Information and computer technologies in media specialist preparation

Abstract

New information and computer technologies transform the social interaction and impose new demands for skills and thinking upon media specialists. The aim of this study is to determine the most effective set of information technologies, which can help media specialists develop competencies and thus stay competitive in the labor market. The research methodology is based on the overview of case studies concerning issues such as technology trends, human capital, and talent competitiveness. The qualitative analysis was performed in three phases – overviewing case studies, distinguishing trends and problem-solving. Analyzing data on skill supply and demand, the key skills needed to succeed in the workplace were identified. The results of the three-phase research revealed that the most important competencies needed to be in demand today are technology literacy, stress tolerance, and big data skills. The major finding of this study is that a media specialist needs to focus on learning throughout his life and gain hard and soft skills in the process.

Keywords

competence digitalization education transformation media literacy skills.

Introduction

The worldwide media consumption is increasingly happening in digital formats. The growing number of devices capable of supporting digital multimedia along with the rapid rise of Internet access speed provided consumers with the opportunity to access digital content anytime, anywhere (Joshi, 2019). Consequently, employers in the media industry resorted to social digital platforms to distribute their content, giving rise to a demand for media specialists in the labor market. This demand is expected to continually increase (Sissons, 2020).

A media specialist, in the interests of this study and based on the terminology used by group of researches, is defined as an individual who has skills and knowledge to work in the media industry such as a journalist or a blogger on any kind of media platforms (TV, Internet, social media, etc.). The rise of the digital content consumption has been acknowledged by Deloitte in one of its annual reports. Deloitte's aim is to analyze the main digital market trends in the past and the likely implications for all ecosystem players, that is government, business, education, and consumers. The report states that the use of mobile devices has increased in the recent years, promoting the digital consumption (Joshi, 2019). There is a shift in consumer preferences toward digital media consumption as compared to traditional forms of media such as television, print press, and radio.

Among a variety of digital devices, mobile phones are the most preferred means of digital content consumption, since they make it easier for consumers to access information and music on the go (Joshi, 2019). In these conditions, media specialists must adapt to the rapidly evolving digital trends and consumer demands. Working with a new communication medium requires media specialists to use unfamiliar technologies to process and showcase media content. Consequently, those specialists who master the principles of digitalization will always be in demand in the labor market (Vsevolodova & Pavlova, 2020).

Modern media are almost universally cross-platform, that is, they combine different formats of presenting information in various contexts of its presentation to the user (Marks, 2016). Understanding how different technology platforms work and how they are perceived by users is one of the defining features of digital literacy for media professionals. The field of activity of media specialists covers a wide range of professions from journalism to public relations (PR) and strategic communications. Studies show that there are preferences in different types of skills that representatives of different professions prefer to shape. Students of PR and strategic communications are more open to web skills than advertisers. The more active in communications the professional field of activity requires, the more knowledge in the field of computer science is required for a specialist (Hubbard et al., 2016). The concept of lifelong learning in the early stages of a media professional’s career means a change in specialization and the ability to quickly master new knowledge necessary to fulfill new responsibilities. Over time, the accumulation of skills, both hard and soft, gradually leads to the formation of a very broad professional view and the ability to freely navigate in any professional context (Yu et al., 2020).

Already, machine algorithms are much more efficient at dealing with these tasks than humans. Therefore, skills that are closely related to creativity and the ability to create new contexts in the field of work come out on top (Hubbard et al., 2016). Those skills that were traditionally referred to as “soft” after the stable addition of artificial intelligence to the media sphere of activity will turn into “hard skills,” because they will be decisive for getting a job (Marks, 2016). By “hard skills” we use a more traditional and generalized definition: these are professional skills that can be purposefully taught and whose proficiency can be discretely measured. These skills are understood as basic skills of any profession, which can be determined through precise algorithms and described in a procedural manner. Soft skills are skills associated with difficult-to-define competencies that relate to personalized experience, subjectivity, and personality. They are difficult to quantify or accurately describe algorithms. In the professional field, these are additional skills related to networking, social interactions, knowledge management, etc. (Marks, 2016; Yu et al., 2020).

