The New Trust Deficit: Facebook, Facts & a Frantic News Cycle

The U.S. is facing a number of simultaneous crises -- rising COVID infections, ongoing civil rights protests for BLM, an economy in recession that's driving huge job losses, bankruptcies, supply chain issues that could cause further harm. 

But there's one thing making each of those crisis worse, more dangerous and out of control.

It's that we can't agree on a single set of facts.

Instead, we have a credibility gap making things worse. Different parts of the country can't even agree about how to frame the various crises, including those cited above and others that have been in the news lately.

CNN's Reliable Sources newsletter recently called this a "trust deficit" in a story about Facebook and why some companies have stopped buying ads on Facebook.

For Facebook, the trust deficit is fueled by allowing misinformation and hate speech to spread.

Social media platforms use algorithms to continue to feed you content similar to the kinds of content you click on. This makes it easy to perpetuate your bubble because you continually see posts that fit your narrative.

Part of the problem: some information may have already been debunked only after we've seen it. Which is too late. People who consume the original message, and used that to bolster their narrative, rarely see the correction or update afterwards.

Another problem: we're so inundated by news that we're overwhelmed. We don't have time to process yesterday's news. Which means we don't have time to process today's news, to put it into context, to make sure we understand it -- before we're hit with the latest shocking piece of news, which is replaced by the even-more-recent news.

The result: we now live in a world with strongly held opinions that aren't necessarily based on facts. 

Which means: we might not agree that the top stories that are, in fact, the most important stories. 

We certainly don't agree with the implications of those stories -- whether they are fake news or facts might be debatable if we could meaningfully debate these issues. 

And we definitely disagree regarding any possible solution to a given crisis.

It's a helluva way to celebrate our nation's independence. 

We try to avoid taking political stands in this blog. But we're tackling the trust deficit because we do see it as a potential business threat for marketers.

It means that where you advertise (and where you don't), where and what you post could be seen as supporting or fueling the trust deficit. It's more important than ever to think about how you communicate to your publics while being aware and sensitive to how your marketing plays today and how it might play in a couple of years.

2020: The Mid-Year in Review

From the perspective of late June, it feels like 2020 to date has had more chaos (including COVID, the suspension of all professional sports, the killing of Qasem Soleimani that seemed to push the U.S. to the brink of combat with Iran, Australia's devastating bushfires) and news (Black Lives Matter, Kobe's death, Brexit, the convictions of Roger Stone and Harvey Weinstein, etc.) in five months than we experience in a typical year. 

That doesn't include the impeachment -- which seems to belong in the distant past.

And we haven't reached peak campaign yet. Here's what Nate Silver of the FiveThirtyEight blog had to say (as reported in Brian Stelter's Reliable Sources newsletter):

"To get a sense for how much *news* there is in the a given election year, we looked at how many full-width headlines there are in the NYT from Jan. 1 through Election Day in election years going back to 1968. 2020 is, uh, pretty special." Most years, just 2 to 5 percent of the relevant editions had banner headlines. The years 1968 and 1972 were more intense, with banners across about 10 percent of the Page Ones. And 2016 was hectic too, with banners across 15 percent of the fronts. But 2020 is uniquely crazy: Thirty three days of the year have called for banner headlines so far, nearly 21 percent of the front pages since January, and it's only June!

Silver wrote: "The average election year features 10 full-width headlines through Election Day. There have already been *33* this year, and we're not done with June yet."

So it's not just your imagination -- there really is more news, and more intense news, than usual...

In our annual list of trends, we did not identify any of the above news stories.

But we did predict that 202 would mark an age of anxiety, fueled by distrust of big tech firms and traditional and social media.

So we feel we correct called the overall direction of 2020.

We're reminded of that because of an article that appeared in the Vietnam Investment Review entitled, "Pandemic throws global media trends up in the air." We find it interesting that an outlet around the world from us picked up on our view of the world.

Here are two key paragraphs in VIR's article:

Norman Birnbach, president of strategic PR firm Birnbach Communications, predicted in January that 2020 would mark an age of anxiety, fueled by distrust of big tech firms, and traditional and social media, even as people began to rely on those sources more than ever, especially in the United States. “Marketers must not only be relevant – they also need find ways to credibly appeal across a divided America.”

