Digital Innovations for Mass Communications

Engaging the User

Paul Martin Lester

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135097035
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

In every field of mass communications—advertising, entertainment studies, journalism, public relations, radio-television-film, tourism, and visual reporting—professionals understand the importance of storytelling. Regardless of whether the finished product is a commercial, an in-depth investigative piece, a public service campaign, an independent documentary, a travelogue, or a collection of photographs, effective storytelling requires a combination of creativity, empathy, and expertise. Through the innovative technologies and techniques described in this textbook, students will learn how to turn passive readers and viewers into engaged and regular users.

The sixteen chapters each include a brief introduction, assignments, simple-to-follow step-by-step exercises, and sources for additional information in which users will learn to produce apps, informational graphics, quick response codes, quizzes, simulations, smartphone and table icons, social media campaigns, three-dimensional pictures, and video. Students will work with the following programs: Blogger, Dreamweaver, Excel, Facebook, GeoCommons, Google Maps, Illustrator, Imgur, iMovie, Infogram, iShowU, JavaScript, JustGive, Kaywa, Kickstarter, LinkedIn, Onvert, Photoshop, Pixel Resort, QuickTime, Reddit, Second Life, SurveyMonkey, TheAppBuilder, Twitter, Vizualize, Wikipedia, Word, WordPress, and YouTube.

When digital innovations are added to traditional print and screen presentations, a media user is not only allowed to interact with the information but can also physically engage with the story displayed. Giving students the tools they need to transform their storytelling in this manner is the ultimate goal of this textbook.

Section IV
Software-Driven Content

A media user has many motives—a need to be momentarily entertained, a hedge against temporary boredom, a quick accounting of the day’s news, a suggestion for a restaurant and a movie, a way of saving money, and no doubt many others. Content producers must be aware and prepared for several possible consumer incentives that dictate desire. The five chapters in this section use specially designed software that have the potential to satisfy most consumer demands.

Games

Quiz games provide users with tests of their knowledge within a supportive, educational environment in the spirit of social constructivism that encourages collaborative activities. Games related to news stories can be seen in The New York Times and other publication websites in which a player competes against the computer or other users. “A Google a Day” challenges participants to find answers to cryptic clues using the popular search engine.

Simulations

With the best simulations, a goal is to help a user understand more fully the complicated aspects of a story by enmeshing the player into a reality different from her own. “City Council” helps a participant understand the journalism process, while “SPENT” explains the effects of poverty on individuals. These two types of simulations, professional practice and issue-oriented, have one aspect in common—they both create engaging first-person experiences.

QR Codes

One of the most prevalent examples of software-driven content is the Quick Response (QR) code. Created by a Japanese company in 1996, the graphic collection of black and white squares printed on billboards, advertisements, window displays, and so on can be links to phone numbers, special offers, videos, and websites for users with a smartphone or tablet app. Graphic designers and artists continue to produce visually creative QR codes within unique contexts—on dinner plates at restaurants that link to drink and dessert specials, behind-the-scene access for the promotion of a movie or television show, and as part of a news photograph that allows users to see video.

3D Displays

As a gimmick to attract attention, the 2009 cover of Esquire did its job. With downloaded software and a built-in camera, the actor Robert Downey, Jr. led computer users to the magazine’s 3D features. Although many found the “in your face” displays initially charming, the effect had little long-term influence because of the superficial nature of the content. If used more thoughtfully, mass communicators who produce serious stories on social problems might consider this technology as a way to further engage traditional readers.

Apps

Location-specific applications downloaded for free or at a modest cost to a person’s smart-phone or tablet pinpoint a user’s location to provide immediate links to commercial and cultural establishments imposed on a map and/or floating over a view of an area provided by the built-in camera. These environmental-specific apps provided by Acrossair, Junaio, Layar, Wikitude, and others allow users to interact with their environment. Apps could also include a list of news stories that occurred near a smartphone user’s location.

11
Games

There are usually two types of persons who use computers for the first time in a serious way to complete projects within a mass communications context:

Those who get frustrated early and expect answers to be readily offered and explicit

Or

Those who enjoy the intellectual stimulation in which frustration simply becomes a necessary component of a game-playing exercise.

Once you learn that the use of a computer can be thought of as a game in which the rules change daily, a much more pleasurable and rewarding experience waits—as long as you make regular backups of the work you produce.

