Digital Forecast 2021

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D I G I T A L FORECAST

TRENDS 2021

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Digital Forecast 2021

Hello, World

The launch of Clarion’s first digital forecast coincides with the anniversary of lockdown in the UK and, thanks to remarkable feats of science, what could be the beginning of the end of the Coronavirus pandemic. It has been a momentous 12 months for us all – and the shockwaves have been felt in the world of digital too. From unending video meet-ups to presidential de-platforming, digital has touched our lives in more ways than ever before. On any given day, as well as being our virtual office, it is also a battleground for critical information and the site of life-affirming moments of joy, bafflement and silliness.

Some of the trends we’ve documented have been a long time coming, while others have been accelerated by the pandemic flywheel; still others came out of the blue and left us reeling (Baked beans?! On Weetabix?!?!). Regardless, the lockdown era has been revolutionary. Attempting to discern a direction while still in the thick of this chaotic energy could seem foolhardy, but we have been intentionally bold, and also optimistic. Take a journey with us through our predictions and let us know what you think.

Neil Young, Senior Associate Director, Digital

Digital Forecast 2021

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We’ll learn more online than ever before

Thanks to a global pandemic that forced many of us indoors and in front of a screen, interest in e-learning has grown exponentially.

Whether picking up an instrument for the first time, working on your dance moves or dabbling in stocks, there are now more ways to explore new-found interests than ever before. This can have relatively benign effects – an increase in indie guitar bands is arguably never a bad thing – but when enough hobbyists band together they become a force to be reckoned with. Most eye-openingly, a Reddit-based coalition of amateur traders (r/wallstreetbets) drove a massive spike in the share price of Gamestop Corp, up-ending market certainties and costing investment firms billions as they scrambled to close short positions. Could a $GME-like supernova happen again? Regulators would prefer it didn’t, but we wouldn’t bet against it. In the meantime, now’s the time to indulge your curiosity and expand your skills in a new golden age of online learning.

Digital Forecast 2021

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The shift towards regulation will continue

The democratisation of information is one of the fundamental principles of the internet, but it is not without risk: often it is hard to tell who’s an expert and who is (bunny-ear quote marks) an “expert”.

This can have far-reaching consequences, not just for the health of our sourdough starters. The troubling rise of extremist groups such as QAnon is an ominous sign of what can happen when misinformation rages unabated. Social networks have come under intense scrutiny for their role in this phenomenon, not just for failing to moderate extremist views and content, but also for the way in which their algorithms appear to cultivate extremism in the first place. How providers such as Facebook respond to these existential challenges, either on their own or via the imposition of new laws, will be fundamental to the development of the internet – and the functioning of civic society. The stakes are high. Will 2021 be the year of decisive action?

Washington, D.C. | U.S.A. - Jan 6th, 2021: Trump Initiated

Riots at the Capitol: QAnon Shaman, Jake Angeli

Digital Forecast 2021

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We’ll see more of Tom Cruise than we bargained for

If 2021 is the year in which we take hesitant steps into a ‘new normal’, it is also the year in which trust in what we see and hear will reach new lows.

The harbinger of this change is none other than Tom Cruise, looking like he’s just stepped out of a high-G encounter in an F-14 – except it isn’t Tom. Or least not as we’ve hitherto known him.

In a series of TikTok videos, someone has created an AI-powered synthesis of the A-lister which is almost impossible to distinguish from the real thing. The implications are both thrilling and terrifying. What if we can recreate Tom and other people, exactly as we’d like?! But what if our shared experience of reality starts to come unstuck, peopled by make-believe simulacrums that anyone can cobble together using freely available software? It’s not hard to imagine ways in which such technology can be used to commit nuisance as well as, quite possibly, nuclear conflagration (‘Sir, Biden’s followed up last week’s rap-roast by calling you an unfettered nincompoop!’). We can worry about this or we can face this new reality: we’re going to be seeing a lot more of virtual Tom and his ilk. So we’d best get good at working out which is which.

Digital Forecast 2021

2021 will be the year of unlikely collaborations

The pairing of disparate elements is a fundamental human urge – it’s the engine of metaphor and language, innit? – and nowhere has this urge found more joyous, shambolic expression than on TikTok.

This impulse is perfectly realised via TikTok’s duet functionality, which enables seamless split-screen collaboration. At their best, these collaborations see a single unit of content expand via a series of interlocking duets that in theory could go on forever, endlessly evolving and mutating like a new form of DNA. Perhaps the most sublime example of the TikTok duet is Sea Shanty Tiktok, a trend started by New Zealand postie Nathan Evans. That Evan’s rousing singalong evoking simpler times of community and solidarity was only made possible by a Chinese surveillance app hardwired for virality is beside the point. When everything else seemed to be going to hell in a hand basket, it gave us hope in the healing power of human creativity.

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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV-052YJ-Zs

Digital Forecast 2021

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More people will opt out of tracking

Imagine if your search history became public knowledge. Or if your location could be pinpointed at any given moment. Or if your private chats were suddenly freely available.

