effectively, using various labels.
I highly doubt we’ll see standardization of nomenclature. You get 10 people in a room, and everything from “viral” or “buzz” to “CRM” has nuanced (or very different) meanings to each person.
Underscores all the more that labels such as “UGC” or “social media” are highly dangerous when a context is not provided (e.g. what is the desired outcome? What is the recommended approach? Who are we trying to engage? What’s in it for them? etc), and that is not clearly communicated beyond the ‘tags’ or marketer-speak.
It’s time we all agreed on a simple definition for social media. I’ve posted one on my blog at http://blog.isabelhilborn.com:
“Social Media: Any communications format where the users publish the content.”
That means it includes offline activities, which is only appropriate, and it keeps the term from being hijacked by marketing agencies who are trying to turn it into another version of advertising.