【TED演讲204】社交传媒和性别消失：未来媒体会发生什么变化？

媒体和广告公司至今还使用以前旧的统计来了解观众，但是人们在网上变得越来越难以追踪。随着社交传媒取代传统媒体，女性用户多于男性用户的事实，Johanna讲到在未来媒体会发生什么变化。

演说者：Johanna Blakley

演说题目：社交传媒和性别消失！

 中英文对照翻译

I'm going to make an argument today that may seem a little bit crazy: social media and the end of gender. Let me connect the dots. I'm going to argue today that the social media applications that we all know and love, or love to hate, 

我今天要提出一个新思想，它听上去有一点儿疯狂：社交传媒和性别消失。让我把这两件事情联系起来。我今天要讲的是那些我们从了解到喜爱，又从喜爱到痛恨的社交传媒，

are actually going to help free us from some of the absurd assumptions that we have as a society about gender. I think that social media is actually going to help us dismantle some of the silly and demeaning stereotypes that we see in media and advertising about gender.

其实在帮助我们从社会中有关性别的一些荒谬假设中摆脱出来。我认为社交传媒正在帮我们消除这些愚蠢和带有贬低的关于性别的刻板印象，我们在媒体和广告中都能看到，这些关于性别的陈规。

If you hadn't noticed, our media climate generally provides a very distorted mirror of our lives and of our gender, and I think that's going to change. Now most media companies -- television, radio, publishing, games, you name it -- they use very rigid segmentation methods in order to understand their audiences. It's old-school demographics. 

如果你还没注意到，我们的媒体常常制造有关我们生活和我们性别的一个非常歪曲的镜像。我认为这应该改变。现在多数媒体公司--电视，电台，出版社，游戏，你能讲得上名字的媒体--他们使用非常刻板的细分方法来了解他们的观众。这是老派的人口统计学。

They come up with these very restrictive labels to define us. Now the crazy thing is that media companies believe that if you fall within a certain demographic category then you are predictable in certain ways -- you have certain taste, that you like certain things. And so the bizarre result of this is that most of our popular culture is actually based on these presumptions about our demographics.

他们想出这些非常带有限制性的标签来定义我们。最疯狂的是媒体公司相信，如果你属于某种统计类别，他们就可以按某种方式来预测你（的行为）。你就会有某种口味，你就会喜欢某些特别的东西。所以这奇怪的结果是：我们最受欢迎的文化是建立在这些有关统计的假象上。

Age demographics: the 18 to 49 demo has had a huge impact on all mass media programming in this country since the 1960s, when the baby boomers were still young. Now they've aged out of that demographic, but it's still the case that powerful ratings companies like Nielson don't even take into account viewers of television shows over age 54. 

年龄统计学说：从18岁到49岁的人，对我国自从1960年代起所有大众媒体的节目安排有一个巨大影响力，也就是当婴儿潮一代人还年轻时。现在他们已经过了那人口统计年龄段，但这还有个例子，像Nielson这样评级优秀的公司，把年龄段超过54岁的电视用户没有考虑在内。

In our media environment, it's as if they don't even exist. Now, if you watch "Mad Men," like I do -- it's a popular TV show in the States -- Dr. Faye Miller does something called psychographics, which first came about in the 1960s, where you create these complex psychological profiles of consumers. But psychographics really haven't had a huge impact on the media business. It's really just been basic demographics.

在我们媒体环境中，这就好比他们不存在似的。假如你和我一样看“MadMen广告狂人”--这是在美国的一个流行电视节目--博士费伊·米勒研究所谓的消费心态学，它在1960年代第一次出现，用来描绘消费者的复杂的心理概况。但是消费心态学对媒体行业却没有多大的影响力。它仅是基础的人口统计。

So I'm at the Norman Lear Center at USC, and we've done a lot of research over the last seven, eight years on demographics and how they affect media and entertainment in this country and abroad. And in the last three years, we've been looking specifically at social media to see what has changed, and we've discovered some very interesting things. 

