I was honored to be invited to speak with Stuart Dambrot of Critical
Thought TV around the possibilities of narrative design for social
impact.
(The first two segments of the interview are below. The fourth will be available in a few weeks.)
Interview 3: Transmedia Activism: Local Voice
Showing posts with label transmedia activism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label transmedia activism. Show all posts
Critical Thought TV: Interviews on Transmedia Activism
I was honored to be invited to speak with Stuart Dambrot of Critical Thought TV around the possibilities of narrative design for social impact.
(The first two segments of the interview are here. The third and fourth will be available in a few weeks.)
Interview 1: Transmedia Activism
Interview 2: Transmedia Activism Field Notes
(The first two segments of the interview are here. The third and fourth will be available in a few weeks.)
Interview 1: Transmedia Activism
Interview 2: Transmedia Activism Field Notes
Transmedia Activism site has launched
The website for transmedia activism is now launched and open-sources the basic framework to be strategic and proactive in the use of media to create social impact. The framework encourages addressing social change first when using actionable content (essentially flipping the model of media first, outreach second), for collaboration on issue identification and storytelling between activists and content producers, and for embedding transmedia strategy from the start of a campaign.
Before creating a campaign, three foundational areas must be explored:
A. Social Change- what are you trying to change?
B. Storytelling- what is the narrative thread?
C. Resources- what do you have?
In setting up a campaign, these areas are explored and used as the basis for a plan:
A. Audience Segmentation- who are you engaging?
B. Resources- what do you need?
C. Story Universe Strategy- how do you define the story?
D. Content Strategy- how will you craft and distribute content?
E. Partners and Stakeholders- who will participate?
F. Engagement- how do you engage toward change?
With thanks to Vicki Callahan for all her help in creating the site, taking stewardship of the model and disseminating the framework.
Before creating a campaign, three foundational areas must be explored:
A. Social Change- what are you trying to change?
B. Storytelling- what is the narrative thread?
C. Resources- what do you have?
In setting up a campaign, these areas are explored and used as the basis for a plan:
A. Audience Segmentation- who are you engaging?
B. Resources- what do you need?
C. Story Universe Strategy- how do you define the story?
D. Content Strategy- how will you craft and distribute content?
E. Partners and Stakeholders- who will participate?
F. Engagement- how do you engage toward change?
With thanks to Vicki Callahan for all her help in creating the site, taking stewardship of the model and disseminating the framework.
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.
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.
Summary: "Preaching to the Converted": Engaging Your Audience and Combating Issue Fatigue
I moderated an online discussion on ArtTribesNetwork, on engaging your audience to combat issue fatigue. The discussion participants were from The Fledgling Fund, Cinereach, the Center for Social Media at American University, The Skoll Foundation, Global Grassroots, The Tiziano Project, the NYC Leadership Academy and the Miami International Film Festival, as well as two independent filmmakers (Brian Glazer, Producer of What We Got: DJ Spooky’s Quest for the Commons, and Marilyn Perez) and a social media expert (Howard Greenstein). We fleshed out some interesting ideas during the hour.
The transcript is online at ArtTribesNetwork.com. Here is a brief summary of the discussion:
Causes of issue fatigue
We briefly discussed causes of issue fatigue (also calling it compassion fatigue or psychic numbing). One reason audiences might disengage from a cause is their perception that there has either been no effective activism strategy put into place, or that there is no effective intervention or forward movement arising from activist efforts.
Another currently relevant reason is the economic crisis that affects our interests at home, which cause audience members to focus less on “distant” issues.
Similarly, issue fatigue hits audiences for causes that are large (hitting vast numbers of people) and/or “removed” from audience members’ daily lives faster than for issues to which they can relate personally or which center on one person in particular.
Keeping issue fatigue at bay
Discussion participants detailed their recommendations for keeping their audiences interested and committed. While you can’t necessarily apply the same questions and strategies to social issue media projects that have disparate or unique goals, the participants did come up with an overarching framework for most social issue media campaigns.
(1) Start with
(a) An exceptionally committed outreach team
(b) Sufficient resources to carry through your outreach and engagement plans
(c) A select, interested audience that will help you move the issue forward by engaging in activism and increase audience numbers by spreading the word, and
(d) Clear outreach goals for each audience segment.
