Transmedia 202: Further Reflections

The above video was shot by Scott Walker during one of my presentations at San Diego Comic-Con, during which I spoke about some of the controversy which has surrounded the definition of transmedia over the past six months or so. I've largely stayed out of these conversations, though you can find a very good summary of the debates here.

I've been focusing on other projects and also I've been more interested in the shapes these discussions take than seeking to intervene in them directly, but over the summer, in a range of venues, I've been pushing and proding at my own definitions to see if I can capture some of my own shifting understandings of transmedia, especially as I am preparing to teach a revamped transmedia entertainment class at USC. Today, I am going to try to put some of this still evolving thinking into writing in hopes that it helps others sort through these issues.

Much of this is covered in the above video so if you process things better in audio-visual than in print, you have your options. I've heard some gossip that Jenkins was going to issue a "new definition" of "transmedia": this is no where near as dramatic an overhaul as that, just some clarifications and reflections about definitions. This definition still covers, more or less, what I mean by transmedia storytelling:

Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.

A great conversation about the multiple forms of how transmedia is being applied and how we can assure the differing platforms create an extension of narrative. This is very important to successful creation of transmedia. It's not just rehashing the same content on differing platforms.

Now Available: Transmedia Hollywood 2 Videos

Due to technical difficulties, we've been delayed in sharing with you the videos from our April Transmedia Hollywood 2 conference, jointly sponsored by the cinema schools at USC and UCLA, and hosted this year at UCLA. We hope to be back next April at USC with a whole new line up of speakers and topics, which we are just now starting to plan. In the meantime, check out some of these sessions, which should give the ever expanding Transmedia community plenty to chew on this summer. As for myself, I'm flying down to Rio, even as we speak.

Welcome and Opening Remarks
Denise Mann, Associate Professor, Producers Program, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television

Transmedia Hollywood 2, Visual Culture & Design: Denise Mann Opening Comments from UCLA Film & TV on Vimeo.

Henry Jenkins, Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts, Annenberg School of Communication, USC. (Some of my comments here got me into trouble at the time and I hope to post something here soon which explores the issue I raise here about the role of radical intertextuality within the same medium.)

Transmedia Hollywood 2, Visual Culture & Design: Henry Jenkins Opening Comments from UCLA Film & TV on Vimeo.

Panel 1: "Come Out 2 Play": Designing Virtual Worlds--From Screens to Theme Parks and Beyond

Hollywood has come a long way since Walt Disney, circa 1955, invited families to come out and play in the first cross-platform, totally merchandised sandbox -- Disneyland. Cut to today and most entertainment corporations are still focused on creating intellectual properties to exploit across all divisions of the Company. However, as the studios and networks move away from the concrete spaces of movie and TV screens and start to embrace the seemingly limitless "virtual spaces" of the Web as well as the real-world spaces of theme parks, museums, and comic book conventions, the demands on creative personnel and their studio counterparts have expanded exponentially.

• Kate Bulkley
• The Guardian, Monday 6 June 2011
• Article history

The traditional processes behind TV programme–making are breaking down. Illustration: Brett Ryder

Storytelling has always been at the heart of the best media, be it a TV show, a documentary or a game, and there is no doubt that with the expanding choice of technology – from smart mobile phones and tablets to TV sets that have internet connections – we are seeing an ever–increasing convergence of storytelling on different platforms. But as this convergence develops, one of the key questions now confronting the media industry is this: who's in control of this explosion in creativity?

The answer might seem obvious. Surely, it's the commissioners who grant producers the chance to broadcast on their channels. Or maybe it's the producers and directors themselves with the ideas for the programmes or films that have the whip hand? Or perhaps it's the writers who ultimately have control?

Transmedia is creating pathways to enrich narrative as well as a great way for creatives to build an audience and grow into broadcast media.

Seven Myths About Transmedia Storytelling Debunked

BY FC Expert Blogger Henry JenkinsToday

This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert's views alone.

Over the past few years, transmedia storytelling has become a hot buzzword in Hollywood and Madison Avenue alike--"the next big thing" or "the last big thing" depending on whom you ask. Last year, the Producer's Guild announced a new job title, Transmedia Producer, a decision that has more or less established the term as an industry standard. More and more companies are laying claim to expertise in producing transmedia content. But many using the term don't really understand what they are saying. So let's look at what people are getting wrong about transmedia.

Myth 1: Transmedia Storytelling refers to any strategy involving more than one media platform.

The entertainment industry has long developed licensed products, reproducing the same stories across multiple channels (for example, novelizations). Increasingly, broadcast content is also available on line. And many films are adopted from books (or now, comic books). None of these necessarily constitute transmedia storytelling. In transmedia, elements of a story are dispersed systematically across multiple media platforms, each making their own unique contribution to the whole. Each medium does what it does best--comics might provide back-story, games might allow you to explore the world, and the television series offers unfolding episodes.

Thank you Henry for great insights!

How Does Transmedia Storytelling Work?

Mike Monello of Campfire gave a terrific half-hour talk at Power of the Pixel on how transmedia storytelling works.

The talk is worth every minute to watch, especially the history of Coney Island Mike uses to frame his own story. So here it is.

A great story starts with a single word and weaves it’s way into the  subconscious eventually creating a visceral connection. The epic story reaches in to the soul and creates a desire to immerse oneself in it’s story world. These story worlds are one of the main stays here at the creativity lab. The entry points to a story are key in developing an engaging story world. Using transmedia as a storytelling device is how the Robots roll.

With their mania for film franchises, leading studios are behaving more like packaged goods marketers than the showmen of yore in pumping out movies, and appear more interested in taking direction from fanboys, brand managers and multimedia consultants.

So the time appears ripe for consultants such as Jeff Gomez and Mark Pensavalle, co-founders of Starlight Runner Entertainment. Their job: To make sure that stories and characters remain consistent as a movie is reincarnated as, say, a TV series, a video game, a theme park attraction or an online virtual world.