The projection was uttered at the start of the year – before coronavirus hit North America, and before civil unrest plagued the United States as it has done for the last few weeks. Divisions well-noted in the past have intensified to scarcely believable levels. And yet, as more and more citizens around the world look to the media for information, there is no easy solution for the industry to ensure that information is credible, accurate, timely, and is transparent in what it does with the data it collects.

We think the point about credible and reliable information is important. 

We're at a point where whether or not you wear a mask is seen as political. Where lies and misinformation on Facebook and Twitter by politicians is accepted because FB and Twitter don't want to be in the censuring business. Where the New York Times published a column that looks at whether or not there some kind of secret deal between Trump and Zuckerberg.  (Check out "What’s Facebook’s Deal With Donald Trump? Mark Zuckerberg has forged an uneasy alliance with the Trump administration. He may have gotten too close.") Where John Bolton's book can be accused of being full of lies that are classified information. 

We'll do a more thorough recap of the year in November, as always. But we thought it worth discussing information credibility. Because it is a real problem affecting the U.S. and the entire world.

20 Ongoing Trends That Will Continue in 2020

Each year we identify a set of ongoing trends that have a longer shelf life and will impact the following year.

Here are the ones we think significant for 2020. In some cases, the trends below will have a paragraph of explanation and in other cases, just a headline is enough.

1.   News fatigue. We typically stay away from making predictions about politics but as the election gets closer, Americans are likely to feel overwhelmed by hourly news notifications on their phones and Fitbit or Apple Watches -- the term we've seen is "ringxiety" -- to the extent that they will shut down and look for content that will distract them. There will also be a contingent who will be more motivated to seek out updates but we haven't identified a clever term for them. We don't think there will podcast fatigue in 2020 but that could come, since the glut of podcasts, no matter how compelling, does not yet seem to be abating.

2.  Short news cycles. In a recap of news from 2019, an article mentioned the longest government shut down that ended Feb. 2019. But so much happened in 2019, that a bunch of us in the office had forgotten about the shutdown. Shorter news cycles mean that a lot of news that would have once been significant and memorable gets forgotten as we get hit by more recent news.  

3.  "News deserts" will continue to grow as more news outlets cut back the amount of news they produce, lay off staffs, reduce the number of days they print, etc. News deserts were once limited to rural communities but now large cities are feeling the loss of some outlets.

4.   Fake news and disinformation will continue, probably increase in 2020.

5.  The credibility of news media is under attack. For marketers, reaching customers while they are overwhelmed by disinformation/fraud and when the media is not seen as credible (whether on the right or left), will become harder and more complicated. This is not a political stance. The point is that marketers are going to need to find more effective ways to reach customers at a time of fragmentation and low trust.

6.   Social media will continue to undergo scrutiny and it won’t look good. 

7.   Cord-cutting will continue to attract the media's attention. With so many streaming services, cord cutting won't be cheap but will be a bit easier due to TVs that make it easier -- but not yet seamless -- to binge on the shows you want, regardless of which streaming services you subscribe to.

8.  Most tech reporters at newspapers will continue to focus on FAANG: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google.

9.   Elon Musk and Tesla will continue to attract undue amount of media attention. 

10. Driverless cars still won't be ready. 

11.  Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality still won’t be everywhere.

12. Blockchain and bitcoin will continue to get media coverage but most consumers still won't have much contact with bitcoin and won't understand how Blockchain affects them.

13. Corporate boycotts & consumer boycotts will continue. Corporate boycotts are when companies pull their ads from specific shows, hosts or networks to protest something said or done. 

14. 3-D content and 3-D printers will still not be as popular as they are cool.

15. Student debt and healthcare will continue to be big issues.

16. Climate change will be an issue. Especially in the wake of the wild fires in Australia and elsewhere.

17. Drug pricing will continue to get a lot of attention. 

18. STEM will continue to be important. 

19. More small colleges will merge or close. Nearly 20 small private colleges in New England have shut down in the past five years, and we expect more as education goals evolve due to declining enrollment and resulting budget problems. There’s also more competition for better-known colleges. Expect more colleges to emphasize career readiness. (Probably because the cost is so high, it’s hard to justify pursuing fields that don’t lead to a career.

