At Harvard we spend a lot of time watching how the media landscape is shifting and thinking about what that means for our clients. Here are our six biggest media trends to watch in 2018.

1. MEDIA TRENDS
JANUARY 2018

2. SIX TRENDS WE’RE WATCHING IN 2018
The big themes occupying the minds of
editors and journalists
(Plus some thoughts on what we, as
communications people, need to do in
response)

3. TREND 1
The fall-out from 2016 continues
Our hypothesis is that 2016 was to the tech sector what 2008 was for the financial sector
– a once-in-a-generation, maybe even a once-in-a-century, crisis that has up-ended
expectations and transformed what we thought to be possible.

4. 2017: THE POLITICAL-MEDIA-TECH ELITE
POST-MORTEM
The Brexit referendum and the election of
Donald Trump led to an unparalleled orgy of
soul-searching amongst the political-media-
tech establishment.
It prompted a post-mortem into what
happened (as Hillary Clinton termed it), how
it happened, why it happened, and what we
can do to make sure it never happens again
This has completely changed attitudes
towards the tech sector among the elite. The
narrative around tech is now much more
sceptical than it was just a few years ago.
Interestingly, consumer sentiment is still
very positive towards tech brands, so this
change seems to be restricted to an elite,
opinion-former audience.

5. POLITICS:
BREXIT
&
TRUMP
DIGITAL
AD FRAUD /
INEFFECTIVENESS
TROLLING/
BULLYING
EXTREMIST
CONTENT
AUTOMATION/
JOB DESTRUCTION
CORPORATION
TAX / OVERSEAS
CASH
DIVERSITY /
EQUAL PAY
PRIVACY /
SURVEILLANCE
SECURITY
RUSSIA
Part of this is because of the
crystallisation of a series of issues, all with
tech at their centre, which have come into
focus in the past year or two.
These issues overlap in many ways, so
that for instance the concern over social
media’s impact on Brexit, Trump and our
political discourse in general is linked to
prior concerns over cyberbullying, trolling
and even radicalisation of young people
online…
Again, most of these issues are mostly of
concern to elite, opinion-former audiences
in the media and political spheres, but
they are starting to trickle down into the
worries of everyday citizens too.
OVERLAPPING ISSUES

6. TECHNOLOGICAL, POLITICAL AND
REGULATORY RESPONSES STILL
ONGOING
The responses to these issues from governments and tech firms are still only in the early days.
If 2016 was the year of the crisis, and 2017 was the year of the post-mortem, then perhaps
2018 will be the year of action, when some of these issues will get addressed.

7. WILL WE SEE MORE OF THE
“TECHLASH”?

8. WHAT THIS MEANS
■ Be sensitive to the changing tech narrative
■ Prepare for greater scrutiny
■ Be part of the solution

9. TREND 2
Fake news narrative continues to gather pace
and undermines trust in incumbent media and
politics

10. FAKE NEWS ISN’T NEW – IT’S JUST
TURBOCHARGED
1986 2016
Fake news isn’t an entirely new
phenomenon of course. We’ve always
had “Freddie Starr ate my hamster”-style
made-up stories.
What’s been different over the last
couple of years is that we’ve had new
channels that can spread false
information faster and further than ever
before, and a politician prepared to
exploit that and indulge in it himself.

11. DECLINE IN TRUST IN UK MEDIA,
ESPECIALLY SINCE BREXIT
Source: Reuters Institute for Digital Journalism
But this fake news narrative has helped create an increased climate of mistrust of the UK’s mainstream
media. The stats show that trust in the UK media fell from 50% to 43% in a single year, between 2016-17.
Presumably this was due to people feeling that the media didn’t necessarily report Brexit truthfully or
accurately. But when the Grenfell Tower fire happened in June, it also became another focal point for mistrust
and anger against mainstream media, who were accused of ignoring or misreporting what happened

12. DECLINE IN POWER OF PRINT MEDIA IN
UK?
The surprise result of the June general election also led some influential figures from the world of journalism
to question whether the mainstream print media – which has been so dominant for so long in the UK – has
lost its power.
We’re a little sceptical about this argument – the tabloids were crucial in swinging the 2015 general election
and the 2016 EU referendum . . . So have they really lost their power in the space of a year?

