Know Your Media: Four Ways to Classify Media Platforms
To establish media relations, and before selecting any type of it, you must understand various types of media based on different factors and evaluate their rate. For example, you need to consider size and coverage the corresponding medium has and how much technical or general it is. When you know the type of a medium, you can identify its audience spectrum (target market) much easier and select your considered media to establish relations.
a) Types of Media Based on Method of Communicating with Audience Media platforms are divided into several types:
Audio media; This includes radio which has ever been around from the past and podcast which has been invented in recent years.
Visual media: This includes television which came after radio and still attracts many audiences.
Print media: This includes magazines, newspapers, weeklies, monthlies, periodicals, etc.
Online media: This came out in the modern world and it includes social media and online communication apps. Nowadays, online media has overshadowed other media by its vast diversity and it has even taken some hypermedia out of the picture or forced these platforms to change their business model. Some conventional media platforms, which still rely on their record, get by by selling the copyright of the contents at their disposal. This is because their media activity is not sufficient on its own. Some of these media even got merged so they can continue their media life.
In every country, there are different types of media in various sizes;
Hypermedia such as CNN, Fox News, … Hypermedia usually have various titles and publications and that's why they have become ubiquitous.
If a medium has an international distribution range, it's not necessarily better than a national medium. This categorization is solely based on distribution range.
In terms of content and technical nature of topics, a medium has two types:
General media: it includes any kind of topics such as culture or economics.
Technical media: it has a selection of topics in a certain field.