Meaning Across Media

Meaning Across Media – Cross-Media Communication and

Co-Creation

Change in Journalism, HannoverSeptember 17th 2015

Kjetil Sandvik, Associate Professor, Dept. of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen

Starting point

• Changes and challenges to the journalist trade should be studied in the context of not only changes in the media landscape but in the changing nature of the user.

• ARE JOURNALISTS CONTENT CREATORS AND PROVIDERS OR ARE THEY (becoming) COMMUNICATION FACILITATORS?

Colleagues from (or associated to) the Meaning Across Media project cited in this presentation:Anja Beckmann, Rasmus Helles, Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Jakob Linaa Jensen, Mette Mortensen, Oscar Westlund, Jacob Ørmen

Changes to the two main links of the traditional news chain: news

production and news consumption

• As users turn into “produsers” or “prosumers”, citizens into “citizen journalists” and news reporting into “networked journalism”, the divide between production and consumption is obviously less distinct than it used to be.

• (quote: Jensen, Mortensen & Ørmen, forthcoming)

Meaning Across Mediacross-media communication and co-creation

3 year collective research project funded by Danish Council for Independent Research

Participants: Kjetil Sandvik (head of project), Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Anne Mette Thorhauge, Stine Lomborg, Mette Mortensen, Bjarki Valtysson, Jakob Linaa

Jensen, Troels Fibæk Bertel (post.doc.), Jacob Ørmen (PH.D.)

Associated partners: Nick Couldry, Axel Bruns, Nancy Baym, Lesley Haddon, Maria Bakhardieva, James G. Webster, Jacob Lyng Wieland (Danish National Broadcast

Company, DR) and researchers throughout Europa in the COST Action project Transforming Audiences

Project purpose

• Examining different modes of communication that users engage in as distributors, remixers, as well as producers in their own right:

• analysis of how a) different socio-demographic user groups employ b) different media and genre types in c) different combinations and d) with different intensity and modes of engagement

RQ1: The users

Two interrelated forms of user analysis:

• a quantitative baseline analysis mapping the communication flows of different user groups across different media

• a set of qualitative case studies, exploring the meaning of these communication flows and user roles in depth for different media and genres.

RQ2: the producers

Case studies of how producers are rethinkingcommunication in the age of networked and mobile media.

• How do media institutions develop cross-media and cross-platform strategies.

Cross media flows• The interconnected communication on several media platforms and

through several media formats, simultaneously or in series and circuits.

• The same media content (or versions of the same media content) is communicated across media.

• Political communication is moving from social media into traditional news media and back again, news production is performed on Twitter as well as in the news rooms of newspapers and broadcast companies.

• Entertainment consists of content communicated through networks of books, movies, TV series, computer games, fan websites, and so on.

• Even if the phenomenon of cross media dates back at least two decades, the affordances of digital networked media have radically enriched the nature of cross media strategies of both users and producers.

Participatory cultureEmpowermentDemocratizationRevolution

Cult of the amateurEcho chambers/information bubblesSurveilance

Use of media across platformsMulti-layered, proliferating, networked, long-tailed

Challenges distinctions between public/private, producer/user etc.Includes multiple communicators and multiple communication flows

Cross-media communication

The art of having different (old and new) media communicating together

• Each media has its special qualities which should be put to use

• Context: media evolution–CMC challenges the role of the media types

• Context: participatory culture–CMC challenges our models of communication

Institutional evolution

Stig Hjarvard: ”The mediatization of society”, Nordicom Review 2008

2000- Media as spaces forparticipation

Media-citizenship

Social media:blogs, wikis, network sites,communities

Participatoryculture:User becomingco-creators and produsers

Media use in DKOver-all tendency:

• Web and social media have become important features in our everyday life.

• But the new media does not substitute the old media: we are increasingly using more media in increasingly more situation.

• Both TV, Internet and mobile phones are used everyday by 85-90%:

• the base for cross-media communication using both trad. mass media and interactive and networked media

Helles et.al. ”The Medialandscape ofEuropean Audiences”, InternationalJournal of Communication 9, 2015

Mapping time spent on what at what age

The tendency that younger people are using more media (on different platforms or within the same platform) simultaneously than older people

Participation based communication• We do not just want to be communication to

(classical mass-media communication format: one-to-many).