13. BUT UK OUTLETS STILL HIGHLY
TRUSTED WORLDWIDE…
Source: Trusting News Project Report 2017; Reuters Institute for Digital Journalism

14. WHAT THIS MEANS
■ The value of trusted media outlets has never been higher
■ Rebuilding trust will take time
■ There’s an openness to new voices and new perspectives

15. TREND 3
The pivot to video, amid search for new
formats that work best online
The “pivot to video” means that media companies are moving away from text-based news
towards producing hours and hours of video content instead. This has been a particularly
big trend in the US but it’s starting to creep over to the UK too. Many publishers have
been investing massively in their video production capabilities, while laying off print
journalists.
But this approach has been widely mocked because the route to making money from it

16. 1. Lay off most of your writers, who
produce stories fast and cheaply for
your own website
2. Produce more video, which is vastly
more expensive and time consuming
and which only finds an audience on
other platforms, like Facebook,
Twitter or YouTube
3. ?????
4. PROFIT
THE “PIVOT TO VIDEO” HAS BECOME A
JOKE, EVEN WHILE IT’S BEING
PURSUED

17. CHASING AD BUDGETS AND READER
TRAFFIC
Daily video views on
Facebook, globally
2014: 1bn
2015: 8bn
The reason media companies are doing this, of course, is to chase advertisers’ budgets. Social media firms
charge more for video ads than static digital ads, so they are desperately encouraging brands to invest in
video.
Brands’ ad budgets are increasingly shifting towards video – 56% of ad money went into video in 2017, up
from 52% in 2015. Media companies presumably see the boom in video consumption – on Facebook,
Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Twitter and everywhere else – and think they have to get in on the act.

18. NEWS CONSUMERS ARE STILL
UNCONVINCED?
Source: Reuters Institute for Digital Journalism
The only problem is audiences don’t
seem to want it.
When you ask people how they want to
consume their news, the vast majority
still say text, not video…

19. PART OF A BROADER
EXPERIMENTATION
WITH NEW FORMATS
We see this pivot to
video really within the
context of a much
broader experimentation
phase that media
companies are going
through.
They’re trying to work
out what sort of formats
work for publishing
news online.
From documentaries, to
GIFS, to Twitter threads,
to long reads…

20. WHAT THIS MEANS
■ Video is important, but don’t be a slave to it
■ Experiment with formats for owned content
■ Create different kinds of content for earned media

21. TREND 4
Monetising beyond ads
This is about how media companies are trying to make money, beyond ad revenue alone.
Our hypothesis here is that the rush to chase traffic and ad revenue has acted as a
perverse incentive to media companies. It’s caused them to dumb down their content and
tempted them towards clickbait and stories that will go viral, even if they aren’t important
or valuable by the traditional standards of newsworthiness.
Now they’re trying to escape that trap.

22. TRAFFIC AND AD REVENUE AS A
PERVERSE INCENTIVE
"News is being reduced to a
three-letter word: it's either
OMG, LOL or WTF.“
Nick Robinson, BBC
An old newspaper catchphrase was, “If it bleeds, it
leads”—that is, if someone got hurt or killed, that’s the
top story. In the age when Facebook supplies us with a
disproportionate amount of our daily news, a more-
appropriate catchphrase would be, “If it’s outrageous, it’s
contagious.”
Christopher Mims, WSJ

23. AD REVENUE ISN’T BEING CAPTURED
BY PUBLISHERS ANYWAY
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
% take of global digital ad revenue, 2018
Google and Facebook Everyone else
Source: Group M estimates

24. SUBSCRIPTIONS BECOME A SAFE
HARBOUR
75k
800k
2016 20172016 2017
Members
300k
$81m
$59m
$64m
$86m
Print ads
Digital subs
Print ads
Digital subs
Source: company data
Media companies have realised that
chasing ad revenue is not just a losing
game: it’s entirely the wrong game to
be in. It’s a game they can never win,
no matter what they do.
That’s why one of the big trends we
saw in 2017 was the flight to
subscriptions as a safe harbour for
media companies
They’ve realised the only way they can
guarantee their future is to turn into
subscription-based businesses.
We think we’ll see more of this in 2018.

