A Study for Non-Profit Organizations and Social Actors

Digital Content Creation in 2018: A Study for Non-Proﬁt Organizations and Social Actors

- A Mixed Methods Approach To The Experiences of New Media

November 2, 2018 Simone Staack Hedelund

Media and Communication Studies Master Thesis (2-year), 15 Credits Supervisor: Bo Reimer Malmö University K3 | School of Arts and Communication Acknowledgements

A warm thank you to Bo Reimer for generous guidance throughout the process of this thesis. Your constructive support and attentive encouragement have been valuable tools. Being a student at Malmø University for the last two years has been a fantastic experience, and I have encountered dedicated and talented staf through a fascinating program.

I am deeply appreciative for all the individuals who contributed to this project, by sharing their time and knowledge on the broad subject of media transformation. The knowledge points provided in the interviews have altered my approach to new media.

!2 Abstract This study explores the phenomenon of new power as a framework for empowerment for non-proﬁt organizations. The concept is coined by social entrepreneurs Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans in their book New Power (2018), and the aim is to investigate the efects of new media today through an analysis twelve media actors experiences of working in the creative industries. Through a ﬂexible study based on the paradigm of phenomenology, this thesis researched by examining new power as a 'black box’—an object of human perception—to arrive at new understandings of the workings of media environments today. The qualitative data is backed by a case study of a niche community in the form of digital scrapings that reveal characteristics of spreadable mechanisms in a networked community. Drawing on dominating theories about participatory cultures, convergence media, and mediatization, the study found tendencies of new media leading to the subordination to the power of prevailing media actors. It concludes by considering future implications for the evolution of Web 3.0, where digital platforms will evolve into a co-constitutive digital sphere where media actors and individuals alike will take action in shaping the digital culture of media, as in the cases of leading digital companies BuzzFeed and Reddit.

Keywords: Media Transformation, Non-proﬁt organization, Web 2.0, Media Transformation, New Media, Participatory Cultures, New Power, Social Mobilization, Digital Promise

!3 Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 2 Abstract 3 1. Introduction | Creating Digital Content 7 1.1. Web 2.0 and the Relevance for Non-Profit Organizations 7 1.2. New Power for Media Actors 8 1.3. New Media Efects 9 1.4. Research Questions | Navigating a Changing Media Landscape 10 2. Context | Influential Participants in Networked Communities 12 2.1. The Harvey Weinstein Example 12 2.2. An Expectation to Participate 13 2.3. Influential Participants 14 2.4. The Creative Industries 15 3. Literature Review | New Media Theory 17 3.1. Manovich and the Language of New Media 17 3.2. Three Key Points For New Media Literature 18 3.3. Convergence Culture and Spreadability 19 3.3.1. Spreadability 20 3.3.2. Storytelling Practices 20 3.4. Criticism of the 'Digital Promise’ 22 3.4.1. Online Transparency and Future Prospects 23 3.5. Literature Review Summary 23 4. Theoretical Framework | New Power 25 4.1. Framework Purpose 25 4.2. New Power Values 25 4.2.1. Participatory Cultures 27 4.3. From Making It ‘Stick’ to Making It ‘Spread’ | A.C.E. 27 4.4. The Participation Scale 29 4.5. Theoretical Summary 31 5. Mixed Methods | Empirical Data Representing Experiences Of New Media 33 5.1. Phenomenology and New Power 33 5.1.1. Mixed Methods and Design of Study 34 5.1.2. Purpose of Mixed Methods Study 34 5.2. Qualitative Interviews and External Validity 35

!4 5.2.1. Semi-Structured Interviews 35 5.2.2. Categories, Coding, and Participants 35 5.2.3. Questions 37 5.2.4. The Role of the Interviewer 38 5.3. Case Study of the Non-Profit Organization MAD 38 5.3.1. Participatory Community, Live Events, and Quantitative Data 39 5.3.2. Digital Scrapings | Quantitative Data 40 5.3.3. Coding 40 5.4. Ethics 41 5.5. Data Integration 42 6. Analysis | Experiences of New Media 43 6.1. Media Production: The Increasing Relevance of Spreadable Mechanisms 43 6.1.1. Taking the Digital Seriously 44 6.1.2. The Tandem Between Live Events and Digital Content 45 6.2. Creating a Sense of Agency: Engaging Niche Communities 46 6.2.1. Participation Scales 47 6.2.2. Producing Content Intended for the Audience 48 6.3. Digital Packaging: Communicating New Power Values 48 6.3.1. Navigating Platforms By Listening to Audiences 49 6.3.2. Co-Creating 50 6.4. Implications of Observations 50 6.5. Quantitative Data | Spreadable Media Analyzed 51 6.5.1. The MAD Community Studied 53 7. Future Perspectives | Digital Content Creation 58 7.1. The Role of Non-Profit Organizations 59 7.2. Future Research of Influencers 59 References 61 Endnotes 64 *Note: Use of Wikipedia for Truth by Consensus 64 Appendix 65 Figures and Images, Appendix A 65 Transcribed Interviews, Appendix B 69

