Journalists beating their heads against a wall: The problem of consumption, value and willingness to pay

Many news organizations and journalists still harbor beliefs that customers will be willing to make micropayments for individual articles or that paywalls or payments from digital platforms will solve their financial challenges.

These beliefs are based on the perception that the results of their labor are so valuable people will want it and pay for it.  They ignore that most households make no direct payments for news of any kind in every country of the world, whether print, broadcast, or digital.

The beliefs that people will pay are driven more by desire than evidence and confuses economic value with attention value and social value.

When journalist’s stories are measured on performance, it can be done in several ways depending upon what definition of value is used. These include the amount of consumption (readership, viewership, clicks, etc.), what consumers will pay for a story, or how much social/political influence the story produces. The value of stories, whatever the measure, will vary from low to high.

Measuring a story about Katy Perry’s latest photo tweet may generate high consumption but low willingness to pay and low social/political influence. If a news organization has a business model based on driving traffic for advertising delivery this may suit those purposes, but it does not support a business model based on consumer payments or a desire to produce meaningful journalism.

A story about city councilors benefiting from the city contracts may generate higher economic value and willingness to pay from some people and high social/political value but low consumption overall. If the business model is based on consumer payments or an approach to produce meaningful journalism, this type of story may be helpful but cannot be expected to produce large amounts of revenue because consumption is low.

Welcome the problematic world of news organizations today.

Newspapers try to solve the problem by providing a daily bundle of 50 to 100 stories, most of which they do not produce and don't generate great consumption, economic value, or social/political value. This is done in hopes of gaining sufficient reader revenue to survive when that revenue is combined with a small amount of advertising income.  News broadcasters get around the direct consumer payment problem by relying on income from advertising, bundled cable fees, or license fees to survive. Digital news providers are struggling to find workable business models and using multiple types of business models and form of revenue. Many are struggling even to make nonprofit news operations sustainable. Only a few digital news providers, less than 2 to 3 in most nations, can make paywalls or pay-per-article strategies work effectively. These are usually national news organizations or financial news organizations.

If the objectives of journalism are to be successfully pursued, relying on news consumers to provide sufficient direct revenue to support news organizations is futile. Other forms of funding and structures of new organizations will be required.


Digital news killed print news, right?

A common argument, accepted by many for its simple narrative, is that digital news killed print news. But the reality is more complicated.
Newspaper print circulation number rose until about 2005 in most Western countries, along with rising populations. That increase, however, masked the fact that household penetration began declining in the 1970s, reaching about 25-35% in those countries at the millennium. This household trend began 3 decades before the appearance of the internet news and led to advertisers to progressively reduce newspaper advertising. Advertisers were unhappy with newspapers long before the internet.
The internet made it possible for many to use it capabilities for inexpensive marketing and personal marketing that cost little and took the place of print real estate, automobile, employment and other classified advertising. Internet advertising became free or low cost. The growth of internet advertising revenue never matched the amount of money leaving print because it was not a true competitor for advertising revenue, rather a destroyer of it. The greatest bulk of internet ad revenue today is not for retail adverting but for search and placement fees. The internet did not "take" large amounts of advertising money from print; it took away the need for advertisers to expend as much.
Digital news did effect print circulation, but not as dramatic as some suggest. Most news readers who were not heavy consumers left newspapers between 1970 and 2000, opting to get smaller doses of news from radio, television, and cable.  When digital news appeared, many began giving up those other sources of news as well. 
After the appearance of digital news distribution, a large numbers of hardcore newspapers readers added digital news to their reading habits to obtain more current information and to get news and analysis from several sources. Over time, some have reduced their reliance on print, but most remain consumer of both.
Most circulation being lost today appears due to lack of interest in news, inability to attract new readers, and mortality of existing print readers, and not large numbers of regular readers abandoning print.
The changes have produced some newspaper deaths, but the number of deaths is far lower than experienced in the 1960s and 1970s when a great wave of newspaper mortality occurred.
Today, print circulation serves about 20-30% of households and most papers have adapted to the new environment by adopting digital strategies, raising prices on subscriptions, and finding new digital and other revenues.  Despite the rhetoric, newspaper finances are reasonable for competitors in a highly competitive market environment. Newspapers have had to work harder and adjust financial performance expectations downward—but most still make returns 2 to 3 times that of average businesses.
It is a competitive business now, but it is not yet dead.