(2) Given that issue fatigue hits when audience members feel disconnected, audience members must feel as if they belong to the movement and feel ownership over the outcome of activist efforts. Our participants talked about the importance of creating a personal, emotional connection to the cause through
(a) Visual imagery,
(b) A strong narrative that focuses on the story of one affected person (be that a witness, victim or survivor), and
(c) The opportunity to contribute through user-generated media.
(3) Social issue media campaigns built on slow, collective and continual action are most effective. The more people are exposed to the message through multiple media, the more likely they'll be to respond and/or take action. Therefore, campaigns must provide a pathway to action through creative opportunities for engagement.
It helps to engage in transmedia efforts, by continually creating and delivering new media, information, technologies and opportunities in order to maintain attention, through multiple distribution channels (traditional as well as digital and online), along with the opportunity to engage personally and collectively, in the real world.
(4) To communicate with your base, participants agreed that web 2.0 tools and social networks create an instant, global audience and deliver media and information most effectively. Digital communications tools are particularly useful for convening people virtually; sharing information, resources and referrals; getting attention; and inviting participation. In addition, you can encourage your audience to promote your message to their contacts in their own words.
(5) Audience members respond when the issue is highlighted in the local or national press, as this keeps driving and creating new interest in the issue.
(6) Finally, audience members also respond when they see their efforts are working. Therefore, participants encouraged providing feedback loops and impact measurements.
The transcript is online at ArtTribesNetwork.com. Here is a brief summary of the discussion:
Causes of issue fatigue
We briefly discussed causes of issue fatigue (also calling it compassion fatigue or psychic numbing). One reason audiences might disengage from a cause is their perception that there has either been no effective activism strategy put into place, or that there is no effective intervention or forward movement arising from activist efforts.
Another currently relevant reason is the economic crisis that affects our interests at home, which cause audience members to focus less on “distant” issues.
Similarly, issue fatigue hits audiences for causes that are large (hitting vast numbers of people) and/or “removed” from audience members’ daily lives faster than for issues to which they can relate personally or which center on one person in particular.
Keeping issue fatigue at bay
Discussion participants detailed their recommendations for keeping their audiences interested and committed. While you can’t necessarily apply the same questions and strategies to social issue media projects that have disparate or unique goals, the participants did come up with an overarching framework for most social issue media campaigns.
(1) Start with
(a) An exceptionally committed outreach team
(b) Sufficient resources to carry through your outreach and engagement plans
(c) A select, interested audience that will help you move the issue forward by engaging in activism and increase audience numbers by spreading the word, and
(d) Clear outreach goals for each audience segment.
(2) Given that issue fatigue hits when audience members feel disconnected, audience members must feel as if they belong to the movement and feel ownership over the outcome of activist efforts. Our participants talked about the importance of creating a personal, emotional connection to the cause through
(a) Visual imagery,
(b) A strong narrative that focuses on the story of one affected person (be that a witness, victim or survivor), and
(c) The opportunity to contribute through user-generated media.
(3) Social issue media campaigns built on slow, collective and continual action are most effective. The more people are exposed to the message through multiple media, the more likely they'll be to respond and/or take action. Therefore, campaigns must provide a pathway to action through creative opportunities for engagement.
It helps to engage in transmedia efforts, by continually creating and delivering new media, information, technologies and opportunities in order to maintain attention, through multiple distribution channels (traditional as well as digital and online), along with the opportunity to engage personally and collectively, in the real world.
(4) To communicate with your base, participants agreed that web 2.0 tools and social networks create an instant, global audience and deliver media and information most effectively. Digital communications tools are particularly useful for convening people virtually; sharing information, resources and referrals; getting attention; and inviting participation. In addition, you can encourage your audience to promote your message to their contacts in their own words.
(5) Audience members respond when the issue is highlighted in the local or national press, as this keeps driving and creating new interest in the issue.
(6) Finally, audience members also respond when they see their efforts are working. Therefore, participants encouraged providing feedback loops and impact measurements.
MediaRights.org article on transmedia activism
MediaRights, a project of ArtsEngine, Inc., maximizes the the impact of social-issue documentaries and shorts within its community by helping filmmakers reach audiences, educators and librarians bring films into their classroom, and nonprofits and activists integrate media into their campaigns. They recently published my article on transmedia activism at their site. Thanks to Kasmore Rhedick, the online editor, for a great editing job.
ResistNetwork: Share your ideas on social change
ResistNetwork has a page seeking ideas for social change, to collect and spread information about websites, online resources, articles or tools. I am part of the team that is curating the page-- the other team members are Jess Tyrrell at Germination, Wai Mun Yoon and Marc Silver. Take a look and send in a message to socialchange@resistnetwork.com.