我在南加州大学诺曼·李尔中心，在过去七八年，我们做了很多关于人口统计学的研究，以及在我国和全球范围内人口统计学是如何影响媒体和娱乐界的。在过去三年，我们一直仔细观察社交传媒，看它如何变化。我们发现一些非常有趣的事。

All the people who participate in social media networks belong to the same old demographic categories that media companies and advertisers have used in order to understand them. But those categories mean even less now than they did before, because with online networking tools, it's much easier for us to escape some of our demographic boxes. 

参与社交传媒网的所有人，都能被归入以前旧的人口统计学里的种类，那些媒体公司和广告商们，以前用来了解人们的统计种类。但是这些旧的统计分类和以前相比，简直无足轻重。因为有了在线网络工具，要跳出旧的人口统计的陈规变得容易多了。

We're able to connect with people quite freely and to redefine ourselves online. And we can lie about our age online, too, pretty easily. We can also connect with people based on our very specific interests. We don't need a media company to help do this for us.

我们能够更自由地与人联系在一起，在网上重新定义我们自己。 在网上关于年龄问题我们能很容易地撒谎。我们能按我们个人非常特别的喜好来结识人们。我们不需要一个媒体公司帮助我们做这个。

So the traditional media companies, of course, are paying very close attention to these online communities. They know this is the mass audience of the future; they need to figure it out. But they're having a hard time doing it because they're still trying to use demographics in order to understand them, 

所以当然了传统媒体公司也特别关注这些在线社群。他们知道这是未来的大众传媒。他们需要摸清这些人。但是他们干的很困难，因为他们还试图使用旧的人口统计学说来了解大众，

because that's how ad rates are still determined. When they're monitoring your clickstream -- and you know they are -- they have a really hard time figuring out your age, your gender and your income. They can make some educated guesses. But they get a lot more information about what you do online, what you like, what interests you. 

因为广告收视率是由这些陈规来统计的。当他们监控你的点击流，你知道他们的确很难查出你的年龄，你的性别和你的收入。他们可以做一些学识方面的推测。但是他们得到的很多的信息是关于你在线做了什么，你喜欢什么，你对什么感兴趣。

That's easier for them to find out than who you are. And even though that's still sort of creepy, there is an upside to having your taste monitored. Suddenly our taste is being respected in a way that it hasn't been before. It had been presumed before.

这些他们很容易知道，但弄清你是谁就不容易了。尽管这有点恐怖，这也有个优势就是监控你的喜好。突然我们的喜好备受尊重这在以前从来没有过。以前我们的喜好都是被假定的。

So when you look online at the way people aggregate, they don't aggregate around age, gender and income. They aggregate around the things they love, the things that they like, 

当你上网看人们聚成社群的方式，人们不是按年龄，性别和收入而走到一起。人们而是按他们热爱的东西，他们喜爱的东西走到一起，

and if you think about it, shared interests and values are a far more powerful aggregator of human beings than demographic categories. I'd much rather know whether you like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" rather than how old you are. That would tell me something more substantial about you.

如果你想想看，人类要是按分享爱好和价值，而不是按统计类别来分，这是一种更强大的聚合力。我更愿意知道你是否喜欢“吸血鬼猎人巴菲”而不是想知道你的年龄。这会让我加深对你的了解。

Now there's something else that we've discovered about social media that's actually quite surprising. It turns out that women are really driving the social media revolution. If you look at the statistics -- these are worldwide statistics -- in every single age category, women actually outnumber men in their use of social networking technologies. 

