Marketing research links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through an exchange of information. Learn more . The power now possessed by the media consumer is a heady change from what was once the most passive partner of the Old Media, in which marketer, medium, and audience knew their roles and stuck with them. It was a cozy threesome, with marketers on one side and compliant audiences on the other, and the medium in between, mediating the relationship between the two. But a funny thing happens to this happy arrangement when the media universe fractures.
Media ceases to mediate.
In cyberspace, content is a conversation in which the audience gets first byline. And merely by negotiating a Web site, a computer user becomes an editor, creating a completely personalized publication for his individual entertainment. My desk is clear of paper, but my hard drive is jam packed. I have databases. I have floppies.