It is currently impossible to imagine a world without the Internet. This technology unites people all over the world and represents the foundation of the information society. The number of active Internet users increased from 4.38 billion people in 2019 to 4.57 billion people in 2020, encompassing 59% of the global population. Countries with the most active Internet users include China, India, and the US. The United Arab Emirates, Denmark, and South Korea are countries with the highest Internet penetration. North Korea occupies the last place in the global Internet penetration ranking due to the lack of Internet access among the population (Clement, 2020). The most popular digital platform worldwide is Facebook, with 2.449 million users per month, followed by You Tube, which has 2.000 million users per month, and Whatsapp that has 1.600 million users per month (Kemp, 2020). As information technologies develop, media specialists will have to immerse into the digital environment and thus acquire new skills necessary to operate in that environment. Media professionals are faced not only with the need for lifelong learning, but also with the need to quickly and practically master a large number of practical skills in the background every day. At the same time, they do not break away from their main activities, but must master digital technologies and software products directly during work (Yu et al., 2020).

The experts from the Institute for the Future (IFTF) note that the new generation of media personas, which makes use of collective intelligence and resources embedded in social connections, comes not from traditional management but from related fields such as game design, neurobiology, and psychology. They distinguish 10 skills that a media specialist may need for success in the workplace (Davies et al., 2020):

Sense-making. This refers to skills that help create unique ideas for the decision-making and that cannot be codified.

Social intelligence. This competence is an assembly of emotional (curiosity, creativity) and social (adaptability, resilience) skills that are conducive to collaboration.

Adaptive thinking. This skill is defined as the ability to deal with abstract problems and come up with solutions that are beyond those that are rule-based.

Cross-cultural competency. This means to possess linguistic skills and to be able to operate in different cultural settings.

Computational thinking. This competence focuses on skills of statistical and quantitative analysis.

New-media literacy. This refers to the ability to critically assess and develop content using new media forms (hereinafter, immersive media).

Transdisciplinary. This means literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines.

Design mindset. This relates to time management skills.

Cognitive load management. This competence is defined as the ability to filter information for importance using various tools and methods.

Virtual collaboration. This is the ability to work productively as a member of a virtual team.

In the context of digital transformations in the media industry, the education system should produce digital media specialists who can effectively handle variability, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of the new environment (Lanvin and Monteiro, 2019). It is important to emphasize that automation, robotics, algorithms, and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered technologies have been proven effective in performing a certain range of human-tier tasks (Raine and Anderson, 2017).

In particular, a group of Russian scientists (Kiriya et al., 2017) who conducted an international study on digital media in 2020 identified the following digital trends: (1) the use of AI and cognitive technologies such as cognitive mobile robots in content creation; (2) the use of AI in automated translation; and (3) the use of virtual reality. It is predicted that by 2025, 90% of all news will be generated using smart algorithms. Furthermore, it is expected that all video and communication platforms and apps will have an automatic subtitle-generating feature so that consumers could watch films, broadcasts, streams and more in any language. The virtual reality technologies simply enable a deeper acquaintance with the content, as they influence the emotional experience of users by creating the sense of presence. Thus, the rise of intelligent machines and systems leads to the automation of the workplace and thus eliminates human error and facilitates the expansion of one's skills and abilities.

According to the 2019 Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI) ranking, which aim was to summarize complex and versatile concepts related to human capital at a national scale in 125 countries worldwide, Switzerland is the most competitive country. It is known for its advanced education system and the lowest unemployment rates. Switzerland shows that, in practice, specialists have to continue learning throughout their lifetimes to keep up with the changing market demands.

The UAE clinched the top spot among the non-European countries, followed by Israel, Qatar, and Cyprus. In spite of its leadership in the West Asia and North Africa region, the UAE has to improve its ability to grow talent and its global knowledge skills. This drawback indicates that the UAE's education system needs to adapt to the global skill trends (Lanvin et al., 2019). The use of information and computer technologies will enable the UAE and other countries with low GTCI rankings to reach the ongoing renewal of skills and thus keep abreast of the latest trends and market demands (Lanvin and Monteiro, 2019).