More on transmedia activism
Paul Hawken's book about the "movement of movements" of activism to create change, Blessed Unrest, has been influential in the field of social justice-- and in my thinking on systemic change and local solutions-building; networks and linkages; and emergent vs. direct strategies.
Now Hawken is spearheading a film about the individuals involved in the movements described in the book. This is transmedia activism in action: The film is being produced through a purely participatory model and created entirely on the film’s website, where the film's production team will allow users to generate, edit and "select" the content that will eventually be synthesized into one central narrative. To fit completely into the transmedia activism model, the film would be distributed across multiple platforms-- though the distribution strategy for the film is still unclear.
(Thanks to Sameer Padania, director of The Hub, WITNESS, for our discussion about Hawken's project. The Hub is another brilliant example of how transmedia activism can work to raise awareness and inspire action.)
Now Hawken is spearheading a film about the individuals involved in the movements described in the book. This is transmedia activism in action: The film is being produced through a purely participatory model and created entirely on the film’s website, where the film's production team will allow users to generate, edit and "select" the content that will eventually be synthesized into one central narrative. To fit completely into the transmedia activism model, the film would be distributed across multiple platforms-- though the distribution strategy for the film is still unclear.
(Thanks to Sameer Padania, director of The Hub, WITNESS, for our discussion about Hawken's project. The Hub is another brilliant example of how transmedia activism can work to raise awareness and inspire action.)
Transmedia Activism
One of the members of The Art of Social Change, Brad Lichtenstein, wrote last month at www.onthecommons.org about his newest documentary project, What We Got: DJ Spooky's Quest for the Commons, for which the film's creators are using a transmedia storytelling process to craft the film and its outreach strategy. Transmedia storytelling is a concept first described by Henry Jenkins. In his blog entry, Brad paraphrases the process' definition as: "Transmedia storytelling, also called multiplatform or enhanced storytelling, is storytelling across multiple forms of media. By using different media, it attempts to create "entry points" through which audiences can become immersed in a story franchise's world. The aim of this immersion is decentralized authorship across multiple new media forms like television, movie theaters. video games, the internet, and mobile platforms. By encouraging the sharing of assets and user generated content, transmedia conveys a complex story through numerous media sources."
There is a pure marketing benefit that arises from multiple entry points into a media property-- and in allowing your audience to participate in creating content and new platforms to distribute it. Even more interesting is the door this opens up for cause outreach, though (particularly in the context of this site). Nonprofits and creators of social change media have a challenge in making their content "sticky" and, in a crowded field with limited funding or distribution channels, it takes significant resources and expertise to first, create audience awareness and, second, inspire/prescribe action. There is a real and distinct opportunity for activists to influence action and raise cause awareness by distributing content through a multiplatform approach, particularly in which people participate in media creation. (A multiplatform approach would involve real-world, web-based or mobile content delivery of a variety of possible media, including feature-length narrative or documentary films, short films and clips, streaming or downloadable video, photography, blog posts, articles, spoken word content, exhibits, benefits and events, etc.)
Nonprofits engaged in social change initiatives should view storytelling as a necessary component of mission-fulfillment. (I know, as if the stretched, underpaid staff of any nonprofit doesn't have enough to think about.) It's well-established that for any individual institution, engaging your audience-- whether that's your beneficiaries, funders (existing and potential), board members, community or other stakeholders-- requires that they convey clearly, precisely and artfully what they do, how they do it, where their services/programs are most effective and necessary, and why they should be supported in your efforts to continue or grow their work. In the larger view of systemic change, though, storytelling takes on an even bigger role, where a well-told story creates a shared experience and helps illuminate all the factors (root cause and symptomatic) that effect social change efforts at both the global and local levels, creating a comprehensive, connected, "best practice" view of achieving progress.
Looking at this issue in the simplest of terms, one of the best ways to have people connect to a cause is to expose them to a variety of accessible media properties over a number of distribution channels-- which opens up avenues for dialogue and provides an audience with an educational experience about workable solutions-- and then work with the most creative and engaged audience segment to facilitate the creation of their own content that further explains the cause and inspires action around it. This kind of participatory social change art is not a new concept. The Theater of the Oppressed, a company established in Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s, engaged its audience as "spect-actors" -- participants who could both act and observe-- to learn how to solve social problems and constructively fight against oppression they encountered in their daily lives. (Today, there are still companies that use this theater form, such as the Aarohan Theater in Nepal which creates interactive theater in which the audience analyze social problems they face and act out possible solutions.) Another interesting example is the upcoming documentary Resist. The film's creators have set up the ResistNetwork website to start the film's outreach throughout its making, and to invite people to contribute stories of change that may end up in the final product or ancillary media.