20. The future continues to look cloudy – as in cloud computing.

There certainly are more ongoing trends. Let us know us know if you think we left out anything significant. If you want more detail about some of the trends for which we did not provide detail here, check out our blog, where have mentioned some of these quite a lot.

4 New Predictions + 17 Ongoing Trends for 2019

It may be a new year but some of the trends we expect to generate media coverage in 2019 are ones from prior years.

In this installment about 2019 trends, we list four new predictions plus 17 ongoing trends that will continue in 2019. That's 21 predictions in one article. In some cases, we will just mention the trend without much explanation because we've covered them a lot before. (If you have any questions, post a comment and we'll respond.)

Here are four new predictions based on continuing trends.

• Lawmakers will act against robocalls. Here’s an issue everyone can support. We all get too many robocalls, whether on our cell phones or land lines. What’s gotten worse is not just how many of the calls we each get but that most of these have spoofed caller IDs so you think it might be a neighbor or someone you know. We expect lawmakers to pass bills to reducing spoofing and robocalls. Already some of the phone companies are expanding their offerings. One problem: you need a different solution to combat the robocall problem on cell phones from the solution for landlines.
• More colleges will fail and college debt levels will continue to be a significant issue for millennials. Some colleges can’t afford to keep their doors open and many students can’t afford to pay for a college education. The former is an issue and the latter is huge problem for society. We expect to see think pieces in 2019 (and beyond) about the plight of higher education in America.
• The implications of the (possible) end of Moore’s Law will generate think pieces. In 1965, Gordon Moore, a semiconductor pioneer, wrote a paper that observed that that the number of transistors on a chip would double every year while the costs are halved. We’ve now reached a point where that no longer may be true. There are significant implications if Moore’s prediction slows down so that instead of doubling every year or two, the number of transistors increases every three to five years. We’re not going to go into the implications here except to say we expect there to be some coverage/debate about this in 2019.
• Cashless-only retail will gain momentum. This is a generational issue but millennials don’t seem to use cash. They use Apple Pay, Venmo and other e-cash solutions but not cash. We expect to see more stores open that are cashless-only – that won’t accept cash. It won’t happen to supermarkets or hardware stores but it will be more prevalent in neighborhoods and retailers catering to a younger, cooler demographic. You might not even notice it happen if you, yourself, rarely use cash at the register. But it will be a problem for older people and people with lower income, including the 14.1 million unbanked adults, according to the Wall St. Journal; what’s disturbing is that the same article reported that, “Despite consumers’ expanded access to banking, one in five households, or 22.7 million, didn’t use mainstream credit such as credit cards and mortgages in the prior year.” That’s a lot of people who will be further cut off from many parts of the economy. 

Here’s our updated list of ongoing trends:

1. The Age of Anxiety continues. Chaos, uncertainty, anger, a sense of helplessness and the near-constant news notifications will continue to fuel our Age of Anxiety, especially since it seems to be hard to escape. Even broadcast journalists have commented on air that they’re overwhelmed in trying to stay on top of and to process all the news – and that’s their job. We expect many to experience news fatigue, take “news vacations” or (aka a technology cleanses or digital detox, where they shut off all notifications on their phones and take hiatuses from social media – even though that’s nearly impossible to do. As we’ve said previously, in 2019, we expect more coverage regarding stress, anxiety, mental health and ways to de-stress. But the implications for marketers is this: 1) If consumers are turning off news and social media, it will be harder to reach them via ads, media relations and social media; and 2) They might be interested consumer media that distracts them from their anxiety.
2. Concerns about Retailpocalypse and Amazonification will continue to have an impact in 2019. More big brands will struggle, close locations or declare bankruptcy this year. One change: we expect some saber rattling about whether or not to clamp down on Amazon’s market power. The good news is there will be some innovations in the sector, and some retailers will do well despite Amazonification. The retail sector is important in a consumer-driven economy but there are implications for real estate (when locations go unrented for a long time), local unemployment (the job market is strong but it may be hard for retail staff to transition to another industry), local economies (what happens to cities when retailers abandon them), local media (which benefits from local ads, circulars, etc.) 
3. The gig economy, robotics and automation and income inequality will continue to spark think pieces about the nature of work. Last year, we said think pieces about the nature of work would be sparked by the labor shortage and the gig economy. This year, we expect think pieces to be driven by those two factors plus concerns about jobs of the future as industrial robots, and automation begin to make inroads in factory settings. Also look for articles about rethinking income inequality, the social safety net and the future of unions for gig workers who don’t necessarily get minimum wage, unemployment benefits, vacation and sick days or employer-contributions for workers’ comp, Social Security and Medicare. We also expect that there will be calls to better measure the gig economy.
4. The debate about how to regulate Facebook, Google and Twitter will continue. It’s clear that social media companies continue to not be able to stay ahead of their problems. Congress knows it needs to do something in 2019 to address data privacy, hate speech/bullying that isn’t being removed/policed fast enough and election interference/misinformation from Russia. The new goal of any new regulation should be to go into effect before 2020 but we are skeptical that this will be possible because we’d bet that Facebook, Twitter and Google would have addressed their problems if they could have, rather than be regulated by Congress. There will also be articles looking at technology’s role in a democracy. Part of the problem: social media makes it easy to share content before users vet it, and that’s something Congress can’t mandate.
5. Fake news won’t fade in 2019. Part of the problem is that the term “fake news” can mean almost anything: from news you disagree with or don’t like (but are actually true) to stories that are part of misinformation campaigns (and are factually false). If we can’t agree on a definition of it, and if Facebook, Google and Twitter all have trouble dealing with the fake news scourge, how will regulations and Congress be able to solve what the social media giants can’t? There’s no light at the end of the tunnel since there are calls that even the fact-checking at Facebook must be checked. It’s harder than ever to trust our institutions, which adds to the anxiety so many are experiencing.   
6. Cord cutting turns out to be complicated and expensive. Over the next 18 months, we’ll experience a glut as more streaming services get launched. It’s getting harder to find all the things you want to watch. Something available on Netflix last month may be found on Hulu next month and then some new service next year. So to watch everything you want, you’ll have to have subscriptions with Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Go, and dozens more. Cable might be simpler and less expensive.
7. IoT will continue to be victim to cyberattacks. This hasn’t gotten a lot of attention but we think it will. As reported by a friend in a recent issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, recently a cruise line offered “a proprietary mobile app, which unlocks your cabin door and lets you book activities on and off the ship….(A passenger’s) roommate used it to prank her, remotely flashing the lights and opening the blinds in their cabin.” Seems like a harmless prank but it speaks to more nefarious possibilities. We’re worried that there will be more IoT cyberattacks, as IoT, Smart Homes and virtual assistants go mainstream. Perhaps the only advantage of having to get up and walk over to a light switch is that hackers can’t hack your home.
8. There’s still not enough cybersecurity protection or privacy. They say millennials don’t care much about privacy but we think that will likely change as they get older. There’s certainly not enough of cybersecurity.
9. Cloud computing will stay strong. This may be the one tech trend that has yet to experience a backlash. Cloud computing remains an important paradigm, and we don't see that changing in 2019, which means that it's a trend that may not get that much ink because editors are always looking for stories that answer "What's new?" and that move the story forward. That said, for business press, there's still interest in the horse race between Amazon's  AWS, Microsoft's Azure and Google Cloud Platform. We expect to see more about "cloud agnostic" or “Not Amazon” as a key message that will help lure customers that compete with Amazon to look beyond AWS. 
10. Driverless cars will generate attention but still won’t appear at local dealership. Closer on the horizon is more electric cars, with China’s plans to eliminate all new combustion cars and trucks by 2030. There are lots of challenges to be addressed either way, like having are enough charging stations for electric cars and investing in the type of infrastructure – in urban, suburban and rural areas – that can enable driverless cars to operate including in bad weather. Oh, and there will continue to be a lot of coverage of Tesla.
11. E-Scooters will become more of a thing in 2019. Some of us first heard about a vague problem of e-scooters like Bird that began cluttering up sidewalks in some cities. We expect them to gain more attention in 2019, becoming a full-fledged trends, much the way urban bike share and bike lanes did (it seems to us) in 2018. (They were around before 2018 but people began talking about bike lanes much more, we feel.)
12. Corporate boycotts and consumer boycotts will continue. These are boycotts by companies in order to demonstrate distance from controversial programs and personalities. We also expect boycotts of companies that are boycotting those controversial people and programs.
13. Drug pricing will continue to get a lot of attention. The problem: it’s expensive to develop new drugs – on average it costs $2.6 billion – and pharma companies need to use successful drugs to fund future development. There won’t be an easy solution so we don’t expect much from Congress except outrage.
14. Wearable tech will still not be as mainstream as people in the industry were hoping. But wearable will make quiet inroads so that before you know it (probably not in 2019, though), lots of things will have built-in technology.
15. The need for more Americans to pursue STEM education and careers continue to be important. With a looming labor shortage (in some fields), businesses are looking for employees with a firm grasp of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). We think funding for STEM will continue to keep U.S. businesses competitive.
16. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality still won’t be everywhere yet. VR and AR still aren't fully mainstream because people still don't yet have a strong-enough need for it. Watching a basketball game on Oculus is cool but not practical in how many people watch content these days, on their phones while in public spaces. (Can you imagine a subway car filled with people wearing heavy headsets?)
17. 3-D content and 3-D printers will still not be as popular as they are cool.