The problem statement with motivation to undertake this study is represented by the need to identify and bring together technological solutions for shaping the digital media competency a media specialist will need to maintain a competitive advantage. Skills for competitiveness represent a relevant topic in the research on media specialist education, as evidenced by the 2020 global digital overview (Kemp, 2020). Furthermore, this topic combines media with technology.

This work aims to determine a set of information technologies to shape the digital media competency of competitive media specialists. The objectives of the study are (a) to identify the digital media skills of interest; (b) to examine the existing technologies that are used to instill competitive skills; and (c) to establish an information technology framework for developing competencies of media specialists.

The object of the study is the competitive skills development.

The subject of the study is the set of information technologies involved in shaping the media competency trends.

Materials and methods

The study seeks to make media specialists competitive with specific competencies. For this, a qualitative analysis was performed, which comprises three phases: overviewing case studies, distinguishing trends, and problem-solving.

Research design and data collection

Phase 1. The overview of case studies (Davies et al., 2020; Joshi, 2019;Lanvin and Monteiro, 2019; Lanvin et al., 2019; Raine and Anderson, 2017).

This phase involves analyzing data on media skill supply and demand to determine the key skills that are crucial for success in the workplace. Phase 1 of this study was conducted on the basis of an analysis of the empirical results obtained from academic-refereed studies. The studies for the sample were selected according to the criteria (Figure 1). At the same time, the comparative studies are excluded from the sample. Based on this sample, 17 studies were obtained, which are fully included in the reference list of this article. Based on the analysis of the results of these selected sources, key competencies and their constituent skills for media specialists were identified (Table 1).

Figure 1.

Criteria for the sample.

Table 1.

The key competencies of a competitive media specialist.

Competence	Description
Hard skills (knowledge)	This skill set enables a learner to comprehend a piece of subject-specific information in a systematized educational form.
Soft skills (courses, digital entrepreneurship):	This skill set helps develop creativity, collaborate with members of a virtual team, and perform abstract and systematic thinking in complex interactions.
(1) digital media literacy	This is the ability to critically evaluate, create, and use information to consume content in the digital space.
(2) cognitive load management	This refers to the amount of mental effort being used in the working memory to process information for reasoning and decision making.
(3) computational thinking	This skill allows taking a complex problem, understanding what it is, and developing possible solutions that a computer, a human, or both, can understand. There are four techniques to computational thinking:
	− decomposition—breaking up a complex problem or system into smaller, more manageable parts; − pattern recognition—looking for similarities among and within problems; − abstraction—focusing on the important information, ignoring irrelevant details; − algorithms—developing a step-by-step solution to a problem or rules to follow to solve a problem.

Source: Reproduced from Davies et al. (2020), Lanvin and Monteiro (2019) and Raine and Anderson (2017).

Phase 2. Trend search

In this phase, technology trends for 2020 were identified from the Future Today Institute's database (Future Today Institute, 2020) to show the benefits of using technology in the workplace (Table 2).

Table 2.

Technology trends in 2020.

Technology Trend	Advantage	Companies Employing the Feature
Monitoring competitors on social media such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube	Media specialists can collect mentions and quickly respond to what users, bloggers and journalists write	YouScan, Mediametrics
Optimizing content for voice interfaces	Media specialists help machines like AI-powered voice assistant read the written content and translate it into spoken audio	Amazon, Apple, Audioburst, Facebook, Google, Listen Notes, Spoken Layer, Trin
Pop-up newsrooms and limited edition news products	This type of offering helps identify engaged readers and help test new ideas	News organization
Journalism as a service	News organizations are allowed to sell on-demand access to the components of their reporting, rather than just the finished product	Project Coral, The Information, MIT Media Lab, ProPublica, PRX, REDEF Group, Twilio.
One-to-few publishing	Major media companies have an opportunity to develop audiences around specific columnists or reporters (narrowly specialized media)	Auphonic, Garage Band, Iterable, Kickstarter, Libsyn, Mailchimp, Patreon, PRI, PRX, RadioPublic, Revue, Signal, Skype, SoundCloud, Sounderfm, SpeakPipe, Square, Stitcher, Substack, Telegram, TinyLetter, Twilio, WhatsApp.