The rapid loss of Silicon Valley naiveté

Digital tech and platform firms are rapidly losing the Silicon Valley naiveté that has characterized their activities in the past 20 years. Billions of dollars of fines and lawsuit losses for abuse of dominant positions, misuse of personal data, workplace harassment, securities violations and a host of other offenses are shaking their world.
Company leaders appear aghast and paralyzed by the developments, often unable to comprehend and effectively adjust to the forces of regulation and litigation that are acting on them globally, but especially in Europe and North America.
A good part of their bewilderment is due to blind spots in their perceptions of themselves and the place of digital firms in society.  For two decades their founders, the companies themselves and digital gatherings and conventions have repeated the mantra that they are revolutionary, different, and old rules don’t apply.  They have argued that digital tech frees users and firms from the constraints of national regulation and power by creating a global immaterial world based on amorphous structures and collaboration in which time, distance, and the ability to regulate are overcome.
Their perceptions were reinforced by the fact that many governments promoted and exempted their activities from taxation and responsibility for some actions as part of industrial development policies and governments permitting enormous firms to emerge by not applying competition laws.
The ingenuous view dominating the industry made it difficult for tech leaders to comprehend that as their firms grew and expanded, establishing presences in the physical world through offices and commercial activities worldwide, they were exposing themselves to the physical world rules based on authority and control.
The highly technical educations of most leaders may also have constrained their vision because it included limited social science and historical knowledge of previous technical revolutions, their social effects, and how societies responded. Many tech leaders today do not seem to understand that society has historically taken 2 to 3 decade to comprehend and respond to new general-purpose technologies, ultimately moving to oversee their activities and bringing them under the control of policy and law. That time is now up for digital tech.
Today, the prevailing perception of tech firms is being widely challenged, with industry leaders being brought before legislatures and parliaments and summoned to courts and regulatory investigations. They are being chastened by critics and policymakers, and tech companies are suffering reputational losses and having to dig into their coffers to defend themselves and pay fines proportionate to their size and activities.
The question today is whether and how well they can alter their own perceptions of their firms and activities, and their roles and responsibilities in society, and how well they adjust their strategies and operations to the demands of the new business environment. Not all will be successful in doing so.


Digital media incapable of privacy self-regulation

Digital media firms have long argued against privacy regulation asserting that regulators don’t understand the ways they work, that digital firms have strong incentives to protect the privacy of users, and that the firms do so through self-regulation.
Unfortunately, for years we have witnessed major digital players continually apologizing for their lapses in protecting the privacy of their customers, often violating their own policies and promises, and for not ensuring that others with whom they do business protect the privacy of the data they access and use. There has been a constant failure to put their customers’ privacy interests first and digital companies have dismissed criticism and call for regulation as misguided or perilous.
The regulations that have appeared, such as the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), have improved transparency and the abilities to control how some of their personal information is used, but is doing little to control the massive amounts of data compiled and interpreted by digital firms and digital advertisers based on search behavior, websites visited, purchases made, social media posts, articles and posts shared, video and music down streamed, apps used, and other digital activities.
Transparency in digital media remains highly limited, uses of personal data often unknown by or misunderstood by consumers, and consumer controls of use remain relatively ineffective.  It is not enough for the central platforms of communication to argue that consumers can choose to use them or not. They have become critical infrastructure by design and business practices that facilitate communication down the street and around the world. Basic life functions ranging including labor, commerce, information, communication, entertainment, and governance activities are all dependent upon their structure and operations. Citizens should not be forced to choose between using these essential services and losing their privacy and autonomy.
It has become time for policymakers to start developing strong, enforceable privacy legislation that puts the interests of citizens above those of digital firms. Although governments economic incentives to support firms and obligations to ensure they aren’t destroyed with overregulation, the current situation is so unbalanced against individuals that only significant public regulation can create a reasonable balance between consumers and commercial interests.
Developments in the past quarter century of the digital world have revealed the abject failure of digital firms to self-regulation privacy. It is time to talk that privilege away from them.