Their specialty is called transmedia, a term with roots in academia that has become the latest buzzword for entertainment that spans multiple media platforms. They have worked on some of the industry's highest-profile properties, including the movies "Tron: Legacy" and "Avatar" and the video game Halo.

"We think we have shown that different media are like instruments, and when you put them together, you can create moving symphonies," said Gomez, who oversees the creative aspects while Pensavalle focuses on the business side.

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Spinoff entertainment from movies isn't new in Hollywood. Even "Lassie" was treated to endless sequels by MGM in the 1940s before being turned into a live show on the fair circuit, a radio series, a network TV series, a cable TV series, books, comics and a merchandizing bonanza that included a line of dog food.

In the past, such renditions and products were typically considered ancillary, to be licensed to the highest bidder. As a result, video games, comics, websites and movies would vary in the complexity of their storytelling, if they didn't outright contradict what came before.

But fans today, who can stay involved with stories and characters around the clock thanks to the Internet and mobile devices, are more sophisticated and less tolerant when it comes to deviations from the script.

"The merging of technology and media today demands that we're more holistic in our thinking," said "Tron: Legacy" producer Sean Bailey, president of production at Walt Disney Studios, which launched the movie in December along with a theme park show, toys, video games and an upcoming animated series. "It's no longer OK to be sending mixed messages."

Although studios actively manage their franchises on the business side, some are just starting to build up the same internal capability on the story side. That has provided an opening for firms like Starlight Runner and rivals such as 42 Entertainment and Campfire, which do similar work with a marketing bent.

On "Tron: Legacy" and the second and third "Pirates of the Caribbean" films, the six-person team at Starlight, based in New York, served as a bridge between the filmmakers and the people behind the theme park attractions, games and cruise line shows.

The Starlight team helped flesh out storylines for spinoffs that fit the movies and came up with moments to connect the different incarnations. In one such "transmedia tip," Olivia Wilde's character in "Tron: Legacy" discusses how she was saved from death. Players of the video game Tron: Evolution — a prequel to the movie — would recognize the reference, since they are the ones who rescue her at the end of the game.

They also led what Gomez called Tron 101 and Pirates 101 sessions for corporate executives at Disney, in which they outlined the mythology behind the franchises and explained the do's and don'ts of creating products connected to it. Those seeking to use Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow character, for instance, were warned that although he's selfish and a trickster, he would never murder an innocent person or act out of malicious intent.

On Microsoft's video game Halo and Hasbro's toy line Transformers, Gomez and Pensavalle had the opposite task: to simplify the mythology. Both brands had built up complex and sometimes conflicting narratives over the years that the companies behind them wanted to streamline as they prepared to launch games, toys and TV shows.

The Starlight team had to figure out which story points and characters should be discarded to clarify "the essence of the brand," as Gomez calls it. For Transformers, they recommended that Hasbro pare the number of characters with overlapping traits, a suggestion that fans can see in a new animated series featuring the alien robots.

In each case, Starlight creates a "bible" of 100 to 400 pages that lays out facets of the fictional universe, similar to those used for years on TV shows and comic book series.

Such documents are usually distributed only on a need-to-know basis, Gomez explained, because they contain the "super-story arc," a mythology of the universe that can be used for years.

The process doesn't always go smoothly, however.

On "Avatar," the Starlight team spent time with director James Cameron and his producing partner, Jon Landau, to learn their vision and communicate it to 20th Century Fox, the studio backing and distributing the film, for use in spinoffs.

But some of the resulting products, in particular a video game, were widely panned.

"I think our transmedia campaign was mediocre," Landau said. "We were concerned about letting our partners in on what we were doing early in the process, but the lesson is that next time we need to do exactly that."

"Deep Media," Transmedia, What's the Difference?: An Interview with Frank Rose (Part One)

Wired contributing editor Frank Rose is releasing a new book this month which will be of interest to many of my regular readers -- The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation Is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue and the Way We Tell Stories. It is a highly readable, deeply engaging account of shifts in the entertainment industry which have paved to way for more expansive, immersive, interactive forms of fun. He's talked to key players -- from Will Wright and Jeff Gomez to James Cameron and George Lucas -- and brings back their thinking about the changing media landscape. As he wrote me, "at various points in my career I've focused on technology and at other times on entertainment, but when I joined Wired in 1999 I started writing about both together."

Rose has been exploring some of the key concepts from the book through his blog as he's been working through the project. I suspect when I teach my transmedia storytelling class again at the USC Cinema School next fall, this book will be on the syllabus, since it manages to condense down many of the key conversations being held around these much discussed topic into language which is accessible and urgent.

When I first heard of his concept of "deep media," during a talk Rose gave at South by Southwest, I was intrigued by its relationship with what I've called transmedia entertainment. And in fact, I've been asked about the relationship many times and didn't really know what to say. So, naturally, given a chance to interview Rose for the blog, that's where I started. It sounds like his own thoughts on the relationship have evolved over time and in interesting ways. As the interview continues, we talk about world-building, the relationship between games and stories, the interweaving of marketing and storytelling, and the impact of 9/11 on interactive entertainment.

You write in the book about what you call "deep media." What do you see as the core characteristics of deep media? How do you see your concept relating to others being deployed right now such as transmedia or crossmedia?

To me it's mainly a question of emphasis. Are we focusing on the process or the goal? Transmedia, or crossmedia, puts the emphasis on a new process of storytelling: How do you tell a story across a variety of different media? Deep media puts the focus on the goal: To enable members of the audience (for want of a better term) to delve into a story at any level of depth they like, to immerse themselves in it. Not that this was fully thought out when I started--the term was suggested by a friend in late 2008 as a name for my blog, and when I looked it up online I saw that it had been used by people like Nigel Hollis, the chief analyst at Millward Brown, so I adopted it.

That said, I think the terms are more or less interchangeable. I certainly subscribe to the seven core concepts of transmedia as you've laid them out. I also think we're at an incredibly transitional point in our culture, and terms like "deep media" and "transmedia" are needed to describe a still-evolving way of telling stories. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if both terms disappeared in 15-20 years as this form of storytelling becomes ubiquitous and ultimately taken for granted.

