COVID-19 EXPOSES THE EDGE SOCIAL MEDIA HAS OVER TRADITIONAL MEDIA IN BOTH CONTENT CREATION AND DISTRIBUTION (Food for thought for media practitioners, communications and marketing strategists)

Having worked in the media for more than 4 years, I just can't shake off the love of the media I think may be it is because it is perpetually intertwined to an element of my current profession, Marketing, specifically advertising and communications as it is a tool used to communicate with customers and targeted audiences. As such I am so intrigued and fervently follow trends in digital media as much as I can because this now is the holy grail of media right now. Social media be pushing the frontier of the media industry in terms of content creation and distribution. A few weeks ago a DJ D-Nice threw a virtual dance party, playing music in his living room broadcast to the world via Instagram live, at some point 150000 people were logged in, last week, rappers Drake and Tory Lanes broke the record of most Instagram Live viewers with over 310 viewers logged in. Since the onset of the Corona Virus, with most countries instituting lock downs, complete or partial, most artists have been taking to twitter live and Instagram live to perform just interact with their fans, holding virtual interviews and so forth, attracting hundreds of viewers at a a time, sometimes simultaneously. Do you know what that means, those viewers would have otherwise been watching TV or listening to the radio, thus these traditional media somehow lost audiences here. Please don't tel me about multisnacking (The ability to consume content on multiple media platforms at once we all know digital media is more attractive because of the interactive nature where there is two way communication as opposed to the mainly one way communication in traditional media). o Traditional media may have figured out a way to use Facebook and twitter as well as the internet to distribute content however whoever is first to master the use social media in real time content creation and distribution will have an a edge, wake up and smell the coffee, follow where media money is going. Today, P Diddy, the hip hop super star and astute business man is hosting an Instagram Live "danceathon",playing music, hosting stars from across the world, including Burna Boy, Janae Monae, Burna Boy, Naomi Campbel, just to mention a few, interviewing them and challenging them to dances with him, his three sons, Quincy, Justin Christian and twin daughters D'Lila Star and Jessie James, to raise donations for his Team Love charity to raise funds to go towards helping fight COVID - 19 across the globe. At the moment, his broadcast is now almost clocking 100, 0000 viewers and he is just one of the stars going live on social media t right now. He has so far managed to raise US$ 4 million. These stars are the same sources of content that some if not most of these traditional media rely own. There is your new form of competition out there. This also goes for communication and marketing strategists. Right now Will Smith's Bel Air Athletics just adopted DJ D- Nice into its branding strategy on the back of his viral Dance Party which have now become a daily phenomenon and has gone as far as designing a DJ-Nice hoodie under the Brand's line,which he has been donning during his sessions. Michelle Obama enlisted the help of DJ Nice to hold a voter registration themed dance party on Instagram Live to encourage Americans to register to vote in the country's upcoming presidential elections. Diddy, started his Insytagram Video Danceathon session with sharig his screen with DJ Nice doing his session as well. Stay woke media, marketing and communications people, digital media is disrupting the media landscape and whoever and whatever is or dares to associate with it!!! It used to be argued that digital media was only appealing to audiences and viewers on the go however, with the almost global lock down, more people than ever before, are home but considerable numbers, especially where internet connectivity is reliable and generally affordable are still preferring to stay online and unfortunately, for traditional media this digital media seems unstoppable. In the picture, P Diddy talks to Supermodel, Naomi Campbel during his Instagram live session. I think we may need a scholarly paper on this one.