3 factors diminishing the value of digital advertising

Advertisers are significantly concerned about the value of digital advertising and that concern is leading them to question whether and the extent to which digital advertising will remain in the marketing and advertising mix of their companies.
3 factors are central to the discontent: suspicions about the effectiveness of digital advertising, large amounts of fake traffic, and concerns about the returns on advertising investments. Media companies, platforms, and others providing digital advertising must address these issues if digital advertising is to remain viable.
Much of the concern about poor effectiveness of digital advertising is due to poor ad formats, lack of audience attention to ads, and high rates of ad blocking—currently about 40% in U.S. on computers and tablets.
Such concerns have forced digital advertising prices downward for the past decade because those factors have reduced demand and because there has been a dramatic increase in advertising inventory that is making individual ad slots less valuable. Today the CPM for Facebook is about $10 and the costs per click average about $2.30 on Google Ad Words and $1.70 on Facebook.
The serious problem of fake traffic continues to inflate audience figures and make advertisers wary of the data given them by those providing advertising space. It is estimated that advertisers lose $6-10 billion annually because of bots increasing visitor, viewing and click data. Although digital firms recognize the issue, no effective remedy has yet been introduced.
Because of the first two factors advertisers are not seeing the return on investments they desire.  ROI is a measure of additional turnover generated by the advertising expenditure. When diminishing returns are seen, advertisers reconsider where they are investing advertising expenditures, how much they are investing, and whether stop additional investments. Digital advertising ROI is concerning because some advertisers are finding it is only about 1/3 that of their ROI for television ad expenditures. ROI issues led Procter & Gamble Co. to cut digital advertising spend in 2017 by $200 million after data showed it was not effectively reaching its target audiences, causing its ROI to decline.
Those providing digital spaces must work together to improve the acceptance and effectiveness of digital advertising or they will never be able to improve prices they can charge and the revenues they receive from advertising sales.


Are social media improving human interactions and creating community?

Social media have now permeated all aspects of life. They have become part of our interactions with family, friends, and our communities. They have been integrated with work and commerce, dating and sex, health and well-being, information gathering, and spirituality.
It is an appropriate time to reflect on the extent to which they fulfil their promise improve human interactions and community.
Because of their communicative abilities, their institutional arrangement, and the ways we use them, social media produce effects and create issues that cannot be dismissed and ignored. Contemporary events and research are revealing significant effects of social media and the issues they pose for society.
The critical issues surrounding social media use and policy efforts involve authenticity of the communication, artificiality of community, individual behavioral and cognitive issues, narcissistic and dangerous behaviors, and anonymity and anti-social behavior.

Authenticity of the communication
Concerns about two types of authenticity are raised in social media use. The first involves the genuineness of the involvement and participation in activities and events. The second involves the extent to which one’s true self and character are revealed and the influence of external influences on that revelation
Although social media allow communication, they tend to reduce participation in and authenticity of experience by imposing themselves on experiences, sometimes becoming more important the experiences themselves. Their mere use interferes with absorption of the experience, atmosphere, and emotions and the processing their meaning and significance. This limits observation, contemplation and significance of experience.
Authenticity is also challenged because much social media activity involves performance and image creation. This involves presenting an image of self that one would like others to perceived. Most social media posts show us as happy, active, enjoying life, interesting, and successful. This raises issues of whether we are who we say we are; how accurately we portray ourselves and our emotions; and if we present ourselves or who we would like to be?

Artificiality of community
Artificiality involves movement away from naturalness and originality. It involves construction of something through imitation and affectedness that is not as genuine or pure as that being contrived. There are significant issues surrounding the genuineness of social media communities that call into question its success at creating community.
Social media create a false sense of closeness and community. We may have many acquaintances on social media, but most of us have few true friends there. There are few real intimate interactions using social media.
Community is also challenged because social media separate as well as bring individual together. Rather than making us part of larger communities, social media fragment us into smaller groups. This creates communities and groups based on group and interest affinity. These narrow communities tend to produce “echo chambers” of opinions and ideas rather than exposure to diverse ideas and opinions. We don’t expose ourselves to different people and ideas. We pay attention to and hear only comfortable opinions

Individual behavioral and cognitive issues
Social media have been associated with many behavioral and cognitive issues by social science and health researchers.
Social media use is associated with reduction in physical activity and this is especially a problem among teens. This issue tends to lead to depression and weight gain
Social media use is associated with reduced attention span and Interferes with listening and learning. It promotes short attention spans to mediated content and tends to heighten attention deficit disorder.
Researchers have shown that social media can intensify existing psychological conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder, addictive compulsion, narcissistic personality disorder, body dysmorphia, social anxiety, social isolation, depression, and voyeurism. Although social may not be the cause of the conditions, social media use creates conditions that makes them worse.

