As pandemic lockdowns spread around the globe in early 2020, advertising rates plummeted and news analysts warned of an “extinction-level event” for news organizations. Concerned about how this crisis had affected the independent digital native media, SembraMedia embarked on a large-scale research project at the beginning of 2021 to see how these relatively new media players had fared, and what had changed since the first Inflection Point study in 2016.

In the first Inflection Point study, SembraMedia interviewed 100 digital native media entrepreneurs in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. For this report, in addition to conducting 100 interviews in those same four countries in Latin America, they added eight more countries, interviewing media leaders from 49 digital media organizations in Africa: from Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa; and 52 in Southeast Asia: from Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand.

2021 Inflection Point International represents the deepest and broadest research ever done into the state of digital native media in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa, and discovers a mix of alarming threats and inspiring breakthroughs.