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FOLD An open platform for adding context to stories ARCHIVES Alexis Hope Gottlieb B.S. University of Washington, 2010 IMASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY M.S. University of Washington, 2012 NOV 2 5 2015 LIBRARIES Submitted to the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, School of Architecture and Planning, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE IN MEDIA ARTS AND SCIENCES at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY September 2015 9 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All right reserved. Author: Alexis Hope Gottlieb Program in Media Arts and Science Signature redacted August 7th, 2015 Certified by: Ethan Zuckerman Principal Research Scientist Signature redacted Center for Civic Media, MIT Accepted by: Pattie Maes Academic Head Signature redacted Program in Media Arts and Sciences, MIT 'rV -7 FOLD An open platform for adding context to stories Alexis Hope Gottlieb Submitted to the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, School of Architecture and Planning, on August 7th, 2015, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science in Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Abstract News is important. It gives us the information we need to make decisions, provides common ground to share with others around us, and helps us become global citizens. However, there are many important stories we shy away from because we lack the background needed to understand them. Some of the most important news stories we encounter-like the Israel- Palestine conflict, the recent unrest in Ukraine, or the ongoing Ebola outbreak-are complex and require context to understand. Traditionally, news relies on a storytelling structure called the inverted pyramid, where key facts are introduced in the first paragraph, with subsequent paragraphs providing background information. This structure worked well for the era of paper-based journalism, so the story could be shortened to fit space constraints without compromising emerging facts. But is this the way that news should be now, or is this the result of using ink and paper procedures in a world where digital technologies allow for more flexibility? This thesis presents FOLD, a publishing platform that uses visual structure to address the problem of including context alongside stories. FOLD allows writers to tell stories by weaving together different pieces of information from across the web in the form of "cards." There are two types of cards: narrative cards, and context cards. Narrative cards are arranged vertically to form the "backbone" of a story. Context cards are positioned perpendicular to the narrative cards, providing alternate axes for reading. The use and reception of this tool within the context of a 3-month public beta is discussed, and opportunities for future work are presented. Thesis Supervisor: Ethan Zuckerman Title: Principal Research Scientist at Center for Civic Media, MIT Media Lab FOLD An open platform for adding context to stories Alexis Hope Gottlieb The following served as a reader for this thesis Matthew Carroll Research Scientist Signature redacted Center for Civic Media, MIT Media Lab FOLD An open platform for adding context to stories Alexis Hope Gottlieb The following served as a reader for this the ss Csar Hidalgo Associate Professor Signature redacted Program in Media Arts and Sciences, MIT FOLD An open platform for adding context to stories Alexis Hope Gottlieb The following served as a reader for this thesis Hiromi Ozaki Assistant Professor Signature redacted Program in Media Arts and Sciences, MIT Acknowledgments I could not have done this without the support of my brilliant, funny, and kind advisor, Ethan Zuckerman. He already signed off on this thesis, so I really mean it. I also thank my readers: Matt Carroll, for offering wisdom from his many years as a reporter; Cesar Hidalgo, for joyfully participating in this experiment and providing thoughtful feedback throughout; and Hiromi Ozaki, for encouraging my creative and aesthetic explorations. Thank you Linda and Keira, for shepherding me through this and everything. To team FOLD-Kevin Hu, Joe Goldbeck, Nathalie Huynh, and Phil Gara-this work would not have been possible without your amazing collaboration. I thank you for all of the late nights, enthusiastic conversations, shared meals, and games of Space Team. A huge thanks to Janine Liberty, and all of the people who gave FOLD a try. To the all-star Civic