1. ‘Futuretainment’ M. Walsh
(2010)
What changes are predicted for the future relationship of
producers and consumers of media and what are the
implications of these?
(CHAPTERS: 4. Network, 7. Crowd, 22. Engage)

2. Network
INSIGHT: “The Audience Network holds the power in
the digital age. In the traditional broadcast
era, beaming out your content through transmission
towers was enough to secure audience attention.
Now that audiences themselves are organised like a
network, your only hope of distribution is ensuring
that consumers are motivated enough to do it for
you.” - page 63

3. Network
“An Audience Network describes the relationships
that consumers of entertainment products have with
content and with each other. ...the links of an
Audience Network are not fixed, but are constantly
growing, shifting and rewiring themselves.” - page 58
An Audience Network will always adapt to
accommodate new people, ideas and ways of going
about things on the Web.

4. Network
“...the concept of an ‘audience’ is already
changing, and in the future it is likely that it will be
very different.” - page 58
Audiences are beginning to break away into smaller
groups - niche markets - making it harder for media
companies to attract them.

5. Network
“Everyone in an Audience Network is connected to
everyone else.” - page 58
Audience Networks wouldn’t function as a network if
this wasn’t the case.

6. Network
“Whenever someone consumes a piece of
media, their actions connect them with other
audience members who they may not know, but with
whom they may share a history of similar
entertainment choices.” - page 63
This is fundamentally the way in which an Audience
Network is created as the media consumed becomes
the links between the consumers.

7. Network
“To create a successful piece of content, you not only
need to get people to like it, but must also encourage
your audience to spread it through their own
channels.” - page 63
By using the Audience Network a media company is
able to reach it’s target audience without having to
target it directly.

8. Network
“With the advent of Audience Network it was clear
that a new relationship was developing between the
creators and consumers of content.” - page 63
This relationship is now a lot closer than it ever was
before in the way that media companies are listening
to their audience more in order to give them the
products they want to see, keeping the company
successful and gaining revenue.

9. Crowd
INSIGHT: “Consumer behaviour on the Web is a
complex adaptive system. A task that might be
impossible for any one individual becomes a reality
through the linked behaviour of online crowds. But
cascading feedback also has a dark side: crowds can
just as easily become mobs.” - page 100

10. Crowd
“Audiences, like most crowds, rarely behave in a
predictable way.” - page 94
Members of an audience will influence other members of
the audience which will in turn show a media company
whether their product has been successful or not.
However, this also suggests a sheep-like effect which could
mean this isn’t a fair representation of the views of a
particular audience when one person takes into account
the view of another, and so it continues.

11. Crowd
“Individually, one audience member might not seem
to have a particularly profound influence on the
media ecosystem but, taken as a whole, the
interdependent interactions of millions of consumers
can have a huge impact.” - page 94
It only takes a handful of consumers to start off an
interaction that will then snowball in many more
people interacting with each other.

12. Crowd
“The Web is fast becoming the ultimate example of a
complex adaptive system....” - page 98
The Web is always changing due to new ideas, new
concepts, new ways of doings things, new sites and
programs and the next generation of Web users.

13. Crowd
“Without feedback, collective intelligence can’t
function properly.” - page 98
Interactions are required to create a network,
otherwise it would all just individual comments and
views.

14. Crowd
“Feedback has become an integral part of how the
Web functions and the ways in which consumers
interact with each other.” - page 98
It is feedback which creates the interactions between
the users as they then start to have discussions.

15. Crowd
“...Audience Networks are helping to bring structure
to the Web through their perpetual interaction with
content.” - page 100
Structure is created through the consumption and
feedback process which the Audience Network
participates in.

16. Crowd
“However, there is a risk to collective intelligence: a crowd
becoming a herd. Sometimes a few individuals can have a
disproportionate effect on the behaviour of a group as a
whole. When people in an Audience Network pay close
attention to the media-consumption behaviour of those
around them, suddenly everyone can begin to imitate each
other, resulting in an ‘information cascade’.” - page 100
The most dominant and actives members of an Audience
Network can become ‘known’ to the extent that people
‘trust’ what they are saying and they influence what others
say and think.

17. Crowd
“As Isaac Newton realised, crowds may be mad, but
their power must nevertheless begin with the actions
of one person.” - page 100
In order to create an Audience Network, one person
has to make the first move in order for someone else
to then interact with them.

18. Engage
INSIGHT: “The future of advertising does not lie in
big, complex online campaigns. The Web is a
powerful medium for telling stories. The challenge for
marketers will be to manipulate digital platforms to
create and sustain their brand mythologies. As
consumers become smarter at eluding marketing, it
will not be sufficient merely to invent better looking
advertisements around content. Advertising will need
to become the content.” - page 255

19. Engage
“As the media has become more fragmented, two
things have happened: firstly, it has become harder to
get enough people in one place at one time to
effectively deliver your...message; secondly, and
more importantly, it is even harder to get them to pay
attention when you do.” - page 246
Audience have split up into smaller niche markets and
people’s attention spans have decreased, giving way
to what some people call a 3-minute culture.

20. Engage
“...the trouble with campaigns is that in an online
world people interact with brands in different ways.”
- page 247
People now longer just watch an advert on TV or see
it in a magazine, they are now interacting with the
brands on social network sites. Viral marketing has
lead to a much stronger relationship between the
producer of the advertisements and the consumer as
it is their job to spread the virals for the company.

21. Engage
“...the Internet...offers brands the opportunity to
enter into a much more direct conversation with its
customers.” - page 247
This is largely due to social network sites as
companies can create their own pages on which their
customers and people who like the brand can interact
with them and with each other.

22. Engage
“...brands have to start thinking like media
companies.” - page 254
In order for a company’s product to be successful, like
a media company, they have to advertise it in a way
that their target audience wants to see it advertised
and to deliver this advertising in an appropriate way
for the target audience.

23. Engage
“...audiences are now so fragmented that the only way for
them to achieve mass awareness is for their message to be
compelling enough for consumers to do the distribution
for you.” - page 254
This is where viral marketing is really good. With viral
marketing, a company will create the content, which
would be the advert, and then they upload it to an online
platform where their target audience will carry out the
distribution by circulating it through e-mail, social
networking, word of mouth, etc.