Let us know if you disagree or agree with us selection. Did we miss something? Overstate things? We're happy to hear from you.

Track Record: How We Scored on Ongoing Trends

We identified 18 ongoing trends for 2018, and we think we did well with regard to most of them. 

1. The news cycle will continue to speed up. People are experiencing news fatigue because so much is happening daily. (By contrast, there were only a few stories — like the rescue of the Thai soccer team — that had the staying power to dominate the news cycle over a period of days. Otherwise, most stories, even some that previously would have dominated for a week or two disappeared, often without having much impact in 2018. This will continue in 2019. Grade: A+.
2. 2018 will be tough for traditional and online media. Unfortunately, true. Grade: A+.
3. Fake news won’t fade in 2018. Unfortunately, true. Grade: A+.
4. Cord cutting will continue but still won't save money: Netflix dominated news coverage and more media companies are offering streaming services but we did see an uptick in coverage that cord cutting is complicated and expensive. Grade. A.
5. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality still won’t be everywhere. Both VR and AR are making progress but neither is there yet. Grade: A.
6. IoT will continue to be victim to cyberattacks. This did not get as much attention as we expected but that may be because IoT and Smart Homes have not been broadly adopted yet. Grade: C.
7. The future is still looking cloudy. This may be the one tech trend that has yet to experience a backlash. Grade: A.
8. Driverless cars attract significant coverage. Got lots of coverage in 2018. We think it’s going to take longer than most people think for driverless cars to get wide approval. We also said we think electric cars will generate more media coverage. Tesla certainly got tons of coverage in 2018, not all of it positive. Grade: B+.
9. There's never enough cybersecurity/privacy. Unfortunately, true. Grade: A+.
10. NFL ratings will continue to decline. We were right for the 2017-2018 season, because overall, ratings were soft. The 2018-2019 season seems to be rebounding (which we realize is a basketball term). Grade: B-.
11. Corporate boycotts & consumer boycotts will continue. We saw some high profile boycotts from brands that pulled their advertising from controversial hosts. This will continue in 2019. Grade: B+.
12. Drug pricing will continue to get a lot of attention. And we said, “But there won’t be an easy solution so don’t expect much except outrage.” Grade: A.
13. Wearable tech will still not be as mainstream as people in the industry were hoping. True, which is why we did not see much media coverage about wearable in 2018. We still believe wearable is making progress but 2018 was not its year for media coverage. Grade: B.
14. STEM will continue to be important. STEM is important but isn’t getting the media coverage it used to generate. Grade: C+.
15. 3-D content, 3-D TV and 3-D printers will still not be as popular as they are cool. Correct (we still think). Grade: A.
16. Artisanal will still be a hot concept. True as far as we can tell but that doesn’t translate into media coverage. Grade: C.
17. e-Wallets still will gain traction in 2018 but mostly for Millennials as opposed to their parents. True as far as we can tell but that doesn’t translate into media coverage. Grade: C.
18. Content management remains king.  True as far as we can tell but that doesn’t translate into media coverage. Grade: C.

Let us know if you agree or disagree with our grading or if we missed an ongoing trend in 2018.