Storytelling, Creativity, and the New Frontier of Digital Play

by Andy Russell | Jan 18, 2011  

Key Tags:  toontastic, launchpad toys, imaginative play, storytelling, iPad, playtime, creativity, tech, tech tools, Andy Russell

Give a young child a couple of toys or a box of crayons and he or she is likely to play for hours, deeply engrossed in an imaginary world. In both art and dramatic play, children construct settings, create fictional characters, and act out fantastic storylines that would be the envy of many Hollywood scriptwriters. Yet, ask that same child to write out a story in a blank notebook or a word processor and you would be lucky to capture a fraction of the depth and splendor of his or her imagination. Play inspires and scaffolds the creative process from an early age, but there is a persistent gap between the origins of imaginative play (ages 4-5) and kids’ adoption of the formal discipline of creative writing (ages 8+). At Launchpad Toys, we’re using mobile devices like the iPad to bridge this gap between informal and formal learning, to harness the power of play to help children capture and share their ideas with other kids around the world.

Getting this app for my five year old!

Educational Transmedia Grounded in Research: PBS Kids

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), an American non-profit public broadcasting television service recently received a ‘Ready to Learn’ grant from the U.S. Department of Education. This grant allowed PBS to partner with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to launch PBS Kids Raising Readers, a national initiative that surrounds children ages 2 to 8 with research-based literacy content, and includes a special focus on children living in poverty.

Two distinct trends – one is sticky, the other is not. A look at the psychology behind the momentum.

Not that it’s a competition, but two distinct trends have emerged in the last two years that are coming to a level of make it or break it – Augmented Reality (AR) and Transmedia Storytelling (TS). Last summer innovators were buzzing about Augmented Reality (AR). This fall the buzz is about Transmedia Storytelling (TS).  Is the marketplace so fickle that we hop from one ‘next new thing’ to the other, or is there something deeper going on?

The promise of immersive technologies, from which AR is the shiny newborn, is its potential to bring the imagination into the experienced world, and to turn the experienced world into a magical place of the imagination. With AR objects can reveal latent information and transform into games, messages or links, and things we imagine can be overlaid onto existing objects.  That’s nice, but there’s still a piece of technology between you and “it”. With technology as mediator, how immersive can it really be?

Transmedia storytelling is the buy-direct version of the imagination.  Though it may be interacted with via technology and media, the real storyworld of TS lies in the mind of the user. The story may start with a film or a TV episode, but the real value of TS is that the user carries the storyworld with them from one life event to the next – chatting about The Matrix with a friend on the phone, thinking about it in line at the grocery store, or Googling a question about Neo that popped up while they were driving home.  Any of these thoughts may then manifest in a user-generated YouTube, a blog post or an original script submitted by a fan.  There the technology is simply the transmission device, it’s not the driver of the experience.  It is, really, the imagination unplugged.

Tools for Transmedia part one - Storify and Shadow Cities

There are a growing number of services and tools available for people who want to create transmedia projects, tools that not only give creators a new way to get their stories out to people but also juggles the creative parts of peoples’ brains (in a good way, I might add!) Here are two quite different ones, Storify and Shadow Cities.

Storify is a ”real-time curation service” that lets a user build his/her own story from a number of sources (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube etc) and insert own comments to create a kind of a story around a subject. It’s easy to handle – what I found is that the most time-consuming part is finding the most meaningful content and arrange them so that the pieces fit together nicely and logically. In a way, it’s very much like writing a blog post, but more handy in many ways – not bothering with embedding, searches possible through the same interface etc.

A nice three part series about a few tools that can be used to create transmedia.

Once in a blue moon something comes along that stops us short, tests our assumptions, and forces us to think anew about something we thought we already knew well. One such is Inanimate Alice.

These are the words of a young learner encountering the story of Alice:

“After [the first episode] I was burning with curiosity to see and read the other episodes in the series. Finally….I finished episode 4 and I felt like I had just nearly fallen off the building like Alice. Inanimate Alice is heart-pounding, exciting, and adventurous and I enjoyed them. You should watch Inanimate Alice, NOW.”

An emerging literary and content experience phenomenon

Inanimate Alice is a remarkable literary and digital phenomenon – a ‘born digital’ text, authored by Kate Pullinger, an award-winning Canadian novelist, that deploys text, video, images, sound and gaming components to deliver a compelling and powerful tale of a young girl, Alice, who travels the world with her parents. To date, the story develops over four episodes (there are six more in the pipeline) and the narrative increases in complexity as Alice herself grows older through the story. Like many who have met Alice, the young reader above has been completely gripped by her tale.

Unlike most digital content being used in education today, Inanimate Alice has not been adapted from another medium. It is not a traditional text-only story which has then been re-created and enhanced in digital form. Rather Alice was conceived, written and created entirely within the digital domain. The producer (Ian Harper, of the Brad-Field company), the storyteller (Kate Pullinger) and the artist (Chris Joseph), the key movers behind Alice, all wanted to create something that was authentically and wholly digital, and not something derived opportunistically from other, more traditional, domains.

The name given to this kind of literature is transmedia.

Transmedia is storytelling across multiple media platforms, usually digital media, as is the case with Inanimate Alice, but we can see no reason why transmedia should not also include within its gamut traditional print and other analogue material. Additionally, some transmedia projects are also building participation into their stories – direct physical participation by the ‘readers’. 

In preparation for the launch of his autobiography titled 'Decoded' Jay-Z, arguably the worlds most famous entertainment entrepreneur, turned a marketing campaign into a mixture of a large scale treasure hunt and instillation art.  'Decoded' is a ground breaking book within itself, apparently the book helps fans literally decode  the lyrics of 11 studio albums to unlock details about Jay-Z's personal history and life. Taking this concept one step further agency Droga5 put together a campaign that mashes up billboard advertising with social media, mobile apps and public installations that together form an interactive game that lets players 'unlock' pages of the book.  At the same time players can enter a competition with a chance to win the "Jay-Z Lifetime Pass" which is essentially a golden ticket that will allow admission for two to any Jay-Z concert anywhere in the world for life. 

