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Chapter 2

Interactive Documentary/Journalism/Storytelling

The use of interactive documentary for journalism and storytelling is a relatively new idea in the world of both documentary and journalism. 

 

  • Interaction is a kind of action that occurs as two or more objects have an effect upon one another. The idea of a two-way effect is essential in the concept of interaction, as opposed to a one-way causal effect.

  • Communication of any sort, for example two or more people talking to each other

  • The feedback during the operation of machines such as a computer or tool

  • Definition of :  mutual or reciprocal action or influence

 

Collaboration- https://vimeo.com/119101747

 

  • Collaboration in the cybernetic sense of feedback loops between users and producers; collaboration in the sense of story- and meaning-making; and collaboration in the sense of enabling social circulation of texts.All of these aspects help to enhance engagement by making users matter.

  • This participatory/collaboration shift is not limited to the media world: witness the development of citizen-science, crowdsourced funding initiatives, and, increasingly, grassroots political processes to address governance issues.

  • is the process of two or more people or organizations working together to realize shared goals.  Collaboration is very similar to cooperation, and both are an opposite of competition

  • Most collaboration requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group. Teams that work collaboratively can obtain greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for finite resources.

  • is a culture in which private persons (the public) do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers (prosumers).

 

Interactive storytelling (IS) is a form of digital entertainment in which the storyline is not predetermined. The self-generated narrative, and its evolution, can be influenced in real-time by the actions of users.

  • Early attempts to understand interactive storytelling date back to the 1970s with such efforts as Roger Schank's research at Northwestern University and the experimental program TaleSpin

    • take an interactive system, such as a computer game, and encourage the actions of a user in such a way as to form a coherent plot. With a sufficiently complex system, emergent behavior may form story-like behavior regardless of the user's actions.

    • data-driven strategies have a library of "story components" which are sufficiently general that they can be combined smoothly in response to a user's actions

  • Interactive entertainment experiences allow the player to witness data as navigable, participatory, and dramatic in real-time

  • When interactive narrative design is successful, the VUP (viewer/user/player) believes that they are experiencing a story.

 

Interactive documentary is a documentary production that differs from the more traditional forms—video, audio, photographic—by applying a full complement of multimedia tools. The interactive multimedia capability of the Internet provides documentarians with a unique medium to create non-linear productions that combine photography, text, audio, video, animation and infographics.

 

  • “If the growth of interactive documentary does anything, I think it will open our eyes to the hundreds of possibilities of telling stories in original ways, and re‑defining what a story is, what an audience is, and what a maker is.”    Gerry Flahive, National Film Board of Canada

  • Interactive documentaries are capable of relaying deep and complex information in compelling ways.

 

Interactive documentaries are capable of relaying deep and complex information in compelling ways.

 

  • A documentary film is a non-fiction motion picture intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, news or maintaining a historical record.

  • Documentary and journalism share the same commitment to truth-telling, sense-making and explaining.

  • A web documentary ,interactive documentary or multimedia documentary, is a documentary production that differs from the more traditional forms—video, audio, photographic—by applying a full complement of multimedia tools. The interactive multimedia capability of the Internet provides documentarians with a unique medium to create non-linear productions that combine photography, text, audio, video, animation and infographics

 

Collaborative Documentary:

 

Participatory Documentary:

 

Interactive Narratives:

 

Digital Journalism:

  • The concept of “digital first” acknowledges an end to understanding the digital as an extension of the analog and heralds a conceptual shift akin to that of the horseless carriage to the automobile in the early 20th century.

  • “not to create new journalism, but to get more out of the journalism we are already creating.”NYT Innovation Report 2015

 

Interactive Journalism:

 

What’s In a Name?

  • Whether called

    • interactive documentaries

    • participative documentaries

    • collaborative documentaries

    • big-signature interactives

    • interactive features

    • Web-first journalism

    • long-form digital storytelling

    • multi-media storytelling

 These projects can stand alone or they can work together with traditional long-form stories.

 

Things to Consider:

  • The shift in audience metrics from “exposure” to “engagement” offers important opportunities for organizations to think about communication, but also blurs the missions of the business and editorial offices.

