We know how Mass Media communications work: messages are created by a limited group of authors, i.e. the major media conglomerates, and disseminated through a finite number of channels, i.e. TV, Radio, Print, etc. Mass Media marketing strategy consisted of making enough impressions with your message in order to influence your audience's choices. Here's a simplified illustration:


Things have changed. The traditional communication channels have been shattered into millions of distinct outlets. Message creators now have little, if any, control over the dissemination of their message. Audiences are influenced primarily by their self-curated networks of information sources which they find most relevant to their unique interests and desires.

We call the communicative tools used in this environment New Media; but New Media is more than just the internet and a stack of gadgets. New Media is the collective network of every connected entity - every cable channel, every website and blog, every retail store and office, every home computer, and every individual human being capable of communicating with another human being. The structure of communications in New Media is an effectively infinite network of interconnected nodes, any one of which can be connected to any other node. It looks something like this:


(I've only illustrated a single arbitrary perspective; imagine every one of those little nodes simultaneously at the center of its own network.)

These nodes act like neurons in the human brain, becoming stimulated and transmitting information on to other nodes. And like our brain, there is no conscious authority controlling how the messages get passed from node to node. The navigation is intuitive and organic. In this new structure, when messages get passed effortlessly from node to node, a successful communications strategy is like a pulse of light, which, as it's transmitted, lights up each node and the connections between them. A very popular message quickly lights up a large part of the network like an fMRI brain scan where active parts of the brain are highlighted in bright yellows and oranges.

This is the desired effect, but this new structure seems dauntingly chaotic. If the path of a message cannot be dictated by any authoritative source and broadcast to a passive audience, then how is it possible to create a strategy to effectively reach an audience that is likely to find the message relevant and compelling? How do you know where your message will go once it is released? And if you can't know that, then how can you possibly devise a strategy for reaching your desired audience?

As I was trying to find an answer to this question, I remembered Habit, an essay by William James, a 19th Century philosopher and psychologist. The essay focuses on the nature of conscious thought as a series of communications between neurons. As currents get passed from neuron to neuron...

...they leave their traces in the paths which they take. The only thing they can do, in short, is to deepen old paths or to make new ones...the sense-organs make with extreme facility paths which do not easily disappear.

The establishment of these known pathways is how we form habits and make certain actions instinctive; it enables us to walk and hold an intelligent conversation simultaneously - the walking part is on autopilot.

Like the neuron pathways carved out in our brain, there are pathways - some well established and some barely formed - that exist within this New Media communications network. These pathways are dictated not by any corporate entity or even by brilliant marketers, but rather by the exigencies of contemporary culture and each individual's desire to live better within that culture. I have particular interests in new media research, liberal politics, and cool new tech gadgets. I have established sources where I go for information on these topics. And all of my sources have their sources, and on and on. And these chains of queries and responses establish reliable pathways for communication.

We must also acknowledge that we are all continually discovering new interests and evolving our collection of sources. The evolution of these pathways, though, is sticky enough to be useful. William James describes the nature of our thinking as "plastic enough to maintain its integrity, and be not disrupted when its structure yields." Clay Parker Jones wrote a great post that described stickiness as something that is fluid enough to adapt and make new connections, yet elastic enough to hold on to established connections.

This stickiness makes it possible to discern the pathways through the New Media communications network. These continually evolving organic pathways are the new playing field. And the challenge for communications strategists is to recognize and understand the human character of each pathway.

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