Dealing with the on-going structural changes in the media landscape is one of the most urgent challenges in today's society, both for people working in the media industry and for consumers trying to adapt to a large and increasing number of new media technologies and services. In this article, we present and discuss a number of current media trends, outline possible future scenarios and evaluate and discuss these scenarios in terms of future media consumption, mainly focusing on the Nordic media market. The research questions are: What are the main media consumption trends today, and what could be the most important characteristics of media consumption in different future scenarios? We have used a combination of a future studies approach, semi-structured expert interviews and design fiction methodology. We have organized two reference group workshops and then interviewed 11 media experts, both from the media industry and the academic world, and combined the results of these interviews and workshops with the significant media trends generated through design fiction methodology in the project course "The Future of Media" at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

One of the conclusions drawn is that the mobile phone (smartphone) and other mobile devices such as tablets, etc., are playing an increasingly important role in current media consumption trends. We can see this through an increased number of mobile devices, an increased use of multiple devices (often used simultaneously) and in the fact that users tend to be "always connected and always synchronized". Another conclusion drawn is that there is an increased focus on personalized and individualized news with more co-creation and sharing of media content. The amount of non-text formats for news, e.g., video, is increasing, as well as the need for a high-speed, high-quality infrastructure/network. The news consumers are increasingly time-pressed, and commute more, which creates new and different demands on the media content, such as being easily accessible at all times and places. Finally, more data is collected by media companies about the consumption habits of media users and more surveillance is performed on citizens by governments and corporations. When interviewed about the scenarios and trends in this study, the experts considered the most desirable future society to have a balanced mix of governmental control and commercial powers. As an example, public service media was considered an important counterbalance to commercially oriented media companies. According to the experts that were interviewed, aspects of all four proposed scenarios could however become true in the future, depending on choices made both on an individual level and on a societal level.