6 Cues to Tell Fake News on Social Media from Real News

Hiawatha Bray, the long-time Tech Lab columnist at the Boston Globe, has an interesting article about fake news. Entitled, "Can computers tell if an Internet news story is mostly true or mostly false," Bray's article notes these common features of fake news on the Internet:

1. Lots of capitalized words or exclamation points.
2. Use of words denote extreme certainty such as “absolutely” and “always.”
3. Sentences that tend to be shorter and simpler. (Which makes them easier to read and forward.)
4. Fewer "love" or "laughter" icon clicks on Facebook. (Real news doesn't usually generate such emotion, apparently.)
5. The media sites where these articles originated don’t have Wikipedia entries about them. 
6. These sites, which may be similar to real news sites, have URLs that are long and filled with unusual characters. (Many reliable news sites are much cleaner.)

These are not all 100% accurate; after all the URL for the Globe's article's URL had a lot of unusual characters in it: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/10/15/can-fake-news-goes-way-spam/UuiUfEmZGKxhMupoXV0AJM/story.html.

We can't wait or rely on algorithms to determine fake news, just as algorithms aren't 100% effective on spam. What we need is for people to take responsibility for what they share. This is important since new reports from the New York Times and others indicate that there will be more disinformation ahead of the midterms next month and ahead of the 2020 campaign. 

Disinformation campaigns at this level (perhaps any level) are anti-democratic, and we need all concerned citizens to take responsibility for what they share. So it's important to be aware of the six indicators for possible fake news.

How to Combat Fake News

After spending a lot of time monitoring the media -- particularly mainstream media with a liberal and a conservative bias -- it's clear that as a country, Americans can't agree on facts. 

Our intent is not to be political, though. The problem for journalists, the media, companies that rely on communicating via the media as well as the people who consumer the media is that: content designed to disinform is causing a credibility problem. (We realize "disinform" is not a real word but perhaps it should be. And we get the irony of using a made up word to discuss the implications of fake news. Also, there's a real difference between disinformation and  news with which one disagrees.)

As part of our list of ongoing predictions, we said we're going to have a problem with a shorter news cycle combined with fake news, which is not going to fade away in 2018. This will get worse as we get closer to the midterm elections.

So what can we do about fake news?

Facebook is altering its news feed, allowing users to identify sources they feel are credible. Google is also changing its algorithm. 

And some are hoping that Congress should get involved and regulate (or try to) big tech or hope that big tech itself will adjust things to reduce the impact of fake news while also helping users weaken the hold of addiction of their products and services.

We don't think those Congress will be affective here (not necessarily their fault; the companies on their own aren't able to figure out a way to improve their credibility).

One solution we'd like came from Jeffrey Herbst, president and CEO of the Newseum, in a Wall St. Journal op-ed column, "How to Beat the Scourge of Fake News: Facebook and Google can’t do it alone. Better educating consumers is crucial" in Dec. 12, 2016.

That seems so long ago, it might hardly still be relevant.

Herbst notes something important:

This is hardly the first time that fake news has been controversial. The “yellow journalism” of the late 19th century featured fake news, false interviews, and an obsessive focus on crime

His solution to fake news is to:

Teach media literacy to millions of students...They become better citizens by learning how to discern what is true and what is not on social media by analyzing sources and making evidence-based arguments.

We don't see this as a 100 percent solution by any stretch. But it is more effective than posting a list of apparent fake news as was done, recently, much to the humor of late night comedians.

Check out the article, and let us know if you have additional suggestions.

It's important for journalism, for public relations professionals -- and most of all, for our country.

Ongoing Trends for 2018

Not all significant trends next year will be new ones.  We always look at ongoing trends that will continue to impact the media, marketing and tech worlds.

The first 14 of the 18 trends listed below include an explanatory sentence. The final four are, we feel, self-explanatory.

1.  The news cycle will continue to speed up. There were days in which there was major news several times a day. We expect that to continue in 2018 – and that when there’s a slow news day – let’s say only one big news story – consumers of news anxiously click on refresh, thinking they must be missing some additional news. Regardless of political views, people, including late-night comedians are finding this exhausting.