Narcissistic and dangerous behaviors
Social media promote narcissistic and dangerous individual behaviors. They induce and reward narcissistic exhibitionism in which individuals make themselves the center of attention, intrude on activities and events, act selfishly, and disregard the suffering of other. This is seen in photos people take and share of themselves at accidents, fires, and tragedies.
Social media can lead to risky behaviors, such as hanging from high buildings or cliffs. Their use reduces awareness of surroundings and each year thousands of people die walking into paths of vehicles, being attacked by animals they are photographing themselves with, and by using social media while driving.
Other forms of unsafe social media behavior observed include sharing too much information, trusting anonymous relationships, addictive symptoms, and sexting and sexcasting.

Anonymity and anti-social behavior
Anonymity involves being unidentifiable. When anonymity exists, it reduces the bonds of community, connections to others, and social obligations. It produces impersonality and diminishes the sense of responsibility for one’s actions.
Anonymity increases bad behavior in digital media. It releases individuals from the restraints of social norms, makes individuals more willing to make negative and outrageous statements, increases willingness to use language not normally used, and creates ability to threaten and attack without disclosure of source.
Social media thus create a hospitable and less observable environment for bullying, extortion, and stalking. Women are particularly harshly targeted online and in social media by other women and men. Their physical attributes adjudged and maligned, mental abilities denigrated, threats of violence and rape are made after they express opinions on issues, and coordinated attacks are sometimes made by multiple parties.
Social media have also become vehicles for hate speech, trolling, and threats against racial, ethnic and religious minorities and those with opinions that others disagree.
Social media create enhanced potential for manipulation and propaganda because source of information or advertisements are often uncertain or less evident and because of difficulty checking accuracy or veracity. Social media are especially problematic because they rapidly spread and repeat messages. Such repetition of misinformation or false information leads to its acceptance by large numbers of people.
Increasing policy intervention and demands
These issues and use factors are creating significant public policy challenges globally. For the most part, digital platforms are without responsibility or—in some cases—shame. Most perceive themselves as common carriers. Most don’t believe they have responsibility for, or they are uncomfortable with, determining how people use their platforms or what they say. Many social media executives have difficulty seeing or admitting the effects of their activities.
Social media thus create a conundrum involving the values of individual expression and desires for a noble social ethos, a nurturing culture, and the maintenance of social order. Demands for regulation of social media are increasingly globally, mainly because existing policies, laws and regulations are often not suited for effectively dealing with challenges and issues that social media pose.
The greatest efforts are focused on child pornography, extremist uses and posting, hate speech, and copyright violations. Germany now provides fines up to $60 million for not removing hate speech within 24 hours of notification, the U.K. is trying to establish a 2-hour take down time for extremist posting, and the U.S. Congress considering measures to control political advertising on social media.
Increasing efforts are also being made to address stalking, revenge porn, bullying, and encouragement of suicide.
There is growing social pressure for self-regulation by social media. This is being promoted as corporate social responsibility activities because uses of the platforms are increasingly important to their own reputations, share values, and avoiding regulation. Primary issues companies are trying to address are harassment and threats, portrayals of suicides and encouragement of suicide, fake news, manipulative advertising, and false accounts.
This brings us back to the question: Are social media improving human interactions and creating community?
The answer is “Yes but….”
Yes. They make it easier for individuals to communicate and create narrow communities in ways not possible in the past, but it comes at a cost....A good part of the communication is disingenuous, artificial, and socially detrimental.
Social media are relative new to society, but this is not the first time new technologies and new communication opportunities have appeared in society and posed new social issues. History has shown that it takes time for society to adjust to the transforming developments and the challenges they create. It takes time for the implications to be understood, for new institutional and economic arrangements to develop, for their values and norms to be established, and for policy and regulation to appear.
That understanding is developing and responses are underway. The overall trend for social media and the internet is now one of it becoming tamed, commercialized, and constrained. The degree to which they become so and how it will affect their abilities and effects remain to be seen, however.


When is it time to deny media access and coverage?

