Im currently in Århus and writing this while desperately trying to get the wireless network to function (Arne Krumsvik who is sitting next to me has it up and running, so I know it is possible!) - I will start typing and then go online, once I get it to work. //Update: several hours later still havent gotten online, though Im told that the network exists and the signal strength is excellent. Update II: Eventually I had to wait until I got home to upload this, because I never managed to get online//


The point of this seminar is/was to gather the authors for a book about crossmedia (production) in media corporations; however visitors have been allowed to listen and learn. Since the theme of the Mobile Content Laboratory this term have been crossmedia production, and I personally have been thinking about phenomena such as crossmedia storytelling (transmedial universes) and the interplay between web and mobiles (moblogging), I thought it could be quite interesting to go to a seminar where I could learn more about what people working with the media and studying the media (e.g. primarily news producing media) thinks about the reality of crossmedia production, and about future trends and developments in the field.

How many forms of communication media can you find on this picture?




1st speaker: Arne Krumsvik on Multiple Media News Production for a Global Market
A model for understanding cross-media as the outcome of commercially-oriented strategies. He presents Miles & Snows categorisation of organisations:Defenders, Prospectors, Analyzers and Reactors. CNN, his case, has moved from being a Prospector to being an Analyzer. Their news production and publication in various media is syndicated and controlled by one central instance, the HQ in Atlanta. What shapes the making of online news? He presents his own tentative model: online news both strengthens the brand of the corporation while pointing to content in old media, and it provides a niche for new revenues (such as subscriptions). NB! Remember to look at MacManus' model of commercial news production.

2nd speaker: Ebbe Grunwald on Multimediality and the Language of the Journalist
What happens to language and the way we tell stories when we follow a concrete story in a multi-medial and cross-medial context? Does language change when used in different media? First case – a story about youth homicide in Northern Jutland shows that story was online first,but that the story were distributed also via sms, so a lot of people knew about it via sms before anything else. But this is perhaps special to exactly this story. The online versions of the story, shows that the story gets more precise with each update (telling what happened, not what was believed to have happened), within the first 4 hours of the homicide, they had at least 4 news updates on it, when the story was in the newspaper the day after, news were already old and had not been elaborated.

3rd speaker: Anja Bechmann Pedersen on the Concept of Cross Media Anja is trying to make a more general model of cross media as a form of communication. She gave a similar talk (the longer version) at ITU 3 weeks
ago, and is doing a good job of mapping out cross media as a concept, and in a way so we can use her concepts to describe what media corporations (DK: mediehuse) are doing. Her cases are the Nordjyske Media Corporation and the Youth Department of DR (Denmarks Radio), the public service broadcasting institution, DK's equivalent of BBC. Some categories:<
Cross media as relations between media products (f.i. a story, conceptually(graphics), navigational)
Cross media as media structures (ideas about media, translation btw media)
Cross media as actor-platform relations (users & platforms, designers & platforms; platform both as physical, technological, economical and organisational).

NB! remember to look at Paddy Scanells article on the concept of Liveness, the book Radio, Television and Modern Life.

The Norwegian opponent: what is the use value of this "tidying-things-up" project, apart from the fact that it is nice to have, he is critical of the media theorists need to "erect taxonomical constructions"; consider concepts such as displaying, cloning, versioning.

4th speaker. Lennart Højbjerg on Visual Cross Media Aesthetics
How TV2 has been using a computer interface aesthetics and following the development of general GUI developments in their remediation of it. In the 1990s the graphically advanced interface (3D, cyberspace imagery, now increasingly influenced by the aesthetics of the internet, f.i. the navigation and menus look aesthetics, use of fonts, animations with flash-look etc. Underlying premise is that this development is software-based. And it is tied to a need to deal with a way of living that is increasingly digitalised.Based on the products “claim to fame”, their need to establish their position on the media market – so aesthetics grows out of a need to either position oneself (differentiation) or dominate.

