Transmedia Activism and Planning

Beth Kanter has written a very interesting blog post taking my article on transmedia activism one step further, looking at business planning and networks. Three very interesting points have arisen from her post so far:

First, Beth poses a question about business planning to build and facilitate co-creation networks, which, as I commented on her site, drives home the point that for organizations to use storytelling to effectively engage and energize community, they have to build/position their internal capacity and create external networks to manage co-creation in the first place. (The underlying problem that remains is how do you do this with minimum cash and resource outlay while still ensuring maximum outreach and stakeholder/network stewardship?)

Second is the question of how someone carrying out a transmedia activism campaign can balance managed vs. organic growth of the story universe. Since I've started looking at strategic planning for this process, I've found it helpful to proactively plan the process while still allowing room for inclusion of unsolicited content and organic growth of the story universe. (As I noted there, though, content creation from a number of decentralized authors raises aesthetic, technical and ownership issues, among others).

Third is the question of influence of content creators vs. content sharers (and how do you measure that influence?). Beth posts a very interesting graph by Gary Hayes that weights being "perceived" more heavily than creation-- so sharers wield more influence than creators. I agree with that in spirit: I don't view content creators as having "less" influence than sharers, but impact and participation are linked in this process so it is dependent on sharing, distribution and entry points into the story universe. But creators wield a separate kind of influence on this process in the ability to shape the content and its effect on perceptions.