Cross country for cross-media (5)

It was for the first time that CMID07 was held. And as observed before, the majority of the participants were involved in interaction design. They experienced cross-media as a new area of research. Given this situation it is not uncommon that there was a search for common ground. Liam Bannon had explored the terrain. I had looked from the media angle. Christy had approached the subject of cross-media with a view of a chain. Monique de Haas took the route from the audience.

Monique starts from human/interactive angle and has done so for a longer time as is clear from her paper in 2005. In the CMDI07 presentation she puts it: humans are the central starting point and driving forces for cross-media communication. If we want to design interesting cross-media formats, we need to get a better understanding of what people do and want from media in certain contexts, at specific times. So, in a specific context, what is their media usage, and what is their mode of reception or interaction (laid back, lean forward, on the move, -inter-active) and how does this differ, at which specific point in time of the day.

Monique is now actively working on touchpoint analyses to investigate and report typical everyday behaviour. This will give better insight in the context. She is of the opinion that cross-media enable and empower people to tell their stories anytime, anywhere and gain the interest/critical mass that every story deserves.

She stresses that we need to get grip on what is relevant in a certain context at a certain moment in time. Technology that supports social behaviour and enhances social strength has the best chance of being adopted. Looking at a model for getting to grips with behaviour in social networks, requires thinking about social currency in these networks. This may better enable conversion of social interaction into economic value. Cross-media projects need cross-over business modelling. Getting your audience hooked in the story is still the key to get the message across. Story will be dissected to smallest narrative units to flow over media channels inviting people to follow and interact with the story across the channels.

It is clear that media value chains are changing fast. Cross-overs are made, new levels of interaction emerge, which strengthen social behaviour. Collective intelligence or crowd sourcing is emerging as away of cooperating and co-creating in social networks. We need a better understanding of the forces that drive human behaviour on these levels of interaction.

The remarks of Monique de Haas at CMID07 have set me thinking about the communication science theory. This model basically works with a model of sender, a channel and receiver. But in the digital media the receiver is no longer passive; he/she will be able to react to the message sent. The model of channel weaving regardless of the presence of meaning can be dispended with. Another model is in the making, but does not have a clear shape yet.

Blog Posting Number: 706

Tags: cross-media, convergence, social networks