Immersive Media a Weapon Against News Fatigue According to AP Study

Now for an unpopular viewpoint of mainstream media: it would be wise for communicators of all stripes to take a good look at mainstream media for insight into the most important new media tools you should be using.  Why?  Because #1) communicators (most especially PR people) are quite dependant on mainstream media and should be cognizant of the motivations and formats it is now applying and;  #2) if mainstream media is doing it, it is a sure sign their audience behaviors have changed – so by extension your audiences have changed.

Case in point,The AP presented at the World Editor’s Forum in Sweden last week an ethnographic/anthropological study they commissioned during 2007 called “A New Model for News, Studying the Deep Structure of Young-Adult News Consumption”(pdf).   In it, they find that young adults (any heavy Internet user, in fact) suffer from “news fatigue” because of a constant barrage of headlines and news snippets.  Although they actually long for in-depth reporting, backstories and multiple viewpoints, that information is difficult to access - both in reality and mentally because of the over-delivery of headlines.

The results of the AP study are compelling enough that the AP has been building its news delivery model around them for the last year. 

The AP now adheres to a model they call “1-2-3- filing” in which they report news as it is happening in headline format, then in 15 - 20 minutes they produce a 250-word brief, and finally in depth details and story angles in multi-media formats as appropriate to its various platforms, including “interactive explainers" (a la USA Today).

(If the subject of media practices is of deeper interest to you, I list some other great resources for mainstream media practices insight in a series of posts I am doing over on my Znetlady blog called Social Media Relations: Five Best Practices.)

These "story angles" and “interactive explainers” are the heart of the well-informed consumer.  We have a steady, relentless snack-food diet of facts and “news briefs” driven by the mistaken perception that fast is best and better in an RSS alert-enabled world.  Unfortunately, with news happenings in constant motion, we never "have time" to "go back" and provide a deeper look for our "news consumers." 

But the news consumer is in fact also actively searching for the satisfaction of a slower-cooked presentation, deeper understanding and a much more balanced news diet. 

There are two reasons for looking closely at AP’s report (besides its implications for communicators on being more effective by providing content in the design and format news distributors are using and  needing).

One is it provides an ethnographic profile of the people the AP studied  and the fascinating motivations for news consumption.  It delivers sometimes unexpected insight into why people want to interact with news, speaking to news as a type of “social capital.”

The other is the fact that the study supports the burgeoning momentum toward more visual and immersive media. 

For example AP is putting more emphasis on their “interactive explainers” which take visitors “more deeply into the news without requiring them to read a long text story.”  This aligns perfectly with a slew of new research coming out about the inherently visual nature and preferences of our brains. A great new book and web site on that very subject is Brain Rules – full of compelling reasons why visual media is our future.

The World Editor's Forum follows on with a report of their own called Trends in Newsrooms 2008 (189 Euros) which sports chapter titles such as "the modernization of the printed word," "multimedia and multi-skilled will be the norm," and "training print journalists for the multimedia newsroom."

The bottom line is communicators simply must start thinking about and producing in visual and immersive media – even for the staid old “news” (inclusive but beyond video).    Humans are simply built for visual consumption; even as search engines are textual "beings" at the moment. 

The AP report has several very important vertical topics pointing to a myriad of implications for communicators. Spend a few minutes with it.   You can also peruse the case study of The Telegraph that has been following the 1-2-3 model.

Get the full 71-page AP report here (pdf).   

Read a summary of the report here.

June 9, 2008 

Comments

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