2.   2018 will be tough for traditional and online media. We hate writing this but the layoffs and shutdowns affecting traditional print (Boston Herald) and cool online outlets (BuzzFeed) that occurred the last two months of 2017 will continue in 2018. Despite living in a time when staying on top of the news (throughout the day) has never been more important, with more people than ever following hourly developments, fewer people seem to want to pay for the news. This is true also for hyperlocal media (like DNAInfo and Gothamist, both shutdown), which for a time was considered to be an exception since people seemed to favor local news about their communities that weren’t getting covered by regional or national media. Great reporting takes lots of effort and resources (as does debunking fake news, as the Washington Post showed us when it reported on a failed attempt to offer a false narrative by the Veracity Project). The problem for traditional and online news sources is, increasingly, Americans turn to social media for news. So traditional and even online media need to develop a new advertising and subscription business model. So far, great journalism is helping the New York Times and Washington Post attract and retain subscribers. But it must be frustrating for them to see hat purveyors of true “fake news” (those that are not based on facts and don’t correct mistakes once they learn of them) can generate tens of thousands of page views when real, serious news doesn’t get clicked.  Another aspect that will affect traditional and online media will be if either or both of the AT&T-Time Warner and Sinclair Broadcasting-Tribune Media deals go through.

3.  Fake news won’t fade in 2018. It’s still easier and more lucrative to generate totally fake news than it is to produce real, fact-based news. Some players are doing this for financial gain and others for a different, more sinister reason, and we expect both to continue in 2018. If Facebook, Google and Twitter all have trouble dealing with the fake news scourge, how will regulations and Congress be able to solve what the social media giants can’t? (For more on this, check out "Why the Fact-Checking at FB Needs to Be Checked: Some measures may not work all that well.") 

4.  Cord cutting will continue but still won't save money: Streaming will continue to be popular but consumers will at some point realize they are not saving money. There will be more streaming services, making it complicated to watch what you want on your TV (remember those?) and you’ll still have to open different apps to find the movie or TV show you want to watch.

5.  Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality still won’t be everywhere. Both VR and AR are making progress but neither is there yet.

6.  IoT will continue to be victim to cyberattacks. We think there will be more IoT cyberattacks, as IoT and Smart Homes go mainstream. Perhaps the only advantage of having to get up and walk over to a light switch is that hackers can’t hack your home.

7.  The future is still looking cloudy. This may be the one tech trend that has yet to experience a backlash.

8.  Driverless cars attract significant coverage. There’s lots of interest in driverless cars because driving is such a part of the American persona. While there’s been great momentum forward, we’re also seeing new challenges that need to be addressed: insurance-related, business model, infrastructure, and tech issues. Do you need Uber and Lyft if you can own or rent a driverless car? If you can rent, why do you need to buy a car? If Uber and Lyft deploy driverless cars, what happens to their former drivers? Meanwhile, we’re also seeing a push for electric cars; China announced plans to eliminate all new combustion cars and trucks by 2030 so we expect to see the rest of the world to follow, which one challenge being ensuring there are enough charging stations.

9.  There's never enough cybersecurity/privacy. There’s still not enough of either. The European Union has proposed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to strengthen and unify data protection for individuals within the EU but it also will affect companies outside the EU. So expect that U.S. companies will need to look at and evaluate how to meet GDPR.

10. NFL ratings will continue to decline. We don’t know whether it’s because of too much football (we’ve never liked Thursday night games) or because of severe injuries or because of the protests but we expect this to continue.

11. Corporate boycotts & consumer boycotts will continue. These are boycotts by companies in order to demonstrate distance from controversial programs and personalities. We also expect boycotts of companies that are boycotting those controversial people and programs.

12. Drug pricing will continue to get a lot of attention. But there won’t be an easy solution so don’t expect much except outrage.

13. Wearable tech will still not be as mainstream as people in the industry were hoping. But wearable will make quiet inroads so that before you know it (probably not in 2018, though), lots of things will have built-in technology.

14. STEM will continue to be important. With a looming labor shortage (in some fields), businesses are looking for employees with a firm grasp of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). We think funding for STEM will continue to keep U.S. businesses competitive.

15.   3-D content, 3-D TV and 3-D printers will still not be as popular as they are cool.

16.   Artisanal will still be a hot concept.

17.  e-Wallets still will gain traction in 2018 but mostly for Millennials as opposed to their parents.