 

 

 

This is how it went down. All 320 pages of 'Decoded' were placed in various overblown sizes on a tone of unexpected and unusual surfaces around the USA (for example on the bottom of a pool in Miami or on cheeseburger wrappings in New York City) Reading then became one big treasure hunt. 

 

 

Players could then log onto a specially created page on Bing (Microsofts search engine) between the 18th of Oct and 20th of November in order to follow clues that lead them to real world places where text from the book could be found. This basically meant that if you were dedicated enough you could read the whole book before it officially hit shelves. An extra layer of interactivity was added when players were encouraged to text a code located on the physical representation of each page which entered them into the competition for the "Jay-Z Lifetime Pass" as well as a Jay-Z autographed version of that page. This has to be one of the smartest campaigns I have seen in a while - at the route of it all the campaign aims to surprise and entertain rather than impose itself on an audience. Here are some of the best example of how the 320 pages were represented in public spaces around the USA. 

 

Times Square Billboard

A three-billboard stack revealing the bookʼs introductory pages were released throughout the campaignʼs four-week period

 

 

London Tube Station

Pages that highlighted Jay-Zʼs experiences abroad were put in the cities where the events happened. For instance, this page was found in the London Underground.

 

 

New Orleans Roof

A page dedicated to the Hurricane Katrina disaster placed on a roof in downtown New Orleans.

 

 

Jukebox

Jukeboxes all over New York City were used to display pages about Jayʼs musical influences.

 

 

Gucci Jacket

The masterfully stitched page handcrafted by Gucci's lead creative, Frida Giannini, is custom-tailored to Jay-Z's measurements and holds song lyrics mentioning the Italian clothing icon.

 

 

Gleason's Gym 

The pages found in a famous boxing gym in Brooklyn called Gleasonʼs highlighted Jayʼs love for the sport.

 

 

Guitar

This guitar, found in a local music store in NYC, hosts song lyrics referencing music influences outside the bounds of traditional hip-hop.

 

 

Plexiglass

A clear, freestanding page made of Plexiglas, overlooking the downtown NYC skyline was located on the Brooklyn piers in Red Hook. One of the more meaningful pages, it holds content about the potential of hip-hop and where itʼs headed in the future.

 

 

The Spotted Pig

These pages were dropped in one of Jay-Z's very own business ventures. The Spotted Pig, known for its cozy atmosphere and cool memorabilia, was used in a variety of different mediums to celebrate the book's content. Pages were found on tablecloths and mirrors highlighting Jay-Z's personal experiences dining with the world's most influential people.

 

 

Pool Table

This custom pool table was designed specifically for the campaign and was placed in the 40/40 Club in New York City. The page is all about the hustle of the hip-hop world and how it translates into other parts of life, in this case, a game of pool.

 

 

Cadillac

Jay-Z shook the borough of Queens with his pages dedicated to Run DMC, the hip-hop legend of Hollis. A 1982 vintage Cadillac Seville, decked out in pages 8 & 9, was showcased as a tribute to the hip-hop OGs on their very own Run DMC Way. The book content included various Run DMC and Cadillac references and covered the car from trunk to hood in recognition of the influence that the hip-hop foreman had on Jay-Z's music

 

 

Basketball Backboard

This page was created as a basketball backboard in his old neighbourhood near the Marcy Projects. The pages hold the song lyrics to "Where I'm From," a dedication to the unforgiving lifestyle of the thug in the streets of Brooklyn.

Plaque

A bronze plaque, moulded with the content of the first two pages of the book, was placed adjacent to the housing projects Jay-Z grew up in. The content poetically details the scene of his childhood: the rap battles, the playgrounds, the crowded streets.

 

 

Counterfeit Book

A page mentioning Jay-Z's frustrations with music bootleggers was found in the form of a counterfeit book distributed by a street vendor near Canal Street in Manhattan.

 

Bike

 

A page mentioning Jay-Z's early childhood bike riding experiences was showcased on a custom bike in a shop located near his old neighbourhood in Brooklyn.

 

Why spreadable doesn’t equal viral: A conversation with Henry Jenkins

By Nikki Usher /  Nov. 23  /  noon

November 23, 2010, 12:00 pm

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For years, academic Henry Jenkins has been talking about the connections between mainstream content and user-produced content. From his post as the founder and former co-director of the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT, Jenkins published Convergence Culture, which is about what happens when, as the book puts it, “old and new media collide.” It’s a tale of fan mashups and corporate reactions.

And now he’s back with a new catchphrase. If convergence culture was 2006, spreadable media is now. The argument: If it doesn’t spread, it’s dead. For things to live online, people have to share it socially. They also have to make it their own — which can be as participatory as just passing a YouTube clip on as a link or making a copycat video themselves.

But what does this mean for news? If news is growing more social, how does Jenkins’ notion of spreadability work for traditional media? And how can traditional media harness user energy to make content not just meaningful but also profitable?

These were some of the questions I had when I first heard the concept, which Jenkins and his collaborators first put out in a white paper in 2009. But I’ve had a chance to read the first few chapters of the book, due out in late 2011. Spreadable Media (coauthored with Sam Ford and Joshua Green) doesn’t mention traditional journalism. But as I’ve had a chance to work with Jenkins, who’s now a professor at USC, I wanted to see what spreadable media might mean for news. Here’s how Jenkins explained the idea’s implications for journalism in an email interview. Among the topics: why all journalists are citizen journalists, journalists and their possible conversations with audiences, paywalls, and most-emailed lists.

NU: What is spreadable media?

HJ: The concept of spreadable media rests on the distinction between distribution (the top-down spread of media content as captured in the broadcast paradigm) and circulation (a hybrid system where content spreads as a result of a series of informal transactions between commercial and noncommercial participants.) Spreadable media is media which travels across media platforms at least in part because the people take it in their own hands and share it with their social networks.

