Social Future Observatory

Our work concentrates on behavioural and social change with a particular emphasis upon technology adoption, communication and contents. In other words we ask the question how does technology/media shape our world and in turn how is technology/media shaped by both predicted and unforeseen events and usages?

Our clients included many of the worlds leading brands with a particular strong position in a broad range of media content and broadcast organisations, mobile and fixed service providers, device developers and financial services.

Structure

One large-scale project: In recent years CSMTC’s Annual Programmes have been syndicated projects consisting of several discreet pieces i.e. Mobile Access, Home Access, Social networks etc. However we believe that the interconnections between all these have become so significant that they are better studied as a whole we are therefore proposing to undertake one very large scale piece (but with a number of constituent parts) conducted between January and October 2009.

Three key themes: The piece will be built around three broad behavioural thematic areas: Issues of Mobility, Social Spaces, and On-Line Lives (see details later), with corresponding commercial themes (see later).

Greater engagement and ability to input: A further change will be the nature of involvement for participating organisations: whilst at a high level the study will retain an element of syndication i.e. setting and understanding the broad social context and futures interpretation, the nature of engagement with each individual organisation will change. Each participant organisation will be encouraged/expected (we expect input from several business areas within each organisation followed by regular contact) to discuss in detail the key areas they require to be studied within the piece. The more a participating organisation inputs, the more they will be able to benefit from the work, specifically and directly, at both tactical and strategic levels.

Two individual, bespoke workshops: As a result of the greater client involvement, SFO will work closely with funding clients in a more consultative capacity. This will change the nature of engagement and reporting, so the 2009 Programme will provide each client with the opportunity for two bespoke workshops, during the first 8 months of the project, addressing primarily their specific issues but set within the context of the developing work as a whole.

A full overview presentation, tailored to each participant: A third workshop/presentation will be offered in the quarter October to December, providing a full overview of the total piece, but again being based on the issues specific to each organisation.

Written report: Additionally a written report will be available towards the end of 2009 drawing together all strands of the research and where necessary carrying private sections dedicated to specific client requirements. This report will not be publically available although we do maintain the right to use elements of our work for academic papers.

Participant numbers: These structural changes represent a major move forward in engagement with funding clients. To facilitate both the expanded research complexity/scope and increased client engagement we, unfortunately, will be reducing the numbers of participating organisations to just 10 for 2009. Additionally as we are dispensing with ‘standalone’ elements such as for instance ‘Mobile Access’ all clients must be involved in the whole programme.

Key themes - Behavioural

The outlined themes are not separate research projects, rather they act as useful ways for us to explore the increasingly complex and convergent world of digital media, access, issues of changing behavior and impacts on more established forms of media and behavior. The following is just an indication of some of the areas we will explore:

Issues of Mobility- How are contents accessed on the move, what contents are more privileged than others, in what context and by what segments, how are they moved, consumed and stored between devices? What kind of devices and how many, for what purposes do people want to hold close to the person? What are the limits to ‘any place/anytime’ for contents and devices i.e. screen/device size, concentration levels, public verses private? What is the relationship between public screens i.e. display boards, signage and the individual, how will this change as devices become more intelligent in themselves and connected one to another? How will location based services combine with communication in the future? How will mobile forms impact on traditional media access modes and consumption? Will the spaces between -‘interspace’- continue to grow in importance, how will this be experienced?

Social Spaces- How do differing spaces provide contexts for content consumption, access, sharing and storage i.e. the home, work, social such as public houses, concerts etc? What technologies and contents are ‘taken in’ what is expected to be present? How do and will individuals interact with others and spaces in differing locations? How do public and private moments play out in such spaces i.e. privacy, screen size etc? Will differing spaces become synonymous with differing levels of connectivity i.e. broadband speeds, mobile v fixed broadband, wi-fi etc?

On-Line Lives- What are the longer term impacts of increasingly living our lines on line? What does virtualisation, cloud computing, storage and access mean to our value of things and services? How will the internet change our communication behaviours, access and use of content? If lives become contents in themselves available for degrees of public broadcast via social networks, virtual communities how will we define content and what will be the role of professionally authored content in the future? What are the emergent changes in notions of community, private and public, issues of privacy?

Key Themes-Commercial

Several of the key commercial themes will include for example the following:

Relationship/Brand building- What are the new expectations around corporate relationships/services and brand positioning? How immediate, extensive should customer service be? How ‘open’ can/should organisations be. Where are brands expected to be ‘found’ and in what form, how far can brands be stretched?

Marketing Opportunities- What are the emergent opportunities, how do individual brands get heard and gain traction? How much personal invasion will individuals exchange for novelty and access (is this brand or product related), does this set limits on location based services, how push interactive can such services become? Is brand positioning and marketing set to be more demonstrable through interactive engagements or game based i.e. Augmented Reality Games

Product and Service Development- Who develops products in an increasingly open world, does application development models similar to say Facebook or Apple represent viable future paths? What kind of new products and services emerge from ubiquitous internet access, is it possible to see examples of these?

Advertising and Financial Models- What are the emergent financial models, how far can advertising revenue stretch across media form and platform? Are there new emergent forms of advertising, product/service representation? What is the criteria for advertising avoidance or acceptance i.e. is advertising a form of currency? What modes of payment, on-demand, access fee, bundling etc represent the future?

We will ask the funding organisations to share their key commercial concerns and imperatives with us and we would build much of the work upon this.

Method

The research will be conducted over nine months commencing in January 2009 and completing in October 2009.

It will involve detailed analysis of existing commercial and academic research on a world-wide basis, obviously not all of this will be applicable to the UK market but where appropriate or likely to be significant in the future it will be incorporated (or included for specific participants). Empirical research will be qualitative and quantitative, qualitative to include, ethnography, personal accounts (video diaries, social networks) observation, interviews and focus groups. Whilst the full structure will be emergent as the work develops we expect that our qualitative work will engage several hundred direct interventions and the quantitative sampling/data to build to a total sample in excess of 2000-3000.