New Electronic Media (NELME): 2016 Foresight

The Nelme (New Electronic Media) project will provide justifiable predictions of the most presumable and critical futures of electronic media, more specifically, electronic mass media, and, even more specifically, the future of the 'broadcast' as we know it today by the year 2020. To accomplish this task, a research framework has been created to describe relationships and causalities between interdisciplinary trends and issues related to broadcasting and electronic media. This report covers intermediate results as a foresight to 2016. For 2016, the foresight contains four scenarios that represent alternative futures. The scenarios are as follows: #1: Linear Broadcasting, #2: Online Mass Media, #3: Specialized Audiences, #4: Non-linear Era. They are organized on two axes: the horizontal axis describes broadband penetration and IP network performance in general ('Limited broadband' - 'World of broadband') while the vertical axis describes content availability ('Exclusive content rights' - 'Open digital market'). The foresight also contains the most probable vision, which, from a consumer perspective, is based on rapid penetration of broadband television and radio services, leading to hybrid viewing. This intermediate report also contains a description of the production processes for 2016, a set of detected user groups and the next steps for the project.