5th speaker: Espen Ytreberg on The combining of Platforms
(research project at Oslo Uni: Participation and Play!)
Research project focus: How the combination of massmedia and digital media shapes non-professional participation (8 researchers, incl. 2 ph.d.s) – Anders Fagerjord, an old DAC friend is part of this.
“The Elite Survey”: They have interviewed 45 decisions makers in Norwegian Media Industry to find out the strategic impact on program offers which include audience participation
Showed that mobile platforms are key factor in the future according to these people, konfluens (??UK name – the platforms should influence each other, not converge) is more important than “convergence”, the combination takes places through coordination, integration and articulation.

Some believe that technological convergence will not lead to the convergence of user habits and media is used and will continue to be used in various social settings. The consequence is therefore not is not to plan solely for convergence, for also for the articulation of each platforms and the ways platforms influence each other. For instance, thinking of TV as a “portal” to other platform uses: since TV is still the platform (media) that most easily and readily attracts attention – so the use of other media should happen through the entrance via the “TV portal”. Still ideas exist of what is high prestige and low prestige jobs in the media business.

[note to self: apart from Anja who is one of the organisers, I’m the only woman who have asked a question so far. The only female presenter today is Anja. I wonder why? My impression is that this field is not male dominated in general??]

6th speaker: Yngvar Kjus: New Media – Old Broadcasting
What is at stake in increasing audience participation between online media and tv:
Analysis of the program: STORE NORSKE
How to promote and control audience participation in a way that suits the producer (NRK as case) – modes of participation: nominations, discussion of nominations, voting – not all forms of participation are allowed, some censored – as programme progresses, participation is restricted more and more
There is a very long tradition for participation in “old” media (like TV); look for instance at the history of Eurovision Song Contest (France allowed phone votes from late 1970’s)
After monopoly has disappeared, increased strategies for the creation of intimacy (cf audience involvement?)

7th speaker: Roel Puijk: On Time and Timing in multiple media production - a case study from NRK
Looking more closely at relation between tv and internet production: org models for production, rutine and creativity, genre differences, changes in journalistic ideology (from watch-dog to guide-dog?!!). Different models of relation between tv content and internet content: seperated model (no- coop), reuse-model (tv content redone for web), added value model, integrated model (diff. media serve different, but supplementary functions).

Study show that very little news-item content is produced for the web, creativity lies more in the construction, layout of features, not in content. Rare examples of progressive content is the "Clickable body" archive navigation at Puls. TV is what they define themselves as making (the journalists??, producers), appearing changes is more focus on popular culture stuff (online), more weight on form and graphical elements.

8th speaker: Steen Rasmussen on The Cross Field of Convergence
Presents a model of convergence, that can be used as a tool for discussion about convergent media production inside media corporations. On the internal side: process (idea, gathering material, editing), version, synergi. Externally: product, quality, use value.

General notes and thoughts: (in the train on the way home)
Would have liked to make people discuss and spell out the difference between the multiple media mode (flermedialitet) and cross media. To me it seemed as "multiple media" basically meant "producing and distributing content for several platforms" and cross media was mostly used interchangeably with this. However, to me, cross media is about producing content that it is split up between different platforms and can only be understood in its whole by gathering and looking at the content from all platforms involved. Multiple media mode production seems to be more about adjusting content for various platforms and audiences, and in the process emphasisng certain aspects of the content for the platform in question, while still reproducing the same basic content on all the platforms (f.i. a news story). I think there is an essential difference between multiple media production and cross media content (in my understanding) and that we are still very far from seeing authentic and orginal scripted cross media content in a Danish context (though I know DR might have something of the kind up their sleeve..).

Another issue that wasnt adressed was that of the difference between remediation and crossmedia production. I came to think of this possible difference/dichotomy during Lennart Højbjergs presentation. To me it seemed that he was describing a history of remediation (tv remediating computer interface rhetorics) rather than a process of mutual content fertilisation (tv using computer interface aesthetics as part of telling a story, the web using a "video on the tv screen and remote control" aesthetics as part of telling a story), ia the notion of cross media as, in this case, the two media forms telling a story which you would not be able to understand without knowing the other media forms and recognising the remediation process going on. Lennart wasnt able to describe the difference either, and I also need to think further about it. But I have an intuitive feeling that something could be gotten at by thinking more in depth about differences and likenesses betweeen the two concepts.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 21:42