Calibrating Digital Media Trends For the Post-Pandemic ‘New Normal’

COVID-19 has had a profound impact on the central role of digital media in our everyday lives. We now are in a historic transition, from a nation organized for a pandemic response to a recovery that surely will create a “new normal.” So it’s timely and important to look back at how digital media has been shaped during this period, and more importantly, to assess what lies ahead, based on current data and trends. This post-pandemic new normal, however defined, will not be binary. Rather, the transition process will be more gradual, yet rooted in some fundamental adjustments in corporate and consumer behavior that already have occurred and are destined to endure. Accordingly, the development of the new normal for digital media will be similar to tuning in a radio station in an analog world – carefully moving the dial back and forth to obtain a more precise signal. This calibration will be both necessary and continuous in post-pandemic times in order to more accurately assess digital media opportunities and challenges. This review – from The Media Institute's Digital Media Center – of relevant COVID-19 digital media benchmarks thus is essential in assessing how they will be reinforced or changed as we transition to a post-pandemic period of enormous consequence and great potential.