In what ways do professionals in your field use the growth of UGC and/or transmedia story-telling?
Journalism has always been a method of communication from society to speak to itself; informing, educating or entertaining. This paper will discuss how journalists use the new media power shift to better engage with their audience, abandoning the traditional one-way communication flow to incorporate user-generated content and transmedia. Instead of only absorbing content, the transition to new mediums allows readers to interact with content in a meaningful way. Interacting with their opinions is crucial, and publications have recognised a need to nurture these to maintain their existing audience, as well as attracting new ones.
For the purpose of this paper, user-generated content can be used to describe any form of content such as video, discussion form posts, images, audio, and other forms of media that users in an online network create. Flew (2008) expands on this, seeing UGC as “blurring the lines between producers and consumers... to be a medium for everyone’s voice.” Below, the diagram explains the flow of communication between the media and the public.
This definition is synonymous with such theory as pro-am journalism, whereby professionals collaborate with amateur writers. This idea of crowdsourcing allows the target demographic to guide professionals in what they find relevant, achieving its original aim: to connect society with itself.
Transmedia storytelling is the spread of information across various mediums, each platform using their core features to share another piece of the puzzle. To use this tool consciously, Moloney explains (2012) “editors must consider what media are available to them and how the individual strengths of those media can be used to the story’s advantage. By distributing them across varying channels we can target the audience with issues that really matter to them.”
Technological determinism has a tangible presence in journalism as an industry; in order to survive, publishers must connect through a primary channel, perhaps their publication or website, but also through supplementary channels such as a Smartphone application and Twitter presence. It is this kind of grassroots communication that offers an “immersive experience, extending curiosity and engaging readers with the headlines,” as Afordproductions (2013) said.
As a case study, Condé Nast’s spin-off magazine Miss Vogue is a vanguard of this theory. The first print edition was launched on September 2, behind the launch of the magazine’s app a week before. In “Miss Vogue steps out in print and app” (2013) Editor Alice Cavanagh says they “designed the Miss Vogue Australia experience of print, App, digital and social media touch points to work together as a multiplatform experience.” The clip below gives a preview of the Miss Vogue Britain's iPad concept design, which is a model for the Australian experience .
Miss Vogue is also pioneering the convergence of social media, photography and text content. Its editors, staff and feature models engage with readers on Instagram to reveal visual snippets of the most anticipated features. Apart from being an effective advertising tool, connecting via this media channel before the magazines launch allows editorial staff to gauge readership interest before its release.
Today’s knowledge economy and creative industries actually force the journalism industry to subscribe to society’s current interests. Grabowicz (2013) explains that the public can bypass mainstream media by producing content and communicating directly with others in their own network. If the media chooses not to be party to this dialogue, their role in society is redundant. A 2008 Bivings Group survey suggests that UGC accounted for 58% of photos, 18% of videos and 15% of articles in the world’s top 100 newspaper websites. No longer is UGC a hobby component, but now an economic component of the industry that resonates better with the target audience. Gillmor (2010) suggests the inclusion of UGC promotes a multi-directional flow of news and information, reigniting journalism as a communicative device rather than a bystander to technoculture.
As another example, pro-am journalism, also called citizen journalism, creates a collective intelligence network whereby readers collaborate to get the quality of professional journalism with on-point reader relevance. Databases such as spot.us provide pro-am support to journalists and newsrooms by offering stories on important and perhaps overlooked topics. By producing stories that engage their audience, publications increase their readership and therefore their revenue, which supports a move towards creative industry. This kind of open source movement democratises innovation, moving with society and its transition into a knowledge economy.
What does this all mean for journalism? In order to survive and thrive as a profession, journalists need to move with the ebb and flow of the digital society. In a network governed by participatory culture, it is the consumers’ involvement that drives success – UGC and transmedia engages audiences by giving their role value in the creative process. The fundamental purposes of journalism still apply. The shift is about optimizing our communication methodology so that we inform, educate and entertain to the best of our ability.
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Sources
Jackson, S. (2013, August 12) App and print a happy mix for Miss Vogue. The Australian. Retrieved October 15, 2013 from http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/app-and-print-a-happy-mix-for-miss-vogue/story-e6frg996-1226695174568#sthash.f02pLWxu.dpuf
Miss Vogue steps out in print and app. (2013, August 12). Publishers Australia. Retrieved October 15, 2013 from http://bond.libguides.com/apa-referencing/newspaper-articles
Flew, T. (2008). An introduction to new media. South Melbourne, Vic: Oxford University Press.
Afordproductions. (2013, September 18). Research Journal : Transmedia Journalism [Video file]. Retrieved October 15, 2013 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4dMP5RgGJo
Moloney, K. T. (2013, June) Transmedia Journalism as a Post-Digital Narrative. Paper presented at the Fifteenth Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association. Toronto, Canada. Retrieved from http://www.colorado.edu/atlas/research/technicalreports.html#
Moloney, K. T. (2013) Porting transmedia storytelling to Journalism. (Master’s thesis). University of Colorado, Boulder.
Artieri, G.B. (2012, November) Productive publics and transmedia participation. Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy.
Wardle, C. & Williams, A. (2010) Beyond user-generated content: a production study examining the ways in which UGB is used at the BBC. Retrieved from: http://mcs.sagepub.com/content/32/5/78
Gillmor, D. (2009, 4 October). ‘The new rules of news.’ The Guardian AU. Retrieved October 15, 2013 from: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/02/dan-gillmor-22-rules-news
de la Peña, N., Weil, P., et al. (2010). Immersive Journalism: Immersive Virtual Reality for the First-Person Experience of News. Presence,19(4), 291-301. Retrieved October 15, 2013 from: http://www.immersivejournalism.com/?attachment_id=226
Grabowicz, P. (2013, 13 October). Transition to digital journalism. KDMC Berkley. Retrieved October 14, 2013 from http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/digital-transform/user-generated-content/
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