Network model of media contents in the age of smartphones

The changes in the information technologies of the last two decades, represented by the democratization of the Internet and the availability of portable and intelligent handhelds, is associated with new business, communication and communicative models. The high service capacities of today's smartphones have enabled a two-way dynamic processing of great amounts of content. The users gather in virtual communities and become both consumers and producers of information: prosumers. These contents come from or are allocated in the cloud or other platforms, and spread rapidly through the net. In this paper, the evolution of information fluxes is analyzed in three phases of the Information Society or Net Society, and the theory around user-generated content and media convergence is discussed. Each phase is represented in a cyclical model articulating data dealing, the new roles of users and the impact of technology. On the basis of these models, news discourses and content may be anticipated for various purposes. A flow model based on algorithms determined by the personal preferences of users is finally proposed.