As Media Noise Grows, Creating Signal Is More Important Than Ever

In 2024, it can seem like social media are the news media. On Tuesday, the Pew Research Center released a report that shows more American adults than ever get their news from TikTok, while large slices of the population continue to get news from other social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook and Reddit.

This can make it difficult to determine the content value of any particular media outlet—or even of the media as a whole. As someone who spent decades as a journalist and who now works with startup founders looking for attention on their innovations, I’ve seen firsthand how this media transformation has changed the equation when it comes to getting the word out. The fact is this: In a time when there is more noise than ever, the key is to know how to establish signal.

The Pew report comes on the heels of years of hand-wringing about the growth of social media and its implications for the national and global media landscape. Increasingly, discussion has focused on the perceived negative effects of social media platforms on mental health and its tendency to act as a vector for the dissemination of fake news and misinformation.

The increase in people getting their news from social media is accelerating at the same time that governments around the world have begun taking harsh measures toward many of these same platforms. Elon Musk‘s X (formerly Twitter) was recently banned in Brazil. And earlier this month, the CEO of Telegram was detained in France on charges that the platform failed to adequately police illegal content.

Perhaps most portentously, TikTok is facing a ban in the United States if its Chinese parent company does not divest the social network by early next year. Clearly, there is a disconnect between the popularity of such platforms, as so clearly demonstrated in the Pew report, and the dangers they are seen to pose by the authorities.

This all seems like a far cry from a time, not so long ago, when most Americans got their news from a single local newspaper and a handful of nightly broadcasts. And it raises obvious questions about the reliability of today’s media as purveyors of an objective standard of news.

It’s a topic that’s close to my heart. I spent 20 years as a journalist, eventually running the Western Hemisphere operations for Reuters. We were the intrepid reporters who traveled to war zones, asked world leaders tough questions and reported the details of the world’s various crises and their effects on the people who experienced them.

So you might expect me to be troubled by the spread of social media and the diffusion of the news through so many grassroots, unverified and unverifiable channels. But it’s not that simple.

The growth of the internet in general, and social media in particular, has exponentially increased the number of channels through which it’s possible to receive—and, crucially, to share—information. This is a double-edged sword because more information does not necessarily mean better information. In some ways, it is analogous to the invention of the printing press, which also brought widespread dissemination of new ideas, many of which were destabilizing to the established order of the time.

But it’s wrong to think today’s fragmented, increasingly DIY media landscape has lost its relevance. The truth is that there’s much more noise than there was even a decade ago. But that means it’s more important than ever to establish signal.

In the days when national news broadcasts and old-school institutions like Reuters dominated news media, there were clear channels for information. A relatively limited pool of organizations, staffed by professional journalists reporting on their “beats,” determined what the news was. This made it easier for everyone to agree on a basic set of facts, but it also shut out many voices.

Today, anyone with a smartphone can broadcast their thoughts and share their experiences in real time with billions of people around the world. From the Arab Spring to Taylor Swift‘s endorsement of a presidential candidate, this has made the world a smaller and more transparent place. The challenge now is to differentiate your message from all the others.

And that’s why it’s more important than ever for big brands and startups alike to understand the media landscape they operate in. Effective communication can bring attention to a project, accelerate user activation and raise the profile of its executive team. These benefits are as valuable as they have ever been. A company that knows its audience, communicates in a direct and engaging way and understands the “snowball effect”—whereby success leads to further success—will meaningfully grow its chances of success in a crowded marketplace.

In today’s contested media environment, it’s more important than ever to establish signal amid the noise.

Saul Hudson is a managing partner at Angle42, a strategic communications agency for fast-growing startups in the Web3, AI and other emerging technology industries.