Source: Adapted from Future Today Institute (2020).

Phase 3. The building of a technology matrix

In this phase, an integrative approach was applied to create a technology-based framework for cultivating competencies (competitive skills and knowledge of digital technologies) in media specialists. The advantages of this framework include cost-effectiveness, interconnectedness, and flexibility.

Media in the present context refer to the means of communication and tools used to create, copy, store, distribute, perceive, and deliver information from the content producer to the audience.

Data analysis

The study is a qualitative research design in which a focus is laid on the association between digital media literacy and information technology tools used to develop the 21st-century media competencies. Furthermore, the competency profile of media specialists was evaluated. The study compares the pace of development of various social media platforms with specific skill requirements (Figure 2) and a list of relevant skills identified from an analysis of empirical academic research in the field (Table 1) and statistically identified technology trends in 2020 (Table 2). Based on the results of this comparison and the definition of the skills required for the media specialist, The Building of a Technology Matrix is conducted as the final result of the study (Figure 3).

Figure 2.

Growth of the stories format in social media (from: Radcliffe, 2020).

Figure 3.

Technologies needed to cultivate skills of a competitive media specialist.

Results

In digital economies, traditional media such as print press, radio, and TV have lost their monopoly over the production and distribution of content. Digital gadgets that give Internet access become proximately attached to our daily routine and changed the way we consume information. Society began to consume information from various sources and mediums, both digital and traditional. This type of consumer behavior opened up new opportunities for media specialists to master new competencies.

Not only are new technologies changing the media, new technologies are also being used to create traditional, native human content. This necessitates mastering these new methods of telling and telling stories (Figure 2).

Figure 2 shows the temporal change in the number of users of the most popular social media, according to the sources described. As described earlier, each type of these media represents its own type of presentation and sharing of information, which is often referred to as the Story Format (Kim and Dennis, 2018). From this figure, one can judge which type of narrative prevails in the perception of users, and, accordingly, which skills associated with this type of narrative (Story Format) are most in demand.

Against the background of maintaining the potential of other social networks at approximately the same level of popularity (about 200 million users), the most extreme growth is observed in 2018. Both present primarily visual information, drawings, photographs, and short videos with the ability to discuss, comment, and mutually subscribe, share, and send content. The relevant skills are discussed further in Tables 1 and 2.

The overview of case studies on human capital and talent competitiveness (Davies et al., 2020; Joshi, 2019; Lanvin Monteiro, 2019; Lanvin et al., 2019; Raine Anderson, 2017) enabled the analysis of data concerning skill supply and demand. The results are skills of a media specialist most needed to stay competitive in the labor market (Table 1). It was found that the media industry has experienced a wave of transformations, which shaped the profile of the media specialist Media content processes, that is, creation, validation, and dissemination, imposed higher requirements for cognitive load management and computational thinking. In the context of digitalization, technology competence becomes a requirement.

To be efficient in creating, assessing, and promoting media content, a media specialist needs to master technologies that meet the global trends. Table 2 provides a summary of technology trends for 2020 that impact content planning and promotion.

Whatever the media specialist creates is considered a finished product when it reaches the audience. For this, the content producer has to start each day with in-depth content verification for conciseness, interconnectedness, and flexibility using technologies outlined in Table 2. The content verification process is the combination of competitive skills and technologies and represents the following operations:

gathering data via the social media dashboard feature to identify noteworthy content and to segment the audience;

analyzing in detail the mobile application metrics and mobile consumer behavior patterns. This is done to adapt and improve what consumers see using the functionality of digital ecosystems, to keep an eye on the traffic, and to track the scroll progress (i.e. how far down the page people are scrolling);

creating unique queries that meet your needs using pop-up windows.