25. MEDIUM TRIES “APPLAUSE” AS A NEW
MONETISATION AND POPULARITY
METRIC
The other aspect of this is how publishers identify
popularity and reward their writers, if they’re not
going to rely solely on web traffic and viral metrics
like social shares.
One thing we saw in 2017 was the blogging
platform Medium develop a new feature called
“applause”, so you applaud an article rather than
liking it.
They use that metric to work out how they
reimburse their bloggers, so the more applause
you get the bigger the cut of subscription revenue
you receive.
We think we’ll see more innovations of this kind in
2018 as media firms try to work out new ways of
operating.

26. WHAT THIS MEANS
■ Retrenchment to “traditional” news values
■ Subscription-based outlets might be better long-term bets
■ More experimentation to come in surfacing and rewarding good content

27. TREND 5
The rise and rise of robo-reporters
Media firms are investing lots into AI tools. News pages are full of easy-to-write, stats-
based stories that don’t require much research or creativity. These could easily be
delegated to robots so that human reporters can focus on writing the more interesting
and in-depth pieces.

28. COVERING HIGH SCHOOL SPORT IN THE
WASHINGTON POST
This story from the Washington Post was actually written by a robot or an algorithm – not a human.

29. AUTOMATED LOCAL NEWS STORIES IN
THE UK
Google is funding a Press Association project to develop similar algorithms in
the UK, supplying stats-based stories to local newspapers around the country

30. MORE AUTOMATION TO COME?
Guardian Media
Group to launch new
£42 million venture
capital fund
– GMG Ventures

31. WHAT THIS MEANS
■ Stats stories become automated
■ Value lies in human reporting and investigations
■ Publishers focus on depth, not breadth, of coverage?

32. TREND 6
B2B influencers are the new journalists,
B2C influencers are the new celebrities

33. INFLUENCERS ARE POWERFUL – AND
THEY KNOW IT
29.7m
Zoella
22.9m
Ksi
17.8m
Joe
Sugg
15.2m
Caspar
Lee
14.4m
Alfie
Deyes
9.2m
Tanya
Burr
7.4m
Dan
Middleton
6.8m
Louise
Pentland
3.7m
Iskra
Lawrence
2.3m
Dina
Torkia
1.5m
The
Sun
Source: YouTube, Instagram and Twitter

34. THE INFLUENCER INDUSTRY HAS
PROFESSIONALISED… CAVEAT EMPTOR
Given the reach these consumer influencers have,
it’s no wonder this has become a professionalised
industry.
They have agents. There are advertising rules
around how they promote products.
And when YouTube changes its rules, influencers
start complaining because it threatens their
livelihoods.
They also charge tens of thousands of pounds
just to mention your product.
So this is not a space to move into without help
and without knowing what you’re doing.

35. B2B TECH INFLUENCERS SHAPE
NARRATIVES
230k followers 20k followers
73k followers 10k followers 6k followers
49k followers 14k followers
12k followers
71k followers
55k followers 243k followers
56k followers
On the B2B side, these
influencers have become
hugely important in their
own right.
Some of these tech
influencers have Twitter
audiences that rival or
even outweigh the
circulations of
newspapers.
They can talk to each
other, share attitudes and
ideas, and shape opinion
on issues that is then
reflected in mainstream
media coverage too.

36. WHAT THIS MEANS
■ Influencer relations needs to be as planned and strategic as media relations
■ If you don’t pay, you won’t get very far with consumer influencers
■ Take advice, be cautious, test and learn

37. RECAP
1. The fall-out from 2016 continues
2. Fake news narrative continues to gather pace and undermines trust in incumbent media and
politics
3. The pivot to video, amid search for new formats that work best online
4. Monetising beyond ads
5. The rise and rise of robo-reporters
6. B2B influencers are the new journalists, B2C influencers are the new celebrities

38. MEDIA TRENDS
JANUARY 2018