crew-Catherine, Sands, Heather, Chelsea, Emilie, Erhardt, Rahul, Nathan, Jude, Ali, Don, Petey, Yu, Willow, Whitney, Kate and more-thanks for always making me feel at home. A special thanks to Lorrie LeJeune for helping me with literally everything. To the beanie babies-Julie Legault and Savannah Niles-I love you, and I seriously can't wait to see what you do next. You are magic. To Deepak, thank you for being an eternal oasis of calm. To Funfetti and the rest of my Media Lab family-thanks for two years of silliness, inspiration, and joy. To Beth Kolko, thank you for your continued mentorship and friendship. It has been transformative. To my family-Julianne, Alan, Joey, Amy, and Andrew-I love you and I promise to call more. To Nicola, thanks for getting me out of the lab sometimes! To Cory Schmitz, thank you for taking care of me, Winston, and Glorp. <3 6 Table of Contents Title 1 Authors and Audiences 69 7.1 Education 69 Acknowledgments 6 7.2 Journalistic pieces, explainers, 70 Table of Contents 7 and event reporting 7.3 Tutorials, experiments, and 72 List of Figures 8 recipes 7.4 Artistic and expressive works 72 9 Introduction 7.5 Other 73 1.1 Motivation 9 1.2 What is FOLD? 12 74 1.3 Contribution 13 Conclusion and Future Work 1.4 Overview of Thesis 13 8.1 Future Work 74 8.2 Concluding Remarks 74 Background 14 75 2.1 Hypertext and hypermedia 14 Appendixes experiences Sample semi-structured interview 75 2.2 Curating digital content 18 protocol 2.3 Remixing digital content 21 2.4 Annotating digital content 25 2.5 Synthesis 29 Related Work 30 3.1 Explainer journalism 30 3.2 Cards in interaction design 33 3.3 Digital storytelling tools 38 3.4 Synthesis 42 Design Rationale 43 4.1 Design principles 43 4.2 Context cards 45 4.3 Implementation overview 45 4.4 Assumptions and limitations 47 User experience and user interface 48 5.1 Overview of a FOLD story 48 5.2 Overview of FOLD homepage 50 5.3 User experience 51 Evaluation 59 6.1 Quantitative observations 59 6.2 User feedback 64 6.2.1 Method 65 6.2.2 Findings 65 7 List of Figures 1.1 Numbered "Tweetstorm" by Marc Andreessen 10 5.1 Published FOLD Story 48 1.2 Vox, a site devoted to news explainers 11 5.2 Overview of a FOLD Story 50 The Memex, as imagined by LIFE Magazine in 2.1 1945. 15 5.3 FOLD homepage 51 Hypertext Editing System (HES) display 2.2 console 16 5.4 First view of creating a new story 52 2.3 Storyspace 17 5.5 Toggling section title on and off 53 2.4 Example of typical Baroque display of art 19 5.6 Text formatting options 53 2.5 First Room of the DOsseldorf Gallery 19 5.7 Searching for/adding a video context card 54 2.6 Public Pinterest search results for "soul music" 21 5.8 Minimap 55 2.7 Description from Pinterest's About page 21 5.9 Zoom out mode 55 5.10 Context menu to link card 56 28 Producer and sound engineer King Tubby mixing tracks 22 2.9 Scene from Kandy Fong's "Both Sides Now" 23 5.11 Link to an existing card or create a new card 56 56 2.10 Ryder Ripps stands in front of his paintings of 5.12 List of existing context cards model Adrianne Ho 24 2.11 Adrianne Ho's original Instagram photo 24 5.13 Edit mode with toggle in top right corner 56 2.12 Margin Annotations in the Vilna Talmud 26 5.14 Preview mode with toggle in top right corner 56 2.13 Annotation of a song on Genius 28 5.15 FOLD publishing flow 57 3.1 Card stacks on Tinder 34 5.16 Integrated social sharing 58 3.2 Acura's tweet 35 5.17 Call to action 58 3.3 Google Now cards 35 6.1 FOLD's web traffic 60 3.4 Cards on Vox 36 6.2 Heat map of sessions 63 3.5 Cards on Circa 36 6.3 Story written in Kannada script 64 3.6 Cards on AJ+ 36 3.7 HyperCard tutorial screen 37 3.8 UI for linking a button in HyperCard 37 3.9 HyperCard bird 37 3.10 Story on Medium 39 3.11 Example of an embedded Storify 40 annotated 3.12 Original white paper about Bitcoin, on Genius 41 8 Section 1 Introduction 1. Introduction 1.1 Motivation At its best, the World Wide Web provides us with breaking news, thoughtful analyses, and connections to people who live elsewhere and whose ideas we might not otherwise encounter. Though access to the Internet is unevenly distributed, there are currently an estimated 3 billion Internet users-more than 40% of the world's population.1 Hyperlinks, the structure at the core of the Web, connect documents and elements together to build a network of information and context. The influx of new web documents and connections between them has grown exponentially, but this growth leads to other problems. There is both too much information for one person to reasonably process, and important information that goes overlooked.