The key competitive skills (Table 1) and technologies for creating a media product (Table 2) together make up a framework for developing media competencies needed in the 21st century (Figure 3).

According to a variety of case studies on human capital and talent competitiveness, the key competitiveness skills include hard skills (knowledge) and soft skills (digital media literacy, cognitive load management, and computational thinking). On the technologies side, there are several types of technological tools that may vary depending on the country's economic profile. Note that the given spectrum of technologies is constantly being updated. Technologies in the proposed framework were selected from among trends showcased in the Future Today Institute's database. These include wireless technologies (Wi-Fi, 5th Generation (5G), and software-defined radio (SDR)) that help expand Internet access; identification and authentication systems that enable media specialists to segment the audience; AI-powered services (virtual immersion, auto-translation, and robot journalists) to automate media; and mobile applications (voice control, video, radio, and e-books) that enable access to information anytime, anywhere.

Judging from the framework components, the most effective media competencies in the context of competitiveness are technology literacy, stress tolerance, and big data skills. The proposed solution will help media specialists look at the media industry through the prism of technology and master the valuable media competencies to be competitive in the labor market.

Discussion

With digitalization, new forms of communication arose that are based on the use of technology. This encouraged employers in the media industry to transform the workplace. In modern social media, the use of text mining techniques is actualized to present information in the news in a more interesting form for readers and viewers (Mhamdi et al., 2018). Studies based on an analysis of Arab social media newspapers have shown the effectiveness of using this modern method of text processing (Salloum et al., 2017a). As technologies become more sophisticated and diverse, a new media ecosystem emerges. Media tools such as video, news reports, and animations are combined with text to ensure visual communication. Furthermore, mobile devices and tablets help users interact with each other on a constant basis (News Media Report, 2019, 2020).

In the near future, the digital ecosystem will be replenished with new elements, some of which can radically change the life of media products. New ways of perceiving content will be the main expected communication methods. These are augmented and virtual reality widely available even at the household level, as well as special means of information management through sensory interfaces integrated with the central and peripheral nervous system of a person. These technological changes will lead to an even deeper change in the strategy of creating and promoting media content and will require completely new skills from specialists in the field of communications (Boyd and Holton, 2018).

Levitin and Coward state that with the rise of user-generated media (video feeds, blogs, and podcasts), the media specialist has to master innovations such as AI, big data, cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, and mobile apps to create and promote his content (Coward, 2018; Levitin, 2015). Digital technologies offered the audience a broader range of storytelling possibilities and thus forced media specialists to communicate using advanced multimedia solutions. It is considered that mining text makes it possible to track the most relevant topics on new channels and Facebook, which are in demand through social media users (Salloum et al., 2017b).

The audience’s ability to create their own content is still not fully exploited in the media field. There is still a division between professional and amateur content, which is supported by professionals. This division is based on the need to maintain high income and wages in the corporate sector.

At the same time, bloggers and other members of the media audience independently create information flows, which, in terms of influence and audience coverage, can significantly exceed the most highly professional media structures (Boyd and Holton, 2018). The distinction between amateur and professional content is maintained through the use of higher quality technologies and skills in music processing, video processing, text creation, storytelling, etc. Higher professionalism requires constant improvement of skills and mastery of new technologies; in particular, modern social networking websites require new approaches to the analysis of reliability and accuracy of information represented in the news on various sites (Salloum et al., 2017c).

The importance of using information technology creates the need for digital literacy. The list of skills that should be included in at least a minimal amount of digital literacy is constantly changing and becoming more complex. The advantage is given to native digital people, people who master technology from the moment of birth. Doyle's list of competitive skills that a media specialist needs most includes communication skills, content management skills, marketing skills, technical computer skills, soft skills (decision-making, stress tolerance, multitasking, collaboration, teamwork, time management, etc.), graphic design skills, and web analytics skills (Doyle, 2019). This skill set is essential to produce a competitive media product. As society is rapidly moving toward digital communication, the role of technology will continue to grow (Noor-Ul-Amin, 2013). Media specialists equipped with both hard and soft skills will be able to quickly adapt to the changing reality, think innovatively, and identify new products and processes that will help the audience effectively engage in social interactions.