Journalists and news organizations in the U.S. and elsewhere are increasingly wrestling with how to deal with alternative facts, untruths, and lies spread by political figures, government officials, and their supporters. These are not merely moral issues for journalists, but also will influence the sustainability of news organizations.
Neither accurately reporting false statements, nor reporting and challenging them, are adequate responses to continual misuse of the media and deliberate efforts to use the media to mislead the public. This, of courses, raises the thorny question of when to deny media access and coverage to individuals noted for engaging in those acts.
How they are handled depends upon their position. Elected officials should be treated differently than their advisors, aides, and supportive commentators and apologists. This occurs because elected officials and party leaders are accountable to the public through the ballot box, whereas others are not.
When elected officials or party leaders are untruthful they should be continually challenged and their lies exposed. When others are involved, journalists should not merely challenge and expose their lies, however. Journalists and their news organizations must not allow themselves to become pawns in manipulation and propagandistic efforts and should stop inviting those who would do so onto public affairs shows, not interview them for news stories, and not cover their public appearances.
These practices are designed to halt influence from those who are consistent purveyors of untruths and continually spread falsehoods. Their lack of intention to engage in open discussion and honest debate makes them unsuitable for exposure in serious journalistic forums. There are others with similar views who can fulfil those requirements.
Journalists have obligations to their readers, listeners, and viewers and society to pursue truth and facilitate healthy and truthful debate that presents differing perspectives. But they also have obligations to ensure that serial liars, wanton propagandists, and inflammatory speakers who deliberately distort and do not engage in honest debate are not provided platforms.
This is important because research shows that original claims are better remembered and given more credibility than media challenges and corrections, especially those coming 24-48 hours later.
Choices to deny access or coverage should be made only to determine how issues, ideas, and policies are discussed and presented in media and by whom, not to stop their discussion or examination. Decisions of who will speak should be based on the past behavior of individuals. Denials of access and coverage should occur to individuals who are likely to deceive or deliberately confuse, thus harming the public and their understanding of public issues.
These are challenging times for democracy and for journalists. Great care in how ideas, policies, and claims are presented is necessary to ensure that citizens are effectively served by journalism. If journalism cannot rise to the occasion in difficult periods, there is little reason for it to exist. If news organizations and journalists do not act, they risk their sustainability. Lack of relevance, loss of credibility, and diminished trust will do more to promote the demise of firms than any changes to its technologies and business model.


The quixotic pursuit of media independence

National and international media development and aid programs often embrace the objective of developing independent media as a means of promoting democratic development.  They do so in hopes of reducing political power over media, but fail to acknowledge that all media and communication infrastructures are systemically influenced by economic and social, as well as political power. And they often seem to ignore the reality that the history and cultures of nation states affect how that power is exercised. Media systems and their content, and the degree of freedom of expression and freedom of the press, are reflections of the alignment of the dominant cultural elements in society.

Even in the West, most notably within European Union and Council of Europe governing institutions, efforts to promote media independence are gaining significant support—particularly when applied to media in Central and Eastern Europe.

The term media independence is often used naively and imprecisely, consequently those pursuing it often appear to be pursuing something that exists nowhere and is an impossible dream.  Independence is really evidenced by its opposite; it is indicated by degrees of dependence or interdependence and their consequences, because full independence is impossible. Very often the term is used as an objective without even specifying independence from what and for what. 

Independence is affected by factors internal to media, such as ownership, decision-making control, and dependence on resources and revenue sources. It is also affected by external factors such as influence through persuasion and criticism, cooption through financial and other material support, and coercion through threats and retaliatory exercise of power.

One needs to be wary of the assumption that ownership determines independence of media. Many assume that state media are dependent and non-state media are independent. In reality, public service, privately owned commercial media, and foundation-supported media may or MAY NOT be independent. In Saudi Arabia, for example, state media are owned and operated by the monarchy and private media are owned by princes and persons close to the crown. There is little difference between them with issues of politics, economics, and social lives are addressed.  The press is relatively separate from government and politics in Germany but not in Hungary, yet it still represents an elite perspective.  Public service broadcasting is reasonably independent of government in Sweden, but not so in Serbia.

The state, the government, social elites and powerful individuals, funders such as sponsors, advertisers, and foundations, and media consumers all influence the amount of independence. The more those influences align, the greater independence is diminished. 

Programs aiding democratic development usually promote private, commercial media. Few efforts to support not-for-profit media outlets exist, however. Not-for-profits are emerging in response to independence challenges in private commercial media and public service broadcasting. Not-for-profits tend to be the most independent of media firms, but they can be dependent on sponsors and funders (parties, unions, churches, NGOs, foundations) and many face sustainability issues.

To create greater independence all media must ensure levels of dependence on any single source of funding are relatively low and that there are multiple sources of income (sponsors, foundations, consumers, members, advertisers, events) to spread dependence risks. A good rule of thumb is that if more than one-third of income is from one source, a media firm becomes vulnerable to influence and may become unsustainable if it is rapidly reduced.

Media independence is a lovely ideal, but can only be partly achieved in practice.


The Challenges of Succession at Viacom, CBS and Natonal Amusements

The current dispute over Sumner Redstone’s competency to make decisions regarding his firms is pitting company executives against family members and family members against each other, diverting significant attention from running the companies and revealing the challenges of governing a firm as its founder ages.