To have a nonprofit's stories heard and to have an audience connect with cause, nonprofits should think about whether they can conceive and execute on a multiplatform approach. Leaving aside the question of funding (there are still relatively few funders who support media outreach initiatives with any consistency), a nonprofit would need a clear, defined, sustainable strategy and the attendant resources to create appropriate, compelling content and distribute it. As Brad points out in his blog, his journey through this process of transmedia storytelling has changed him from a filmmaker to a content producer. Nonprofits dealing with social change don't need to get into the business of content production or multiplatform distribution-- but it is a digital world now. It's likely time to add storytelling to the task list.
Republished from The Art of Social Change, at ArtTribesNetwork.com (http://www.arttribesnetwork.com/group/theartofsocialchange/forum/topic/show?id=1996069%3ATopic%3A7220 )
There is a pure marketing benefit that arises from multiple entry points into a media property-- and in allowing your audience to participate in creating content and new platforms to distribute it. Even more interesting is the door this opens up for cause outreach, though (particularly in the context of this site). Nonprofits and creators of social change media have a challenge in making their content "sticky" and, in a crowded field with limited funding or distribution channels, it takes significant resources and expertise to first, create audience awareness and, second, inspire/prescribe action. There is a real and distinct opportunity for activists to influence action and raise cause awareness by distributing content through a multiplatform approach, particularly in which people participate in media creation. (A multiplatform approach would involve real-world, web-based or mobile content delivery of a variety of possible media, including feature-length narrative or documentary films, short films and clips, streaming or downloadable video, photography, blog posts, articles, spoken word content, exhibits, benefits and events, etc.)
Nonprofits engaged in social change initiatives should view storytelling as a necessary component of mission-fulfillment. (I know, as if the stretched, underpaid staff of any nonprofit doesn't have enough to think about.) It's well-established that for any individual institution, engaging your audience-- whether that's your beneficiaries, funders (existing and potential), board members, community or other stakeholders-- requires that they convey clearly, precisely and artfully what they do, how they do it, where their services/programs are most effective and necessary, and why they should be supported in your efforts to continue or grow their work. In the larger view of systemic change, though, storytelling takes on an even bigger role, where a well-told story creates a shared experience and helps illuminate all the factors (root cause and symptomatic) that effect social change efforts at both the global and local levels, creating a comprehensive, connected, "best practice" view of achieving progress.
Looking at this issue in the simplest of terms, one of the best ways to have people connect to a cause is to expose them to a variety of accessible media properties over a number of distribution channels-- which opens up avenues for dialogue and provides an audience with an educational experience about workable solutions-- and then work with the most creative and engaged audience segment to facilitate the creation of their own content that further explains the cause and inspires action around it. This kind of participatory social change art is not a new concept. The Theater of the Oppressed, a company established in Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s, engaged its audience as "spect-actors" -- participants who could both act and observe-- to learn how to solve social problems and constructively fight against oppression they encountered in their daily lives. (Today, there are still companies that use this theater form, such as the Aarohan Theater in Nepal which creates interactive theater in which the audience analyze social problems they face and act out possible solutions.) Another interesting example is the upcoming documentary Resist. The film's creators have set up the ResistNetwork website to start the film's outreach throughout its making, and to invite people to contribute stories of change that may end up in the final product or ancillary media.
To have a nonprofit's stories heard and to have an audience connect with cause, nonprofits should think about whether they can conceive and execute on a multiplatform approach. Leaving aside the question of funding (there are still relatively few funders who support media outreach initiatives with any consistency), a nonprofit would need a clear, defined, sustainable strategy and the attendant resources to create appropriate, compelling content and distribute it. As Brad points out in his blog, his journey through this process of transmedia storytelling has changed him from a filmmaker to a content producer. Nonprofits dealing with social change don't need to get into the business of content production or multiplatform distribution-- but it is a digital world now. It's likely time to add storytelling to the task list.
Republished from The Art of Social Change, at ArtTribesNetwork.com (http://www.arttribesnetwork.
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