Mastering competitive skills and digital technologies will enable a specialist to reliably assess the likely technological opportunities and to evaluate the skill supply. Media specialists who wish to gain a competitive advantage have to keep an eye on and effectively respond to the profile demands of the media industry (Information technology and the U.S., 2017). For this, they should focus on:

the need for education (this is based on the understanding of technology-driven changes in the market demands for skills);

the partnership between teachers and technology in the media specialist education;

the nature of technologies that can either automate, or expand (require new skills), or transform (create new products) the workplace.

In the study on partnership between media and technology, Deuze (2019) states that media specialists moved from being engaged in a single activity to creating a unique finished product for consumers across a broad range of fields (Deuze, 2019). With regard to demand, future media specialists need to focus not on the media market but on trends for media competency. The media market is losing its boundaries, gradually becoming part of an integral digitized space that will surround a person in the near future. Streams of news, advertising, social communications, personal communications, and information impact will become part of the learning, work, household space, and urban environment (Osburg and Lohrmann, 2017). Therefore, it is much more important for a specialist to master this future space and its technologies than to orientate in the trends of the media market itself.

According to the above, specialized education programs for designers, typographers, and editors will soon become a usual thing in the media industry. Modern media and digital education is increasingly taking on the features of modular and customizable online learning. This means that instead of receiving some integral training course with the formation of all the necessary skills and the acquisition of all knowledge in a certain area, the user studies that particular skill or technique that interests him at the moment. Such education is almost entirely online and digital.

Also, within the framework of corporate culture, collaboration is used as learning in the process of joint activities and solving problems in the real world. In the context of collaborative learning, the modularity of acquiring skills in the digital sphere is preserved, but knowledge transfer is carried out through personal communication with a mentor (Patala et al., 2019). Consequently, there will be a need for specialists equipped to use information technologies to engage and persuade the audience. Overall, media specialists need to handle different types of multimedia, to critically filter and evaluate information, and to create and showcase unique visuals.

Marques-Hayasaki et al. (2016) argue that the spread of new technologies led to disruption of a traditional broadcasting model and thus redefined the workplace of the media specialist This assertion is consistent with the opinion that media content is created and distributed using technological knowledge. That is, data collection and data processing take place when there is a partnership between people and technology with further hybridization of economic, technological, and social aspects (López-García et al., 2017). Consequently, the overlap of technology and competitive skills results from the competence trends in the media industry.

Conclusions

The results of the study reveal that in the context of digitalization, hard (knowledge) and soft (digital media literacy, cognitive load management, and computational thinking) skills are a key to the media specialist's competitive profile. Soft skills help media specialists effectively develop in a direction other than writing. It was established that besides the key skills, there is a need to employ technological tools for self-development. For this, a technology matrix was generated that is comprised of tools and skills needed to shape a competitive profile of a media specialist Among them are technology literacy, stress tolerance, and big data skills. In summary, it can be stated that to be competitive in the labor market, a media specialist needs to constantly upgrade his skills and learn new technologies to optimize resources for skill development and consolidation. Hence, media specialists are recommended to consider continuous self-learning.

Footnotes

Research limitation

The study is limited by the time frame and scope of the study, as well as the available statistical information obtained from the databases. The field of social media is rapidly evolving, so the information received about this area can quickly become out of date. Also, a narrow segment of research works is used for research, and it can be significantly expanded in the future with the emergence of new empirical studies on this topic.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Availability of data and material

Data will be available on request.

ORCID iD

Nidal Al Said

About the author

Al Said Nidal holds a PhD degree is an assistant professor of the College of Mass Communication at the Ajman University, Ajman, United Arab Emirates.

Butheyna Zuheir Al-Rawashdeh is a teacher (A) of the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology at the Al Balqa Applied University, Al-Salt, Jordan.

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(2020) Worldwide digital population as of July 2020. Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/ (accessed 15 September 2020).