What’s ‘interactive’ about online video journalism?
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 13 October 2006 at 12:52
Tags: Journalism
The two buzzwords in online journalism are “interactivity” and “multimedia”. But could it be that more multimedia means less interactivity?
Everybody traditionally in the print business seems to be rushing into online video: The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, and The Sun have all recently announced plans for video features on the web sites. Most recently, Trinity Mirror revealed that video would feature prominently as all of the group’s regional sites are relaunched.
“There is an agreement across the board on interactivity being right up there and we’re basing the new website design on interactivity,” Trinity Mirror’s editorial director Neil Benson told Journalism.co.uk.
But what does video have to do with interactivity? Very little, if you ask UCE online journalism lecturer Paul Bradshaw. In a very interesting analysis posted today, Bradshaw suggests that the proliferation of online video represents a step backward for interactivity, specificially the ideal of tranforming news from a lecture to a conversation:
The rush to online is becoming a rush to a form of TV which just happens to be broadcast on the web. And in that rush, newspapers are in danger of not exploiting the real benefits of the web: giving users control; providing extra information and context that wouldn’t fit in a print (or video) version of the story; creating communities between readers, or a forum for them to express their knowledge and opinions; communicating complex concepts in a way that can’t be done with words alone; engaging the reader through innovative formats, or by connecting them directly with interviewees.
It appears that newspaper executives used to a lecturer-audience relationship are choosing the options that challenge that least: video; podcasts - “we talk, you listen”. The most control users have is over where they listen, or watch.
He has a point, doesn’t he? Podcasting and online video are revolutionary only because they liberate users from linear broadcasting’s tyrannical schedule. Unless carefully tagged with keywords, audio and video isn’t searchable like text, making it far more difficult to find diverse viewpoints on similar topics. Despite YouTube and similar sites making distribution easier, video is still a typical one-way medium.
Increasing broadband penetration and increasing broadband speeds are driving this trend towards multimedia news organisations that feel a commercial imperative to compete on all platforms.
But what’s “interactive” about that?
Tags: Journalism
