I am having a bit of a ramble around the demise of mass media, why it happened in the first place and how our digital world is impacting on what we consume and how.

So I came across an interesting book by Lizabeth Cohen - Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies, Dept. History Harvard University. Entitled A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America.

Cohen explains:

“What I discovered was a shared understanding among many Americans, beginning right after World War II and lasting into the mid-1970s, that the best strategy for reconstructing the nation’s economy and reaffirming its democratic values lay with promoting the expansion of mass consumption.

Policy makers, business and labor leaders, along with many ordinary Americans put mass consumption at the center of their plans for a prosperous postwar nation.

Not only would a dynamic demand-driven economy provide the best route to recovery and affluence, but it would also, they hoped, nurture the long-sought ideal of a more egalitarian and democratic nation.

Citizens, living better than ever before, would be on an equal footing with their similarly prospering neighbors. So being a good citizen and a good consumer became intertwined.“

Sometimes it’s easy to forget our recent past and the drivers for significant social and economic policy decisions which in turn become imbedded and forgotten.

However the structural nature of consumption has changed as content has decoupled from its format - to become super-distributed, whilst the migration from our agricultural clock and industrial mindset to a 24/7 digital world means that we have to stop and think afresh about what we make, why we make it and who is going to use it.

Read the full story:
Brand Experience Replaces Broadcasting: Online Communities And User Engagement Are The Access Keys

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