This kind of informal circulation may be solicited or at least accepted by media producers as part of the normal way of doing business or it may take forms which get labeled piracy. Either way, the widespread circulation of media content through the conscious actions of dispersed networks of consumer/participants tends to create greater visibility and awareness as the content travels in unpredicted directions and encounters people who are potentially interested in further engagements with the people who produced it.

So, at its heart, our book is interested in the value being generated through this grassroots circulation and how various sectors of the media industry are being reconfigured in order to accept the help of grassroots intermediaries who help expand their reach to the public. Along the way, we dissect many of the myths about how media circulates and how value gets generated in the digital era.

NU: How does spreadable media relate to your term convergence culture?

HJ: Convergence culture starts by rejection of the technologically focused definition of convergence as the integration of media functions within a single media device — the magic black box — in favor of one which stresses the flow of media content across multiple media channels. Certainly the rise of the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, have made the magical black box much closer to reality now than it was when I wrote Convergence Culture, but I would say we’ve had much more experiencing living in a convergence culture than living with convergence devices. We live at a moment where every story, image, or bit of information will travel across every available media platform either through decisions made in corporate bedrooms or decisions made in consumers’ living rooms.

The book outlined what this means for entertainment, branding, education, politics, and religion, placing a strong emphasis on what I call participatory culture. Citizen journalism is the application of participatory culture to the news sector but similar kinds of trends are impacting each of these other spaces where media gets produced and distributed. The emphasis in that book though is on participation in the form of cultural production — people creating videos, writing fan fiction, and otherwise generating their own media.

Spreadable Media takes the convergence culture context as given. We are now half a decade deeper into the trends the first book describes. Since the book was published, we’ve seen the expansion of mobile communication, social network sites, Web 2.0, and the rise and fall of Second Life, all extending our understanding of participatory culture and transmedia communication. So, what are the consequences of those shifts to how information, brands, and media content circulates? We certainly are still interested in participatory models of cultural production but we are now much more interested in acts of curration and circulation, which on both an individual and aggregated level, are impacting the communication environment.

NU: Let’s talk specifically about what spreadable media might mean for news. What are your thoughts on the way the news industry might make sense of this concept?

HJ: A central idea animating the book is “if it doesn’t spread, it’s dead.” There is a constant tension at this moment of media transition between wanting to lock down content and meter access on the one hand (a model based on “stickiness”) and wanting to empower consumers to help spread the word (a model based on “spreadability.”) We can see that tension in terms of the desire to gate access to news content and the mechanisms of spreading which characterize Twitter and blogs. Journalists have long embraced a central idea in this book — that content represents a resource which community use to talk amongst themselves. Journalists need to know how they fit into those circuits.

In the book’s opening chapter, I reflect on the role of Twitter in the aftermath of the Iranian elections. I argue that its central role was not in helping to organize the protests but rather in getting information about what was happening to the outside world and to increase people’s emotional engagement with it. Twitter stepped in to bring what was happening in the streets of Tehran closer to people in the west — with key roles played by the Iranian diaspora in the United States and Europe who helped to facilitate the circulation of this information. The general American public felt greater closeness to the people in Iran because they were learning about these events through the same tools as they used to share cute cat pictures with their friends. And they felt a greater investment in what was happening because they were actively helping to alert others about the events.

As this unfiltered information was flowing through Twitter, those on the social networks started putting pressure on news agencies to provide more cover. You could imagine Twitter as a self-contained news system, but the opposite happened: they used #cnnfail because they wanted the skills and resources that professional journalists could bring to the process. They were signaling how much they still relied on legacy media to sort through the pieces and help provide a context for the information being circulated. While it was framed as a critique of journalism, it was actually a call for help. News organizations need to be more alert in registering these signs of public interests and more nimble in responding to them.

NU: Are bloggers an example of people experimenting with media spreadability? What do we do for news organizations who want to bring all of that user engagement and monetize it?

HJ: We’ve long known that news stories generate conversations that people cut out news articles to put on bulletin boards and refrigerators, that we clip news stories and send them to friends. This happened in a pre-digital world and it happens now with more speed and scope thanks to the affordances of digital networking tools.

Blogs originated as a tool for sharing links; Twitter is now used extensively to share links with other consumers. News sites which prevent the sharing of such content amongst readers may look like ways to protect the commercial interest of that content, but in fact, they kill it, destroying its value as a cultural resource within networked communities, and insuring that the public will look elsewhere for news that can be spread.

In the book, we use the example of how the Susan Boyle video moved through the blog community, being situated into a range of different ongoing conversations wherever she was relevant — with science blogs talking about her vocal cords, church blogs organizing prayer groups, mommy blogs dealing with her role as a caretaker for her elderly mother, music blogs discussing her song choices, and fashion blogs talking about her make-over for the show. Every news story today spreads through these grassroots intermediaries and gets inserted into various conversations across a range of different communities. The better journalists understand how value gets created through this process, the more effective they will be both at serving their ever more diverse constituencies and at developing a business model which allows them to capture value through circulation.

NU: You say in your white paper and current drafts of the book that content that users can’t manipulate and whose intellectual property is controlled by organizations will be the least likely to spread. That seems to describe a typical news article, and maybe a typical news organization. How can news organizations make their content more spreadable?

HJ: Spreadability is partially about technical affordances. YouTube videos spread well because they allow users to embed them on their blogs and Facebook profiles. At the same time, the embedded video’s interface makes it easy for us to follow it back to its original context on YouTube. It is content which is designed to be spread.

Spreadability is also about social relations with consumers. Many of those who create spreadable content actively encourage readers to spread their materials, often directly courting them as participants in the process of distribution. We are certainly seeing news sites right now — Slashdot comes to mind — which encourage readers to gather and appraise content, but far fewer are encouraging us to help create awareness through actively circulating their content.

