Lecture 2: Communication: Managing digital communication across multiple media Flashcards
New media (hardware and software)’s dual effect
They accentuate existing communicative practices AND they enable new ones
It basically means that the new media are both a disruptive, revolutionary force and platforms where you perform existing practices
Three distinct, interrelated ways new media change the way organizations can communicate strategically (the three main features of today’s media landscape)
Collaborative and power-shifting infrastructure: easy access to using and producing communication and information, and they force/allow people to play an active role in generating content (e.g. Facebook, comment option on newspapers) –> makes it visible how others have engaged with the content of the communication. Also allows for individuals to have higher influence over companies because the platforms are bigger
Reconfiguration of time and space: anyone can communicate at anytime anywhere. It means communication is more of a process as a constantly evolving environment in and across dispersed networks
Possibility for hypertextual and hypermediated meaning formation:
hypertext is about the practice of linking communication - interconnected network of nodes and links, where the reader enters at any node and chooses any path through and about the network - which means the linearity of communication is broken up, e.g. Twitter replies lead to other tweets
Hypermedia: the convergence of multimedia content, such as graphics, audio and video, by means of the hyperlink.
Enables jumps in space and time, individual sampling of texts, mash-ups of media etc - communication is not linear
Hybrid media ecology
Resulted from the three ways new media change how organizations can communicate strategically
Commercial, activist, amateur, non-profit and governmental actors interact with each other in ever more complex ways
A communicative environment where there is 1) a coexistence of paid and unpaid communication, 2) a coexistence of individualization and globalized reach, 3) a coexistence of a more complex system of public spaces, fragmented according to specialized, professionalized and individualized needs and interests
Convergence culture
Convergence (according to Henry Jenkins): 1) the flow of content across multiple media platforms, 2) the cooperation between multiple media industries and 3) the migratory behavior of media audiences who would go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want
Describes technological, industrial and social changes at the same time
Some media will converge but others will diverge
Some media will stay distinct from other media both in format, technology and content - either despite or because of the convergence of other media: we can still go to the cinema even though we can watch films on the computer, we can read printed books as well as ebooks
Produser (Axel Bruns)
A hybrid of a user and a producer, involved in the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in the pursuit of further improvement
Wikipedia, TripAdvisor
Social media (definition)
Web based services that allow individuals to 1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, 2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and 3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system
By danah m. boyd and Nicole B. Ellison
Cross-media
An intellectual property, service, story or experience that is distributed across multiple media platforms using a variety of media forms (Indrek Ibrus and Carlos Scolari)
Communication which is circulated through and/or created on different kinds of communication channels, both offline and online
COPE Strategy
Create Once, Publish Everywhere
Seperate the process of developing and formulating the communicative content from the specific requirements of how the communication is to be distributed
Four Cross-media strategies
- Create and play: strategic communication plays our within the organisation’s own channels, e.g. websites, brochures, events –> but in today’s communicative society, it is pretty impossible to control because stakeholders share content on Facebook etc.
- Discover and link: (extension of create and play) make the communication available via links on e.g. third-party social media platforms where potential stakeholders can discover it –> links go straight back to the organization’s website so that they retain ownership and partial control
- Fetch and distribute: stakeholders copying and replocating communication from the organization onto other media platforms beyong the organization’s control - e.g. share a screenshot of a website on social media, quoting a promotional text in a news article/exam paper –> good because you reach people you might not otherwise have access to, bad because you lose control
- Open and play: (also known as crowdsourcing) the organization’s communication is made open to stakeholder contributions - direct encouragement to co-produce communicative content or product development - campaigns encouraging people to post pictures of themselves with a specific hashtag
Transmedia Storytelling
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 (Jenkins)
The creation of “possible worlds” that can sustain multiple interrelated storylines and characters
E.g. McDonald’s “My Burger” campaign invited stakeholders to enact the role of chef by creating menu items for the restaurant
Can be serial (unfolds over time, each bit ends with a cliffhanger - I’m thinking of Lily’s Garden) or episodic (stand-alone story)
Readerly text (Message Design)
A text to which the reader’s response is more or less passive, meaning the reader understands and accepts the meaning of the text without much effort
Writerly text (Message Design)
Demand that the reader “works things out” - the reader has to actively look for and produce meaning with the text
Producerly texts (Message Design)
A combination of readerly text and writerly text
meaning it’s easy to approach and comprehend, but it offers multiple layers of interpretation by leaving gaps for the reader to engage with
Five levels of readerly and producerly activity (Sharon Goodman)
- Active reader: the reader is invited to be active with the text through negotiation and interpretation of its meanings, such as inviting reader to perform a certain feeling or actions
- Interactive reader: invites interaction - built in possibility for the reader to decide on how to use the text - e.g. American Idol, where viewers can interact by voting for the participants but cannot change the show itself
- Agentive or selective reader: invites direct participatio, e.g. websites like Wikipediahave embedded hyperlinks which offer flexible pathways to reading and understanding the text - offers readers interpretable freedom through creating alternative extended narratives and heightened personalization
- Interventive or transformative reader: invited to actually transform the text, such as Old Spice invited viewers of Twitch to control a man’s activities for three days
- Designer or producer: invites design or production of a text - the reader is free to generate texts. Rare in real life but e.g. McDonald’s MyBurger campaign allowed stakeholders to create their own burgers, albeit in a controlled environment