目前我们关于社交传媒的一些其它发现的确非常令人惊喜。事实证明，女性真正是社交传媒革命的驱动力。如果你看看这些统计--这些是全世界统计数据--在每一个年龄组，在使用社交网络技术方面女性都多于男性。

And then if you look at the amount of time that they spend on these sites, they truly dominate the social media space, which is a space that's having a huge impact on old media. The question is: what sort of impact is this going to have on our culture, and what's it going to mean for women? If the case is that social media is dominating old media and women are dominating social media, 

然后如果你看，女性在这些网站所花费的时间，女性真正地主宰了社交媒体空间，这种社会媒体空间会对旧媒体产生巨大冲击。问题是，对我们文化它会起到什么影响, 对于女性这又意味着什么？假如现在的情况是社交传媒逐渐主宰旧媒体，同时女性在主宰社会媒体，

then does that mean that women are going to take over global media? Are we suddenly going to see a lot more female characters in cartoons and in games and on TV shows? Will the next big-budget blockbuster movies actually be chick flicks? Could this be possible, that suddenly our media landscape will become a feminist landscape?

那么是否意味着女性将会主宰全球媒体？我们是否会突然发现，在卡通里，游戏中和电视秀上出现大量女性角色呢？那么下一部大手笔的电影大片会变成迎合女性消费者的肥皂剧吗？有没有可能，突然我们媒体天地变成女权主义天地？

Well, I actually don't think that's going to be the case. I think that media companies are going to hire a lot more women, because they realize this is important for their business, and I think that women are also going to continue to dominate the social media sphere. 

好吧，我其实不认为会这样。我认为媒体公司会雇佣更多的女性，因为他们意识到这对他们行业来说很重要。我认为女性也会继续主宰社交传媒的领域。

But I think women are actually going to be -- ironically enough -- responsible for driving a stake through the heart of cheesy genre categories like the "chick flick" and all these other genre categories that presume that certain demographic groups like certain things -- that Hispanics like certain things, that young people like certain things. 

但我想很讽刺的是女性的确会挑起大梁，给予俗气的流派类别狠狠的一击。就像对肥皂剧和其他的各种体裁，人们总是假设某种人口统计学里的类别，就会喜欢某种特定的体裁。比如南美人喜好这个，或者年轻人总是喜欢那个。

This is far too simplistic. The future entertainment media that we're going to see is going to be very data-driven, and it's going to be based on the information that we ascertain from taste communities online, where women are really driving the action.

这太过简单了。我们将会看到未来的娱乐媒体是会以大量数据为基础的，是会基于从我们在线社区文化中感知到的信息，这里女性其实真是引擎。

So you may be asking, well why is it important that I know what entertains people? Why should I know this? Of course, old media companies and advertisers need to know this. But my argument is that, if you want to understand the global village, it's probably a good idea that you figure out what they're passionate about, what amuses them, what they choose to do in their free time. 

你可能会问，知道人们喜欢什么娱乐，为什么重要？我为什么要知道这个？当然，旧媒体公司和广告商需要知道这个。但我的论点是，如果你想了解地球村，一个好点子恐怕正是搞清人们对什么有激情，人们玩什么，当人们自由时，他们选择做什么。

This is a very important thing to know about people. I've spent most of my professional life researching media and entertainment and its impact on people's lives. And I do it not just because it's fun -- though actually, it is really fun -- but also because our research has shown over and over again that entertainment and play have a huge impact on people's lives -- 

了解人们的喜好，这是非常重要的事。我花了我整个职业生涯研究媒体和娱乐和它们对人们生活的影响。我研究这个不仅仅是为了好玩儿--尽管这的确有很多乐趣--而是因为我们的研究不断地证明娱乐和游戏会对人们的生活有巨大的影响--

for instance, on their political beliefs and on their health. And so, if you have any interest in understanding the world, looking at how people amuse themselves is a really good way to start.

例如，在人们的政治信仰上和人们健康问题上。那么，如果你对了解世界有兴趣，看看人们是怎样自娱自乐的这就是一个非常好的开始。

So imagine a media atmosphere that isn't dominated by lame stereotypes about gender and other demographic characteristics. Can you even imagine what that looks like? I can't wait to find out what it looks like.Thank you so much.

想象一个媒体远景它不再被性别和其他统计类别决定的站不住脚的陈规所主宰。大家能想象这会是什么样吗？我迫不及待地想知道这远景的样子。十分感谢。

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