It is interesting to think about groups which have a strong investment in seeing content spread and a lower investment in controlling its distribution. Think about political campaigns with low budgets who want to maximize their reach to voters. Think about religious media who place a higher value on spreading the gospel than monetizing the circulation of information. Think of activist groups who want to reach beyond their core group of supporters. In each case, they build in direct appeals to their fans to help them spread the content rather than constructing prohibitions on grassroots circulation.

Right now, news organizations are caught between their civic mission — to meet the information needs of their communities and their economic needs — to stay in business long enough to serve their publics.

NU: What does spreadable media mean to the conversations journalists need to have with their audiences?

HJ: As information spreads, it gets inserted into a range of conversations which help people to process the information and understand its value for them as members of a community. In the book, Sam Ford, my co-author, draws on his experience in the PR world to talk about companies who actively listen to and respond to what their consumers say about them. He argues that the conversations seeded by spreadable media are much richer ways to monitor public response than narrowly structured focus groups. And he cites some examples of companies which identified problems in their customer relations and rectified them as a result of listening closely to what consumers said about them.

Newspapers have historically relied on letters to the editor to perform some of these functions, but this focuses only on those groups who seek to influence directly their editorial decisions, while there are other things a news organization might learn by actively listening to conversation people are having around and through the circulation of their content.

NU: Spreadable media seems to be a reaction to the idea that things are viral and that people have no agency. But doesn’t the whole idea of viral mean that people are actually taking action to share something? Don’t we want our news stories to be most-emailed and our videos to be viral?

HJ: Very much so. Viral media asks some of the same questions we are asking, having to do with how media content circulates through grassroots communities outside the direct control of the people who originates it. But the language of viral media mystifies how this process works. Many talk as if things just happened to “go viral” when they have no way to explain how or why the content has grabbed the public imagination. Other framings of “viral media” strip away the agency of the very communities whose circulation of the content they want to explain. It is a kind of smallpox-soaked blanket theory of media circulation, in which people become unknowing carriers of powerful and contagious ideas which they bring back to their homes and work place, infecting their friends and family.

Our work starts from the idea that people are making conscious decisions to aid the circulation of certain content because they see it as a meaningful contribution to their ongoing conversations, a gift which they can share with people they care about. As they circulate this content, they first are playing key roles in appraising its value at a time of exploding media options; they also help to frame the content, helping it to fit better into the ongoing social interactions; they may also build upon, appropriate, transform, and remix the content further extending its shelf life and enabling its broader circulation.

NU: One of the things I found most fascinating about your current exploration was your distinction between ordinary Internet users, who operate according to the gift economy, and media companies that operate according to market logic. Can you explain?

HJ: Basically, spreadable media moves between commercial and noncommercial economies. For the producer, the content may be a commodity or a promotion; for the consumer, it is a resource or a gift. The producer is appraising the transaction based on its economic value. While the consumer makes a decision about whether the price is too high for the value of the content, they are also making decisions based on the social or sentimental value of the content. When they pass that content along to their friends, they do so because they value their friends far more than because they want to promote the economic interests of producers. When they consume media, they often do so so that they have currency they need in the social interactions we have around media.

Media producers need to understand the set of values and transactions which shape how their media flows in order to understand when and how it is appropriate to monetize the activities of their consumers. We are used to transforming commodities into gifts. We do it every time we go to a store to buy a bottle of wine to a dinner party. We bought it as a commodity, we give it as a gift, and the moment of transformation comes when we remove the price tag. We need to better understand the same transformation as consumers take content from commercial sites and circulate it via Twitter or Facebook to their communities.

NU: If you had to project, what might this mean for user-generated content? And what happens when we start putting paywalls up on sites?

HJ: In the case of news, we might think about many different types of user-generated content. Often, we are talking about the citizen as reporter (especially in the case of hyperlocal news), producing content which can be uploaded to news sites. We might also think about the citizen as editor, determining which news matters to their community and passing it along in a more targeted way to their friends. We might think about the citizen as commentator, who responds to the news through what they write on their blogs or updates. We might think of these media as amplifying their role as consumers, allowing them to more fully express demands for what should get more coverage, as occurred in the #cnnfail debates after the Iranian elections.

Right now, we dump all of this into a box called “citizen journalism,” which is in its own way as misleading as categories like “viral media.” We might start from the fact that journalists are themselves citizens, or that these groups are doing many things through their sharing of news, only some of which should be understood as producing journalism. Focusing on citizen journalism results in an oppositional framing of blogging as competing with professional news production. Spreadable media would push us to think about journalists and bloggers as each making a range of contributions through their participation in a larger civic ecology.

NU: And finally: How many people do you expect to actually engage in making media mashups? I see more people watching Auto-Tune the News mashup videos on YouTube than making their own media out of existing media.

HJ: Our book makes the point that there are many different forms of participation, some requiring more skills, more technical access, more community engagement than others. Spectacular forms of grassroots cultural production rest on one end of a continuum of different forms of community participation. So some people certainly will be mashing up the news, just as they are remixing songs, films, and television shows. And we can point to many exciting examples of political remix videos which emerge from people’s engagement with news and commentary — think about the recent mashup of Donald Duck and Glenn Beck.

But many more people will help to shape their news by appraising its value and passing it along to specific people or groups who they think will be interested in it. We all probably have friends or relatives who mostly communicate through forwarding things. They may or may not be exerting great selectivity in their curatorial roles, but they are helping to insure the circulation of that information. More people in the future will be engaging with news on that level and their acts of circulation will play a larger role in shaping the flow of information across the culture.

Photo by Joi Ito used under a Creative Commons license.

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This entry was written by Nikki Usher, posted on November 23, 2010 at 12:00 pm, and tagged #cnnfail, Auto-Tune the News, convergence culture, curation, gift economy, Henry Jenkins, Joshua Green, market forces, mashups, MIT, paywalls, Sam Ford, sharing, Slashdot, spreadable media, Twitter, USC, viral. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback.

13 comments:

1. Laurel Felt at 3:47 pm, November 23, 2010
   

   Great interview!

