Digital Traces in Context| 100 Billion Data Rows per Second: Media Analytics in the Early 21st Century

Abstract

This article describes the newest stage in the development of modern technological media. I call this stage “media analytics.” It follows the previous stages of massive reproduction (1500–), broadcasting (1920–), the use of computers for media creation workflows (1981–), the Web as global content creation and distribution network (1993–), and social media platforms (2004–), to name just a few such stages. Unlike other stages, the new stage is not focused on new mechanisms for creation, publishing, or distribution of media, although it also affects these operations. Instead, this new stage is about automatic computational analysis of the content of all online digital media, personal online behaviors and communication, and automatic actions based on this analysis.