These 8 media and communication trends will be important in 2022

Trend 1: Hybrid culture - both/and becomes a constant companion

In an ever more complex world, it becomes all the more necessary to endure supposed contradictions. Often, however, decisions - or at least the path to them - trigger something for which we are still far too little trained: mastering transitions. In concrete terms, this affects several fundamental areas in the media industry:

• the journalistic offering: the transition from analog to digital.
• collaboration: the transition from traditional on-site collaboration to a hybrid new-work approach.
• the structures and processes: the transition from a hierarchically organized company to an organization guided by personal responsibility, self-efficacy and clear roles.

Several trend reports address this transition phase and advise more ongoing transition instead of one-time transformation.

Trend 2: Unbundling - the paywall is not the (only) solution

In order to be able to emancipate themselves from falling advertising revenues, most publishers expanded their paywalls last year. Hopes of new sources of revenue quickly gave way to disillusionment: The willingness to pay for news offerings has leveled off at a moderate 10 percent of the readership in Germany as well as in Switzerland.

As a result, media companies will have to move away from a full range of products and move toward a portfolio of specific - paid - special-interest offerings. This also means developing special-interest offerings for very specific usage situations or emotional situations in the future - as social media platforms have been demonstrating for some time.

Trend 3: Curation - less is more

What to invest time, attention and money in? With the increasing abundance and unbundling of media content, this decision is becoming increasingly difficult for users. Media companies are trying to make these decisions easier by investing more in quality and focusing on a few core offerings.

But the arbitrariness and interchangeability of many media offerings is still great. "Cover what you do best. Link to the rest," preached the U.S. journalist Jeff Jarvis back in 2007. Today, this saying seems more relevant than ever.

Trend 4: Leadership - empathy gets you further

The fiercely competitive market for talent in journalism is becoming more and more apparent. This is particularly evident when filling positions with specific technical expertise and away from the big cities.

The pandemic months turned the concept of "work" on its head for many people: Suddenly, the enormous possibilities of freedom, flexibility and financial independence became more important to many than a classic 9-to-5 job. This makes intangible incentives such as self-efficacy, flexibility and empathetic leadership all the more central to attracting and retaining talent in the future.

Trend 5: Impact - Outcome was yesterday, now it's all about long-term effect

Journalism is the oxygen of every democracy. But what if the oxygen cannot unfold its effect? While in recent years the credo has been "more and more" - more output, more reach, more clicks - in the near future we need one thing above all: more long-term impact.

The development of regular habits strengthens the loyalty and, above all, the trust of users. Only in this way can a real bond with impact be achieved in the long term. But this takes time. More than ever, this means investing in true community management. And that goes further than just publishing a few funny social posts and reporting a few user comments as the situation demands.

Trend 6: Diversity - more than just a gender asterisk

While the dispute over the raison d'être of an asterisk in orthography escalated last year, the focus in the new year should once again be on the real concern behind the special character. And here, the fact that male overrepresentation still prevails in media reporting, but also in media houses, prevails.

This not only results in women being less visible in journalism. Rather, entire segments of society hardly receive a hearing or attention in media reporting. Since these underrepresented population groups are also not part of the media organizations, no personalization - in the sense of conveying content via strong personalities - can take place either. 2022 offers the opportunity to prevent this double self-goal as best as possible.

Trend 7: Product development - the new backbone of journalism

Anyone who wants to offer journalism with visibility, impact and financial return urgently needs know-how in product development. This is not new, but it still does not seem to be practiced in many media companies.

These product subject matter experts should be able to combine strong communication and ethical skills with technological understanding. They understand how elements of digital products impact information dissemination and audience engagement. But where can such staff:ers be found? And are journalism schools ready to impart this knowledge to their students?

Trend 8: Metaverse - still a hype in 2022

The dreams of the Silicon Valley pioneers are big: Nothing less than the future of the Internet is to be heralded with the Metaverse. What is being made palatable to us as the virtual and open digital home of the future is first and foremost the great battle for future dominance on the Net.

Nothing less is at stake than the new digital standards that will be defined in the coming months. A lot of money is at stake for the big digital companies: Whoever is the pioneer in the metaverse may be able to decide on entire value-creation cosms in the future - starting with the avatar, through events, to their own sub-worlds. Accordingly, this major hype is hardly left out of any of the numerous trend reports.

* Konrad Weber is a strategy consultant and coach in the field of digital transformation. For more than 13 years, he has worked as a bridge builder between content and technology - before becoming an independent consultant as a digital strategist at Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen SRF with several years of experience in project management and strategy development. During this time, he has, among other things, developed a digital and social media strategy for the company, established new steering processes for strategic offer and product development, and launched a digital success measurement model.

Meanwhile, as an independent consultant, he accompanies management teams from large companies to startups in the development of new strategies and accompanies teams and organizations in profound changes. He also teaches digital journalism, innovation methods and strategy development at various universities in Switzerland and Germany.

All sources and trend reports in the original can be found on Konradweber.ch can be retrieved.