   These nuggets remained with me:

   NU: What does spreadable media mean to the conversations journalists need to have with their audiences?

   HJ: More people in the future will be engaging with news on that level and their acts of circulation will play a larger role in shaping the flow of information across the culture.

   Nikki’s question spoke to consensus-building between/among consumers and journalists, while Henry’s statement (excerpted from later in the article, not intended to appear as a response) spoke to consumers as circulators. I appreciate the communicative function of circulation — sending a message to journalists, provoking conversations amongst recipients of circulated pieces — but feel like it’s a less “direct” form of collaboration.

   Is the directness of this communication imperative for the future of journalism? Is it tenable? Who will get left out of this conversation, and how will this uneven participation shape news?

   Food for thought this Thanksgiving!

    
2. Jonathan Stray at 4:23 pm, November 23, 2010
   

   Information spreads, but do beliefs and actions? I just came across a very interesting paper which studies the adoption of new things from a game-theory point of view, instead of the more usual epidemiological model.

   Abstract : Which network structures favor the rapid spread of new ideas, behaviors, or technologies? This question has been studied extensively using epidemic models. Here we consider a complementary point of view and consider scenarios where the individuals’ behavior is the result of a strategic choice among competing alternatives. In particular, we study models that are based on the dynamics of coordination games. Classical results in game theory studying this model provide a simple condition for a new action or innovation to become widespread in the network. The present paper characterizes the rate of convergence as a function of the structure of the interaction network. The resulting predictions differ strongly from the ones provided by epidemic models. In particular, it appears that innovation spreads much more slowly on well-connected network structures dominated by long-range links than in low-dimensional ones dominated, for example, by geographic proximity.

    
3. C.W. Anderson at 6:43 pm, November 23, 2010
   

   Just to make two three points on this I made on Twitter but might as well leave for posterity here.

   First, for me, the key change is not in the “spreadability” of the news itself but rather the “tracability of that spreadability.” In normal language: news has always spread. What is different now is that we can materially *see* it spread in ways we could not before. And seeing it changes it. This is the difference, not the speed of diffusion, etc.

   Second: if I ever review Jenkins book, I will call the review “Chunky or Smooth.” What I mean is – what is the degree of focus in the book on the mutation of messages during their diffusion, the ways they get blocked, etc. Is the spread chunky (blocked, full of pits and weirdness) or is it smooth, like, digital to the max? The fact that he’s distinguishing spread from memes or virality is a good first step. But there’s a tendency, in the analysis of spread, to focus on the spread rather than the “non-spread.”

   Finally- I always feel like a big part of what’s missing from analysis of spreadable media is the role played by institutions. Usually it’s the message and the tech and the nodes, without any analysis of the institutional routines that lie inside the digital universe. In my own study of this one of the things I found was that the actual diffusion of the news barely mattered at all for the traditional, big media. Instead they relied on their traditional sources and routines.

    
4. Suzanne Lainson at 7:10 pm, November 24, 2010
   

   What I am most concerned about is the spread of “accurate” information. We have seen in the most recent election that a significant group of people will forward that which reinforces their world view, even if it is an outright lie, and then ignore what contradicts their beliefs, even if it is provably true. So how do we enable the system to create a more open, educated citizenry rather than one which uses the tools to perpetuate myths?

    
5. @tbains at 12:58 am, November 25, 2010
   

   Jenkins mentioned his colleague Sam Ford who “argues that the conversations seeded by spreadable media are much richer ways to monitor public response than narrowly structured focus groups.” Of course, listening to what customers/critics are saying is a key benefit of social media tools and often the first, tentative step that an organization takes when entering the digital landscape.

   But if PR professionals truly want to participate in the grassroots circulation of content, they must be sure to have a strong product/service. No amount of savvy can overcome a mediocre product. And your brand can not become “spreadable” unless your customers have established an emotional investment in it—enough to warrant acting on corporate content by forwarding/adapting/re-shaping it—for good or ill.

   In Jenkins’ words, “While the consumer makes a decision about whether the price is too high for the value of the content, they are also making decisions based on the social or sentimental value of the content. When they pass that content along to their friends, they do so because they value their friends far more than because they want to promote the economic interests of producers.”

   The technical tools available to us are great—we can measure and monitor to our heart’s content. But you can’t force “spreadability” or, in common parlance, “engagement.”

    

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I’ve had the pleasure of attending two transmedia (or cross-media, if you prefer) conferences this year. The first was Transmedia Hollywood, over in LA, which was hosted by the venerable Henry Jenkins. And the second was Power to the Pixel (or PttP) this week. Both were pretty similar, with similar aims: to look at how multiple media touch points, channels and formats can be used creatively to build meaningful, participative experiences. Both focussed on storytelling, because that’s a deliberate approach to harnessing transmedia has so far been adopted mainly by entertainment brands, or brands whose products are stories. PttP perhaps had more of a mix of fringe players on the transmedia storytelling scene, the kind of people who are busy (and importantly) innovating alternative models of distribution, such as Jamie King of VO.DO, or more accidental (or even reluctant) transmedia storytellers, such as Tommy Pallotta. For this reason, and perhaps also due to the presentation format, as opposed to the panel set up for Transmedia Hollywood, it felt a little less intense, as well as less intensely focused on a relatively narrow description of Transmedia Storytelling. That said, there were still a lot of ARGs. A few speakers stood out. Mike Monello gave a great presentation, as you might expect, on transmedia storytelling. Lance Weiler delivered a very insightful, clear view of the approach he’s had to take in order to plan complex, transmedia properties. And Tommy Pallotta gave a heartfelt and soul baring account of his own personal journey as a creative producer, that has led him from projects such Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly to increasingly experimental, transmedia projects, most recently Collapsus. (Stay tuned to JawboneTV for an exclusive interview with Pallotta in the coming weeks.) What was clear from all of the accounts from the likes of producers, directors, creators and writers, many of whom have come from more traditional backgrounds, was the feeling that this was still a very embryonic area for creativity and storytelling. Nobody seems to know what the rules are yet. And this is even after ten or so years since the first commercial ARGs were created, e.g. The Beast.