18.  Content management remains king.  

Recap of Our Predictions for 2017

We feel it’s not enough to issue predictions for the upcoming year. We also think it’s important to look at how we did with predictions for 2017.

A brief recap – though we predicted a shorter news cycle in 2017, we did not expect it to be this fast/short. Whether or not you’re a news junkie (and if you’re reading this, we assume you are), 2017 has been an unusually exhausting year. Even generally apolitical Jimmy Fallon envisioned Halloween nightmare that entailed being unable to escape the news cycle. There were a lot of stories this year that we (nor anyone else) predicted – a list of so many, mostly political (which we avoid), we are not going to list them here. We will say that we did not expect the solar eclipse to generate so much coverage.

One of the big themes late in the year was the pervasiveness of sexual harassment in Hollywood, politics, the media, and pretty much every field; we hope awareness of and concern regarding sexual harassment continues to be a public conversation that will make it difficult for those perpetrating the harassment to get away with it. We also hope that it will be easier for victims to be believed and supported.

Here are our assessment of our predictions for this year.

1. Fake news won’t fade in 2017. 

Unfortunately, we were right about this one. “Fake news” is too broad a term says Claire Wardle, Strategy and Research Director of First Draft News, a nonprofit research group housed at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University. Wardle told CNN’s Brian Stelter on his “Reliable Sources” podcast that there are “three different types of problems:

• Mis-information: “the kind of false information disseminated online by people who don't have a harmful intent.”
• Dis-information: “false information created and shared by people with harmful intent. False news reports around presidential candidates ahead of the 2016 election fall into this category, and so does their social media amplification from malicious accounts.”
• Mal-information: “the sharing of ‘genuine’ information with the intent to cause harm. That includes some types of leaks, harassment and hate speech online.”

Keep in mind: the general definition of “fake news” tends to be news the speaker doesn’t agree with – it’s actual truth, notwithstanding.

We think Wardle’s definitions are useful to understand there are flavors of fake. But we don’t think the distinctions will become mainstream because currently there isn’t much consensus on facts (or “facts”), with one person’s dis-information (harmful intent) being someone else’s mis-information (false information passed along with non-harmful intent).

Meanwhile, we said it will be difficult for social media sites to combat the spread of fake news, especially because they profit from fake news.

Grade: A+.

2. Big Social will evolve in 2017, but not necessarily in a good way. 

Unfortunately, we were right about this, too. We said, Twitter’s future “is very much in doubt,” and that continues to be true. We said that Facebook is facing problems about fake news, and that was proven true in November’s Congressional hearings. But we left out Google – oops. We said, “all of this turmoil will benefit Snapchat, which is already is favored by the millennials,” and Instagram, and we think that’s right – butt we overstated things when we predicted that SnapChat will be the dominant social media platform by 2018. We also predicted “LinkedIn will thrive as long as it remains (as we think it will) apolitical,” and that’s been true.

Grade: B+

3. The media cycle will speed up. 

This certainly was true in 2017. While President Trump’s use of Twitter to announce official government policy certainly is a major reason, it’s just one factor. Another: a recent Pew Research Center report found that, “About a quarter of all U.S. adults (26%) get news from two or more social media sites, up from 15% in 2013 and 18% in 2016.” So expect this trend to continue into 2018 and beyond. (This is not necessarily a good thing but was predicted in the early 1980s by futurist Alvin Toffler.)

Grade: A+

4. The gig economy and the sharing economy will continue to go mainstream.

Independent contractors or contingent employees – as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) used to refer to them – now comprise an estimated 30% of the U.S. workforce. The BLS and U.S. Census Bureau plan to do a better job of tracking the gig economy. In the meantime, we were right when we said, “We need to more accurately define the gig and the sharing economies… to gain an accurate portrait of overall U.S. economy as well as develop appropriate policies regarding taxes, healthcare and social services.” Both the New York Times and Wall St. Journal validated our predictions.

Grade: A

5. IoT will continue to open the door to cyberattacks.

This was not as big an issue in 2017 as we expected. That does not mean the threat is over. As the Internet of Things (IoT) does go mainstream, cyberattacks remain a significant threat – though likely more targeted to companies than to the average home. But overall, we overstated this.

Grade: C

We will post more of our annual recap in the next few days.