• We need new communication models which focuses on various forms of user involvementand user experiences (one-to-one and many-to-many communication)– personalization: online-services which adapt to the

users’ actions – enabling dialogue (e.g. blogs), user participation

(interactive elements creating unique user experiences) and user co-creation (possibility to create your own content).

Content

Producer

User

Media

Production of content

Uses of content

Platform

UserUser

User

User

User

Communication as collaboration,

participation and co-creation

Modes of user engagement• Communication as composition (the combined use of various media and

applications by audiences (using a player to watch a TV program, using a browser to monitor its website, and news applications to get updates)).

• Communication as content curation (i.e. compiling and organising existing bits of material, rather than necessarily creating new content; prominent in sites from del.icio.us to Reddit, or in retweeting patterns around crisis events).

• Communication as collaboration (e.g., participating in debates relating to media content (chats, blogs, forums))

• Communication as participation (e.g., influencing the content of television, such as using SMS to vote for one’s favorite in a talent show)

• Communication as co-creation (the independent creation of media content, e.g. designing new features on Facebook, re-mixing Youtubevideos, producing journalistic content in various forums etc.)

Cross media challenges

• Old models are challenged: professionally created content provided by media companies and sold to the users piece by piece, through subscription or license fees

• New media and changes in user behavior challenges this model by empowering users to create content, share content, remix content etc.

• General reaction: distributing content across media/platforms

• (quote: Bechmann 2009)

The challenged journalist in a cross-media setting

Everyone is multimedia-reporters. The aim is to get more unique contentfor the printed paper as well as the online edition and less re-use of cont-ent from print to web

The online paper should not just be a

copy of the printed version. It should

offer something else – e.g. quick updates,

posibilities for user debates, user-

generated content and integration of

several media (e.g. web-tv).

Cross media challenges

• Alternative strategy for old media companies: COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere

• Logic: by circulating the same content, users can freely choose how, when and where they want the content.

• Problem: still the old production format, no sense of media affordances and specificities –and not very clear understanding of what the users want.

Cross-platform

• To avoid reducing the actual content flow to ‘various forms of repackaging’ we focus on how the media companies strategically view the users as collaborate target groups in the content flow structures.

• Cross-platform strategy thereby refers to how products are combined across platforms, how content bits are circulated and how users are engaging with the content bits in different distribution channels.

• (quote: Bechmann 2009)

Cross platform strategies in a broadcast company

• The interplay between broadcast, web and social media to generate:– leads and traffic– branding– engagement and dialogue with the user– to create interest for the 'main product': the TV/radio programs

• Challenges:– even frontrunners like DR are still producing with a division between

media instead of producing cross media– production logics are still that of a main media (TV, radio programs)

and surplus or add-on media (web, social media etc.) produced by others (even not in-house: outsourced – web and social media productions are residing in separate units) for various types of ‘second screens’.

Cross Media Communication – producer-vs user-perspective

Producer-perspective: experience created for the user• Controls which content on which media/platforms and

with which navigation possibilities– second screen production controlling both (all) screens

User-perspective: user-created experience• User decides which content on which media/platforms

with which relations and navigations– second screen: not necessarily same or related to content on

other screens (we watch TV but play Candy Crush and make FB updates with our tablets or smartphones)

DILEMMA

Cross media productions

• Connects primary, secondary and tertiary texts (Fiske 1987) into one common media text

• Embeds possibilities for participation • Uses several communication matrixes:

• One-to-many (the TV show in itself)• One-to-one (chats)• Many-to-many (debate forums, quizzes, games…)• One-to-one-as-group (communities on e.g. FB)

• Attempt to create interest and engagement by ways of immersion AND interaction

Cross media experiences• Experience through

• engagement

• participation

• collaboration

• co-creation

• Two types of cross media experience• Experience + (the augmentation of experience of one

specific media by implementing other media in the communication-structure, e.g. a website to a TV-show)

• Experience universe (interplay between different media: e.g. book, movies, games)