Really wished I could have been at both these events. I will just have to read all about them to get my fix.

CHECK OUT FILMMAKER TOMMY PALLOTTA’S NEW TRANSMEDIA PROJECT “COLLAPSUS”

Directed by Tommy Pallotta (producer of “Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly”), “Collapsus” is a new transmedia project about a not-to-distant future making the energy transition from fossil fuels to alternative options. That doesn’t sound exciting, but stick with me. Here’s how it was explained to me via email:

“Collapsus” signals a new experience in transmedia storytelling that combines interactivity, animation, fiction, and documentary. This pioneering approach blends real documentary footage with mini-games and movie fragments, inviting you to choose your own perspective as the story unfolds. Interact and make decisions to avoid further blackouts; get a broader perspective by listening to the experts; or observe the consequences for everyday people through the fictional story.

“Collapsus” looks into the near future and shows you how the imminent energy transition affects a group of ten young people, who appear to be caught up in an energy conspiracy. What will their world look like after the turbulent transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources? Following the adventures of Vera, Jack, Tony and Amir, you are lead into a world of conspiracy, treason and, most alarmingly, failing energy supplies. In this story, set in the near future, the international powers try to cope with a transition from fossil to alternative fuels, while dealing with political dissension, uprisings and a population terrified by increasingly frequent black-outs. As a player, you are required to make decisions that leave their mark on a national and a global scale, in your quest to find solutions to the energy crisis.

Does it make sense to you? No? Check out the trailer:

Still confused? How about a introduction with director Pallotta explaining stuff:

Collapsus Introduction from SubmarineChannel on Vimeo.

GO! GO FORTH AND “COLLAPSUS”! Or something… follow “Collapsus” on Twitter at least…

Once story was only spoken then it colored the walls of the caves. As story grew it was then bound to a page and then given voice through radio and TV. As it matures even still, along with its media savvy consumer, it now springs forth story worlds across media platforms. Our ability to gain new perspectives in a characters nature from various media delivery mechanisms allows for a depth and richness to story that has only been imagined.

Star Wars is a quintessential example of a Story World that continues to evolve in amazing new ways with technology. What I am seeking to do is extend media and create interactive media using new and emerging technologies to tell stories in interesting ways. I am also very keen on tools that might be used to help craft the transmedia narratives.

A transmedia project develops storytelling across multiple forms of media in order to have different “entry points” in the story; entry-points with a unique and independent lifespan but with a definite role in the big narrative scheme

Building out story worlds across media is a way to enhance and extend a story. It allows you to develop richer characters and create extensions of a story that just cannot be achieved through a single medium. It extends the life of a narrative and engages the modern media consumer much more than just a one off.

The ability to extend the mythology of a story world and play out the patterns of legend by enriching the lexicon is a powerful tool in a creators belt. Transmedia gives you this power. Alas with great power comes great responsibility. You must know that if successful user generated content will extend your story world in entirely new directions. Some of which you may not like. However to be true to the audience and the story world you must accept this. Any good parent knows someday your baby will grow up and leave home, all you can do is teach them the right lessons and be there when they need you.

One of the problems faced when crafting transmedia is that you must keep track of endless threads of story and understand how the varying platforms interact. Part game theory part alchemy the mastery of these skills are achieved by some wizards like Jeff Gomez. Remember that he has been practicing his magic for some time and just like any sorcerer’s apprentice sometimes the magic doesn’t work right. Know this and prepare to be trampled by brooms



The best defense against wayward brooms is to arm your self with tools that will help keep track of all your threads. Mind mapping in my opinion is a must and I like Mindmeister. Another critical tool I can’t live without is Inform an interactive fiction writing tool. OmniGraffle or Visio are two great tools as well that can help you map out you universe. Another great tool is an open source production tool called Celtx, I LOVE this program!

Examples

Historic

The Wizard of Oz

“author L. Frank Baum, and after his death, his estate were, I believe,  pioneers in transmedia storytelling.

There were stage plays, books, Sunday comic strips, toys, board games, amusement parks, dolls, an annual television event since 1956 and movies. Lots of movies; here is a list which I found on Wikianswers:

Wizard of Oz (1910) – based on a 1902 stage musical – Silent film
Land of Oz (1910) – Silent film
Dorothy and the Scarecrow in Oz (1910) – Silent film
The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914) – Silent film
His Majesty the Scarecrow of Oz (1914/1915) – Silent film
Wizard of Oz (1925)
The Land of Oz (1932)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)

In other words, the Oz world was communicated by all the available platforms of the time. The more you read and see, the more you immerse yourself. “ Richard Gottlieb

- http://www.playthings.com/blog/Out_of_the_Toy_Box/37530-Understanding_Transmedia_Story_Telling_The_Wizard_of_Oz_as_pioneer.php

Modern

The Matrix, Star Wars, and Lost are some good examples of transmedia. Let’s take  a look at Lost

A myriad of entry points exist to this compelling and intricate series on ABC. The mythology of the series is amazing and the audience engagement factors take it from a 34 nielsen ranking to a 2 (taking into account the new CPR rating). That is powerful magic indeed! How much money would a network or studio pay to get that kind of ranking?

The entire story world was first and foremost well written but beyond that the game mechanics behind it created a media frenzy. User generated content is off the scale and there are even YouTube videos of Cats recreating lost

Users also created an entire Lostapedia and I am quite sure a new form of mystic religion around the powers of the Island may be forming.

Here is the Keynote I did on Transmedia for IABC and a shorter form at Cre8Camp 4.
Understanding Trans Media – How Story World’s Are Changing the Art of Communication

Tags:  History, Story, Story Worlds, Transmedia

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 29th, 2010 at 5:08 pm and is filed under Convergence Culture, Ethnography, Feature, Game Changers, Transmedia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

From my "new" Blog I Have Robots.