Welcome to the New, User Generated Non stop Media Whipsaw

Sounds like a lovely place, doesn’t it? Or, perhaps, a page from Freddy Kruger’s travelogue?

Actually, this represents the media as it exists today. As we have seen from recent events, when you mix a hot story with 24 hour news cycles, add a dash of user content, and the power of the Internet and cable TV to keep wrenching visual imagery alive in a recyclable, non-stop  stew and it becomes impossible to predict what will result.

One thing is for sure: it can be a wild ride. 

Predicting how information will diffuse and what will resonate has always been a tricky business. What news and information will catch on and generate a buzz? What will languish and die on the vine?

Much can be learned by studying the elements that lead to popularity. E.g., a recent NY Times piece (“Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?”) cited research that seemed to show why it is difficult to predict hits in the music business.

The article reports that, despite the attempts by many to study the components that make movies and music catch on, the influence of peer groups is the wrench in the works that makes this almost impossible.  This element can produce different hits out of the same selection of songs every time, based on how others rate their initial experiences. The article calls this “cumulative advantage,” or the “rich get richer” effect.

This has lots to do with chaos, and theories of emergent behavior (think of the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings and changing the course of history) that say that, with complex systems, patterns can emerge that are difficult to predict.  This applies to the weather, the ways in which ants and bees swarm, and waves crashing on the beach - each will vary every time from the same basic set of inputs.

Which of course has always been true. What has changed is the increasingly participatory nature of media. The media have traditionally decided which stories to feature by taking an educated guess at what will sell (yes, let’s not forget that the vaunted fourth estate is also a business).  Information flowed in one direction, from top down.

Now, they no longer need to guess - people raise their voices in myriad ways, contribute content, and in doing so, can change the course of these stories.  More inputs mean more ways to stir the soup.

Amidst these new realities, there are some fundamental rules as to what makes a story hot . These haven’t changed; size  and locality matter. Stories are built on character and narrative. Sex and violence sells.

But the staying power of these stories and the direction they take are greatly influenced by the Whipsaw.

And, just like as in quantum mechanics, watching and participating in the experiment changes the experiment.

Would events have unfolded in the Imus story the way they did,  at warp speed (it became an exhausting week that seemed to come to a conclusion in record time)?

Would this have happened in the absence of the constant recycling of the sound clips? Or the thumping bass background of his apology tour and those who were screaming for his scalp, all brought to us live as it unfolded, with people piling on in increasingly polar opposite and raucous camps?

And, in the case of Virginia Tech, would NBC News have played the incendiary video if they didn't perhaps feel compelled to compete with YouTube?

I wonder