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[Media Actually] I'll buy your media experience. : ① You are already choosing it.

Content Curator Dr. Sophia Seo's [Media Actually]
I'm Sophia, the content curator. I adding stories to your content experience.

  • Friday, August 25, 2017, 2:10 pm
  • ACROFAN=Sophia Seo
  • press@acrofan.com
 
[Special Column] I'll buy your media experience.

① You are already choosing it.
② How much different people are we experiencing?
③ The answer is in '○○○' media experience.

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On the way home, an office worker A is searching for a movie to watch this weekend. When he enters the movie ticketing site, the movie he did not know well was at the top of the ticket sales. As he clicked on the details, people's reviews were not bad. So, he books the movie immediately. Then, he opens the portal site and click on the 'Most viewed news' on the main page to check today's issues. On SNS, there is a comment that ○○ program is a well-made drama exceeding the viewing rate of 5%. To see this, when he opens up YouTube and searches the program, more videos came out than he expected, so he just clicks on the video with the highest number of views.  (...)

Mr. A's daily life will never be unfamiliar to you living in Korea. In fact, Mr. A's routine is the most common and general using pattern of media contents in the 20s and 30s. This is all about watching news on the portal, getting interesting videos through social media, and searching and consuming videos on YouTube. And, since many studies have already addressed where to which device, and how much the users consume the media contents, it is true that not new.

This column focuses on the media use of 'them' rather than 'you' to explain the story of Mr. A. In the story of Mr. A, you can find one thing in common. That is, another person's media experience leads directly to my media experience. Information such as ticket sales, the most viewed news, recommendations, views, etc., are actually made from the media experience of others, and they are having a lot of visible or invisible effects on the choices and decisions of media content today. It has been actually proven through a variety of studies (to be covered later in the series).

About this phenomenon, Mutz (1998) described by using the concept 'impersonal influence'. Impersonal influence is the influence occurred when media delivers attitudes, beliefs, or experiences of anonymous others in the realm where personal contact is not made, and individuals perceive and consider them. In other words, Mutz argued that there is a need to pay attention to the fact that the individuals are influenced in deciding or judging their attitudes by media, which delivers collective opinion or experience of other people.

Including viewing rate, other people's experience of using media has so far mainly approached from the level of quantitative indexes of advertisements. Especially, in the case of digital media environment, as there is no evaluation index of media contents that can replace viewing rates, various indicators such as ticket sales, number of views, and number of shares are used as content evaluation indexes. In other words, the object of information provision is not an individual but an advertiser or a content creator. In recent years, it has also been used in the context of curating, which provides contents suitable for individuals. However, still it is not a form that the users use for other people's media experience.

There are two main reasons to pay attention to the media experience of others. One is that long ago, individual users have been utilizing and influenced by the experience of others. Therefore, to know about people's media use behavior, there is a need to examine "how to experience" the media experience of others in addition to the general media usage survey that has been carried out so far. But, this part was out of picture. Especially, the scope of its influence is expected to be strong in the digital media environment which can get more information about other people because of the characteristics of media. The other is that, in the media environment where a number of media contents are pouring out, examining what emotions users felt and how they received them when consuming the contents, meaning what kind of experiences they meet, are more important than whether the user consumed contents or not.

Therefore, if you want to know how individuals use contents or products or how to use them, you should first focus on what media experience you have from others.


"I'm Sophia, the content curator. I adding stories to your content experience."