  • - The world and its stories are growing ever more complex at a moment of abundant and unfiltered information flow, and audiences and even some makers show signs of becoming increasingly overwhelmed. Over the past decade, these “new realities” have informed

  • The growing dominance of the small, mobile screen as a site of news consumption is a new reality.

  • Over the past decade, these “new realities” have informed a growing body of work produced by pioneering documentary makers and journalists working in digital spaces.

 

The HOW:

  • This form can be structured in what could be describe as “micro-narratives”—small narrative units that, like Legos, can be disaggregated and reconfigured in various way

  • This modular approach has significant advantages when designing stories for small screens that enable their users to move from simplicity to depth as they follow their interests, linking units together, Lego-style, into a larger structure in the process.

  • Narrative units are easily shared in a socially‑networked economy

  • This malleable approach to storytelling maps well onto an emergent behavior known as “unbundling,” in which users and producers dismantle larger integral texts into self-contained fragments or segments such as webisodes, mobisodes, viral videos, and digests.

  • uses of interactive features, templates, and tools to tell stories quickly and effectively on digital platforms is the way of the future

 

Making the Work-WORK:

  • Collaboration between journalist, documentarian and interface designers

  • Understanding the audience-NICHE

  • Consideration of stylistic conventions

  • Understanding your platforms

  • Users are accustomed to scrolling and flicking their way through screens, so stories need to be designed in ways that invite this behavior, that make creative use of it, and that go beyond the catchy headline

  • Think “living” and long term

  • Awareness of the transformation of news cycles (24/7 and instantaneous), reach (global), sourcing (the crowd), and business models (still being invented).

  • Staying educated and understanding new technologies

  • Engagement is key - Smaller, more focused, and possibly more engaged audiences might be more advantageous

 

Forms of User/Audience Participation:

UGC refers to a broad spectrum of participatory activities, including comments, blogs, tweets, wiki contributions, podcasts, and videos that their makers share with others online

  • Active collaboration (co-creation)

  • Populate projects with content

  • Feedback

  • Play major role in spreading the project socially-Social circulation

    • Users frequently unbundle media content, breaking out and sharing favorite scenes or material deemed, relevant for their circle of friends, which in the process enables interested members of their network to find their way back to the original source

  • Data trails-involuntary

 

Navigation Specifics:

  • They can go “deeper,” allowing the user to drill downwards into a story to gather more information—a strategy familiar from the “inverted pyramid” approach to traditional news story construction.

  • The second navigational interaction can move “outwards” in the form of links to other websites or even to related story elements onother platforms.

  • across channels and platforms increases

  • The opportunity of drawing users in from multiple locations

 

Engagement Measures:

  • Google analytics?

  • Length of stay on a story?

  • Frequency of visits?

  • Links and referrals?

  • Mentions in social media?

  • Participation through letters, debate and user-generated content?

  • Some combination of these?

 

Argument Against:

The lean forward / sit back debate

  • frequently, interaction gets in the way of the story instead of helping it

  • majority of audiences accustomed to traditional newspapers and radio and television programs

  • The culture of journalism as professionally practiced and institutionalized in print and broadcast organizations has long catered to a sit back experience

Both the lean forward and sit back are necessary to appease the audience.

Options to watch in full or click through should be considered

Highrise opens with an instructional appeal:

  • To watch the film just lean back and relax.

  • At any time, click down to dig deeper and get the facts.

  • (Dig deeper and deeper, click and drag your mouse)

  • At any time, click up and the film resumes back on its track

 

When to Use:

Linear, interactive, cross media, multimedia, or transmedia: how does one decide what form a particular story should take?

  • The Guardian and current managing editor at The Marshall Project, Gabriel Dance, put it, “starting from the story and then deciding which parts are best for which mediums.”

  • fit of form and content

 

Who’s Big in Interactive Digital Journalism?

  • BuzzFeed

  • The Guardian

  • FiveThirtyEight

  • The Marshall Project

  • The Intercept

  • New York Times

  • NPR

 

Project:

  • Create 3 videos that relate to your cause

  • Add videos to Youtube and your site

  • Connect to others through social media and interaction-future lessons

 

 

References:

DeJarnette, B.(2016) How to Scale Up Interactive Documentary in the Digital Newsrooms. Retrieved from: http://mediashift.org/2016/02/how-to-scale-up-interactive-documentary-in-digital-newsrooms/

 

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