X factor cross media experience+

Viewers

Website

Updates:RSS, app,

FB, Twitter

Mobile phoneX-factor app

TV-show: the primary

media

DR blogs

Other media: may not be (fully)

controlled

Live events

Aftenshowet*

Other DRradio and TV

shows*

*+ Aftenshowet’s and otherDR TV and radio shows’ websitesRed arrows = participation and co-creation

Challenges of new media

Participatory (social) media:• radical possibilities for dialogic processes, for

collaboration, participation and co-creation• Communication as dynamic multi-step flow

processes• Fixed solutions changeable, adaptive, user-

centered and/or user-generated solutions• Perpetual beta and long-tailed way of

communication

Social media ‘hype’

• Social media ascribed the power to change societies and empower democratic movements.

• Recently fueled by the democratic uprising in Arabic countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Iran and Libya creating headlines like “the Facebook revolution”.

SoMe and networked media characteristics

• Speed (the quality of networkedcommunication)

• Availability (the qualityof online-ness)

• Usability (the quality of non-expert systems)

• Mobility (the quality of navavigation and positioning)

Journalism in the age of cross media communication

• What role do expanded possibilities for communication and access to information have on journalism as genre/branch and for public insights into societal matters?– Do the cross media combo of traditional mass media and

interpersonal and networked 'social media' result in democratization of journalism and information flows in general (as hinted in terms like Facebook/Twitter revolutions)?

– Do professional actors still dominate journalism (and communication flows all together, as hinted by Jenkins: all are not equal and producing content takes skills)

– or may non-professional actors have impact on the news flows and production cycles?

• (quote: Mortensen 2013)

New news circuits

• New types of interplay eyewitnesses (which always have been key information providers for news journalists) and news production:

• the eyewitness photo documentation as sole providers of breaking news in periods of crisis.– (quote: Mortensen 2013)

User Generated Content: eyewitness’ photos as news providers

Fundamental change in access to information from areas of war and disaster – ‘breaking news’: juxtaposes user generated content and professionally produced content.

• Compared to other types of user generated content: great media and political impact: content circulating across platforms, geographies and languages (e.g. the case of Neda).

Eyewitness photos and the global news media

• Documenting events and relations that would not have been documented otherwise

• Undermining censorship and other restrictions• Producing news material outside the framework

of established news institutions, but often internalizing standard news criteria (dramatic, up-to-date etc.)

• Making source criticism difficult: appears authentic but hard to authenticate

• (quote: Mortensen 2013)

Role of the media• From centralized gate

keeping to open access and new online democratic voices

• Broadcast media are no longer setting the agenda without competition

• Information can not be controlled as before (open access (p2p), file sharing, hacking

Summing up• News consumption is changing rapidly, and thus there is a need for

continuous studies into its shifting nature. • There is a need for both quantitative and qualitative research into

how news consumption across media is transforming, among the public as well as among specific groups.

• Ideally, such research should attempt to study changes over time in different geographical contexts, or even better, making cross-cultural comparisons to create a more comprehensive understanding of contemporary news consumption.

• (quote: Westlund, forthcoming)

• And an important part of such studies is focusing on how news consumption have gained a participatory and co-creative dimension:

• consumption is also about users sharing, spreading, commenting and even creating content that feeds into to the circuits of news production

Output from the Meaning AcrossMedia project

• Rasmus Helles & Klaus Bruhn Jensen (Eds.): Audiences Across Media: A Comparative Agenda for Future Research on Media Audiences, special section of International Journal of Communication vol. 9, 2015

• Jakob Linaa Jensen, Mette Mortensen & Jacob Ørmen (Eds.): News across Media - the production, distribution and consumption of news in a cross-media perspective, Routledge 2016

• Kjetil Sandvik & Anne Mette Thorhauge (Eds.): Researching cross-media communication. Methodological approaches, MedieKultur 2016

• Kjetil Sandvik, Anne Mette Thorhauge & Bjarki Valtysson (Eds.): The media and the mundane: communication across media in everyday life, Nordicom2017

• Stine Lomborg & Mette Mortensen (Eds.): Users Across Media, special issue, Convergence. The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies vol 23, no 3, 2017