Redstone, who is now 92 and allegedly mentally incapacitated, had for many years planned his estate. He created a family trust that would take control over National Amusements after his death. National Amusements holds controlling interest in companies such as Viacom, CBS, Paramount Studios, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.

In recent months Redstone suddenly altered his will and estate gift plan and changed the trustees of the Redstone trust and the members of the Viacom board. This provoked a corporate and family drama about whether he is capable of making the changes or is being manipulated by his daughter Shari Redstone, who serves as President of National Amusements and vice-chair of Viacom and CBS. Those decisions are being challenged by company executives and other family members in courts in Delaware and Massachusetts.

The Redstone dispute reveals the fundamental challenges facing family owned and controlled firms upon the incapacitation or death of the founder. In many cases family members are disinterested in running the firm or do not have the business knowledge and skills to do so. In these cases they often wish to sell the family firm to obtain its wealth. In cases where family members have the ability to run a firm, they may prefer different company strategies than the founder, disagree with each other over what the strategies should be, or differ on how the wealth or control of the firm should be distributed among themselves. Because of these types of challenges, only about one third of family firms are passed to a second generation and only about 15 percent reach a third generation.

These challenges can be significantly heightened if the founder maintains personal control over the firm too long, does not let go of sufficient control to implement the changes before death, or does not create irrevocable arrangements. These conditions create an environment in which influence can subsequently be exercised over the founder that leads to disagreements and open disputes among interested parties.

Family firms must take significant care to avoid these situations if there is any hope for calm and successful succession.


The thorny problem of identity in digital data

The objectives of digital tracking are to identify users so marketers and content providers can know who users are, what their interests are, and how they relate to goods/services and content being promoted or provided. Although it is becoming easier to determine what individuals use digital devices, the ability to establish their identities still remains challenging because people have multiple, not just single, identities.

Identity has traditionally been defined by the individual’s relationship to institutions (families, tribes, nations, nation-states, and religions). Even within this conceptualization, individuals had multiple identities: mother, member, citizen, believer. Modernity and the development of global communications and social networks, however, have expanded our conceptualization of identity and give us even more identities, some of which loosen identity bonds previously held and some of which compete with each other.

The notion of identity is related to the concepts of distinctness and sameness. Identity is established when individuals perceive themselves as distinct from others and sharing sameness with others. In the past this led to identity being manifest as statements such as “I am German”, “I am Italian-American” or “I am a Buddhist”. The institutions representing these types of identities traditionally sought to promote them through social practices and policies designed to heighten identity, interaction with those sharing relatedness, and cognitive separation from others. Factors such as proximity, language, and daily social practices helped solidify these identities.

Although other identities have long existed, changes in communications have made make it much easier to assert, develop, and maintain political and cultural identities and communities based on affiliations with groups with unique characteristics that are smaller or involve more focused institutions. “I am Catalonian,” “I am Gay,” “I am a Social Democrat,” or “I am vegan” are reflections of these types of political and cultural identities. Professional identities such as “I am a scholar”, “I am a police officer”, or “I am a physician,” and shared activity identities such as “I am a sailor”, “I am a gamer”, or “I am a guitar player” all have identity and community elements that are meaningful in the lives of individuals. Websites, social media, and specialized communications now focus on solidifying these identities and communities.

Increasing global telephony, Internet, and social media capabilities have amplified business and social transactions worldwide, as has facile travel for business and personal purposes. This has facilitated frequent interaction with persons at great distances and made those interactions as easy as those with individuals in closer proximity.  This is creating new and greater senses of community and identity among persons who do not have regular physical connections.

Individuals thus embody many coexisting identities, but some can conflict and force individual choices between their importance and dismissal of their contradictions.  Such contradictions are seen in identities such as Gay Republicans, off-road vehicle users who value nature, and foodies who don’t care how their ingredients are produced.

Making sense of identity data gathered through online and mobile tracking thus requires a degree of sophistication not yet present in data collection or available to those making decisions with that data.  To get beyond gross categorization such as individuals interested in air travel, people with children, music lovers, or those seeking information about Indonesia will require finding ways to better capture and understand multiple identities and the ability to determine which are most salient to each individuals’ lives and behaviors. Overcoming that complexity still remains elusive, but will need to be found if digital data is to be used more effectively. Doing so, however, will raise even more questions about personal privacy and what information people want public about themselves and their identities.