Social constructivism theory can help understand your role within a learning environment. Because we acquire knowledge through challenges, designing and playing games have been established as necessary components to a person’s education. An individual’s specific and separate experiences up to this point dictate how successful the game is.

More importantly, digital innovations as described in this textbook require a collaborative or social approach. Although it is possible to achieve satisfactory results alone, teaming up with another or with members of a discrete group creates the best chance to produce work with lasting impact for others. Consider these two-person teams that were successful because of their collaboration:

• Marie Sklodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie, a married couple that shared a Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on radiology.
• Christo Vladimirov Javacheff and Jeanne-Claude Marie Denat de Guillebon, a married couple known for their colorful environmental artistic displays.
• Elton Hercules John and Bernard John Taupin were a singer and lyricist team that became one of the most successful pop song duos in history.
• Steven Paul Jobs and Stephen Gary Wozniak were cofounders of the Apple Computer Company.
• Sergey Brin and Larry Page were cofounders of Google, Inc.

Consequently, you should never feel you are alone when designing games or other presentations related to your particular mass communications field. In fact, working in a social, collaborative environment within a classroom, lab, or online should be a regular working requirement.

One of the best resources for games is the website of the High School Journalism Initiative (HSJ) with its office at the prestigious Missouri School of Journalism. Established in 2000, it serves to train young reporters as well as educate all in the importance of the First Amendment. HSJ currently is connected to more than 3,500 student news websites.

Several websites offer grammar exercises in the form of interactive quizzes. HSJ offers a “Test Your Skills” game that includes the question:

Which Sentence Has the Error?

• That dog is so ugly it’s owner has to walk it in the dark.
• “I think it’s a shame,” said the Venusian, “that you earthlings don’t understand my language.”
• The flea could hardly contain his enthusiasm: “More than six square feet of Dalmatian, and it’s mine, all mine!”

Whether you are correct or not, there is a brief explanation of the proper use of possessives.

“Newsroom 101” contains more than 2,000 exercises designed for journalism students and professionals who need to learn or take a refresher course in the Associated Press writing style and in grammar, usage, and spelling. Developed by Gerald Grow, a retired professor from Florida A&M University who is better known for his musing on such diverse topics as Buddhism, food, and computers, the elaborate site is a witty exploration of the written rules that makes journalism unique.

Perhaps as a way to encourage more tactical web searches, but more likely a clever marketing strategy, the web browser Google initiated its “A Google a Day” game in 2011. The New York Times ran the feature next to its workday crossword puzzle with the questions getting harder as the week progressed. For example, one day’s clue was:

“My name is Robert. One day before my brother Rohan’s 19th birthday, our father had an album on the Billboard 200. Name the album.”

(Try the keywords Robert, Rohan, and Billboard if you don’t know.)

Other variations of quiz games included one that was provided by CNN on Beatles trivia while MSNBC and the Scripps Howard newspaper chain offered a “spelling bee” game based on the rules of the National Spelling Bee. Both were included as sidebars connected to a news story about each topic.

While a student at Washington State University, Vancouver, Matt Johnson developed a PowerPoint program inspired by the popular answer-then-question television game show “Jeopardy!” hosted by the amicable Alex Trebek. Depending on your mass communication professional interest, you can use the free website to write specific categories and answers within each dollar amount. To continue with the answers-first format, every Friday, the online magazine Slate presents a 12-question news quiz by 74-time “Jeopardy!” winner Ken Jennings. (He couldn’t win one more game?) At the end, you can see how your score compared with the average player and one from the magazine. For Parade magazine, Jennings also produces a game called “Konnections” in which players answer questions and try to determine the links between them. (It’s good that Jennings never encountered a spelling category on the game show.)

For some, checking your score against others is a powerful incentive to play. “The News IQ Quiz” offered by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan “fact tank” more known...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Author Biography
• Preface: Digital Innovations for Mass Communications
• SECTION I Essential Knowledge
• SECTION II User-Generated Content
• SECTION III Database-Generated Content
• SECTION IV Software-Driven Content
• SECTION V Immersive Experiences
• Conclusion: Tell Stories That Engage
• Appendix: Short Story, “Virtual Photography: When Images Become Real”
• Index