Avenues of Employment: Dynamic Career in Digital Media

“Creating the web was really an act of desperation, because the situation without it was very difficult when I was working at CERN later. Most of the technology involved in the web, like the hypertext, like the internet, multifront text objects.” – Tim Berners Lee

Present Understanding

World Wide Web (WWW) and What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG), this two popular term in which the whole world is surrounded by 24x7 in present time especially creating, sending and receiving information without any geographical or physical boundaries. Tim Berners Lee has projected that the whole world will communicate using digital devices and create ‘Mines of Information (MoI)’.

In the never before situation of novel coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak, every single entity getting everything about negative, positive and casualty information of COVID-19. And millions of digital and social sites are engaged in providing suggestions and solutions to fight against the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Coming to have a sense of dynamic career opportunity in digital media world, one thing is clear that communication has shifted now on internet, therefore, intellectual and technological know-how can create a great career opportunity to an individual as a creative writer, graphic designer, social media manager, digital media strategist, visualizer, cartoonist, online advertising manager, data analyst, web site manager, copywriter, search engine optimizer, blogger, influencer, video producer, short filmmaker, content curator, e-marketer and at the last one can start digital media agency or can become an independent consultant.   

Employment Opportunity    

You might not immediately think of the various forms of this dynamic domain that most ordinary people experience in their everyday lives. User-Generated Content (UGC) which everybody posts on their social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Vimeo, TikTok, Hello and on many more such sites and apps. Digital media is in your music, podcast, audiobooks; it is displayed on ads that catch your eye in public spaces, and makes up the content on your mobile devices, computers, and Smart TVs. Likewise, online newspaper and online news websites are functioning like open source for everyone. These days’ news websites are giving free space to an individual to post content directly and those contents are reaching out to millions of people globally which is itself an incredible experience and also being appreciated by monetary benefits. Online radio is a new wave in modern digital world wherein public, private and community radio stations are also shifted on virtual world and Radio Jockeys (RJs), Video Jockeys (VJs) and Disk Jockey (DJs) are attracting people through their innovative contents. Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality(VR), Mixed Reality (VR), Internet of Things (Iots), Robotic communication and machines learning will take a new bounce in the communication industry especially in the field of marketing, advertising, public relations and corporate communications and one has to learn and practice before getting in the real field.    

Salary Dynamics

Content is the king and engagement is the queen, I think this is the striking point to get a bucket of money in their pocket. As I said this is a dynamic and evolving field, one can expect salary starting from 25k to 1.5 Lakh at initial level vary from gravity and functioning and from city to city and country to country. Salary structure is very dynamic in this field, one can earn very good money using out his/her intellectual and technical skills.   

Contributed by Dr. Shashikant Bhagat, Associate Professor, National Institute of Mass Communication and Journalism (NIMCJ), Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India.