For many, the security of our personal data has only ever been a passing concern – something we swipe past in exchange for app usage (Hi, TikTok; hey there, Facebook). But this is changing as people discover how their data is being used – and just how fragile our anonymity actually is. Users of Parler, a right-wing social media network, learned this to their cost when a security vulnerability led to their private data being widely shared, allowing internet sleuths to reveal their identities, addresses and even their real-time location during the storming of the United States Capitol. Meanwhile, Apple has taken steps to highlight the data that each app tracks while giving users the opportunity to opt out of previously hidden tracking. As users query just how much of their data is being siphoned away by their devices and apps, could we see a shift to ostensibly more private networks, such as Telegram and Signal, or the rise of new forms of social network that don’t harvest your data? With high-profile commentators such as Elon Musk joining the fray – the Tesla and Space-X billionaire urged his followers to download Signal -- the issue has legs.

Digital Forecast 2021

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History will repeat itself, but faster

One of the weirder – but also, on some level, completely unsurprising – trends of 2020 was the erection of strange metal monoliths in unlikely locations, from Utah to the Isle of Wight.

But if the form was somewhat novel, the story followed a well-worn pattern: surprise and delight, then mimicry (why don’t we build our own monolith), fatigue (can everyone stop with the monoliths), and, inevitably, destruction. The role of digital in all of this was as simple accelerant, dousing timelines with monolithic photos, locations and commentary. If previous cultural fads have played out over months or even years, here it took all of two weeks for angry fundamentalists to start tearing down any monolith they could get their hands on. In some ways, this is the story of the internet, if not human history. We think it’s safe to say we’ll see something similar happen over the next 12 months.

Digital Forecast 2021

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We’ll enter the Post-Bean Dad era

The Bean Dad Incident, which erupted in the first few days of 2021, encapsulates everything that has gone wrong with social media since the heady era of Arab Spring optimism in the early 2010s.

It all started when musician John Roderick shared an exhaustive, 23-tweet thread concerning how he’d deprived his nine-year-old daughter of food as she struggled to learn how to open a can of beans. Roderick presented his tale as a fun, teachable moment, but he was swiftly thrown into Twitter’s tumble-dryer of shame. In the end, he deleted his account. So, what went wrong? Leaving aside Roderick’s parenting style, the issue is that Twitter elevated Bean Dad, briefly, to the scale of a presidential election or a global pandemic. Like other social media platforms, Twitter prioritises engagement. This means content that (whether by design or mistake) incites or enrages others is rewarded with mass reach. Roderick appears to have accidentally set off this mechanism; others make it a deliberate strategy. The end result is a corrosive effect on public dialogue, an increase in tribalism, a trend away from nuance towards absolutism. And here’s where we want to be optimistic. As social media moves through its painful, awkward adolescence, we expect to see platforms evolve to dial down the Bean Dad effect.

Digital Forecast 2021

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As lockdown massively decreased our normal social interactions, many of us turned to our screens to get a taste of what we once had.

The introduction in March of Clubhouse, a social networking app based on audio chat, met this need with a fresh approach. The invite-only app has already had over 8 million downloads despite still only being in pre-launch, with various big-name stars and celebrities jumping into Clubhouse rooms, immediately drawing big crowds. Mark Zuckerberg even made an appearance, no doubt to pinch some inspiration for his own platforms. Meanwhile, the power of voice is only getting louder with Twitter introducing the option of audio tweeting in June, drawing a mixed review from users. Their new feature is designed to “add a more human touch”, the company said in a blog post, but there are concerns about the company’s ability to adequately monitor post content. It’s safe to say that this audio boom is not just a fad. With more than 30 social audio companies launching in 2020, 2021 will see our voices travel even further.

Social media will become more social

Digital Forecast 2021

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We’ll do less doomscrolling

The last 12 months has seen many of us graduate from good ol’ social media FOMO to fully-fledged doomscrolling – that is, the anxious and seemingly unending consumption of large quantities of negative online news.

While a late-night trawl through Twitter or Instagram is nothing new, the backdrop of the COVID crisis has given our thumbs fresh impetus. So, is doomscrolling here to stay or will we see a shift away from this compulsion? There are two factors at play here: one is the way in which smartphones and social media platforms are designed to influence our behaviours – for example, via nudge-like notifications or interfaces that encourage constant checking. The other factor is the extent to which news media, in part due to the impact of social media, have optimised to seize eyeballs in an economy of attention scarcity. We don’t hold out a huge amount of hope that we’ll see significant positive changes in either area, although it is heartening to note the responsible UX design movement and changes by smartphone manufacturers to allow users to silence apps and moderate screen-time. Increased awareness of doomscrolling and its damaging effects also means there is more opportunity for each of us to learn how to reduce its impact on our lives. And let’s not forget -- if social media has the power to make you feel dismayed about current events, then the opposite is also true: it can bring a smile to your face. We’ll drink to that.

Acknowledgements:

Clarion’s Digital Forecast was written by Neil Young, Dan O’Connor, Matt Newman and Dylan Ajani. Design by Ben Walton.

For further information or to chat to Clarion’s digital team, please email Debbie Little, Business Development Director dlittle@clarioncomms.co.uk or call 07787 550 994.

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