!5 List of Figures

Figure 1: Instagram proﬁles with most followers (September 2018) 8

Figure 2: Example of new power language from BuzzFeed article 10

Figure 3: Example of terror organization ISIS’s social media usage 13

Figure 4: Example of creative storytelling | Paul Nicklen 15

Figure 5: Social media platforms listed by most active users (September 2018) 21

Figure 6: Old power values vs. New power values 26

Figure 7: The participation scale 29

Figure 8: Spreadable media in networked communities 30

Figure 9: Social media statistics: Non-proﬁt organization MAD 40

Figure 10: Example of ofine media going viral 46

Figure 11: Example of extensible media 53

Figure 12: Social media posts with #MAD6 54

Figure 13: Example of actionable media post 54

Figure 14: Example of extensible media post 55

Figure 15: Example of connected media post 56

Figure 16: Example of connected media post 57

!6 1. Introduction | Creating Digital Content

1.1. Web 2.0 and the Relevance for Non-Profit Organizations In the contemporary media landscape, digital content is abundant. New types of narratives, storytelling practices, and platform innovations, are continually created and re-created in the context of Web 2.0. It is a term describing the second generation of the world wide web departing from static HTML pages to interactive web experiences (Techopedia; Web 2.0 definition, n.d.), which has altered the way people across the globe communicate and interact. Studies show that media actors working strategically with new media—media native to computers—have been successful in driving attention to their message (Bickart, Fournier & Martin, 2017; Awan, 2017). For non-profit organizations, the new media environment is an exciting period to reach new audiences and gain support using digital tools to create narratives about their mission. One organization that uses the digital to strengthen their visibility is the non-profit National Geographic. Courteney Monroe, leader of their TV division, says:

“The way I think about it is, I compete with anybody that is capturing somebody’s attention, other than National Geographic… I compete with Netﬂix; I compete with traditional television networks… I compete with anybody who is taking a consumer’s time away from watching National Geographic content” (Johnson, 2018).

To stay relevant for their users, National Geographic is adapting to contemporary media habits throughout the organization. Goldberg elaborates: “We never 'just' produce a magazine story. We have cross-departmental and cross-functional teams meeting to create content… that will tell the story most efectively across platforms” (Johnson, 2018). Their approach to new media has given them a leading position on social platforms, in particular the photo-sharing platform Instagram.

Figure 1 contains a list of the most followed proﬁles on Instagram. Here, the organization is the proﬁle with most followers as a non-famous actor, with more than 92,2 million followers (National Geographic, September 2018). By taking the digital environment seriously, they have become a dominant digital actor with a massive, supportive audience.

!7 Figure 1: Instagram proﬁles with most followers (September 2018)

1.2. New Power for Media Actors According to scholars, the transformation of media is a process of societal mediatization, which ultimately “lead to the subordination of the power of prevailing influential [media] institutions” (Hjarvard, 2008:7). According to the theory, non-profit organizations, like National Geographic, can gain significant influence by embracing new media and social platforms. Social entrepreneurs Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans argue that activists and social actors play a crucial role in the future, because it “will be a battle for mobilization. Those who flourish will be those best able to channel participatory energy—for the good, the bad, and the trivial. This battle will have big implications for people, organizations, and for the world at large” (2018).

One way to frame the new media landscape, is through the concept of new power coined by Timms and Heimans in New Power (2018). Today, they argue, ordinary people can become empowered through digital platforms: “People around the world have the capacity to make ﬁlms, friends, or money; to spread hope or spread ideas; to build community or build up movements; to spread misinformation or propagate violence—all on a vastly greater scale and with greater potential impact than a few years ago” (Timms & Heimans, 2018).

A study by Lovejoy and Saxton (2012) reveals that social media is beneﬁcial for nonproﬁt organizations because media practices help to create and maintain connections, engaging stakeholders, and inviting public audiences to join, converse, and collaborate. Today, many non-

!8 proﬁt organizations are embracing digital methods to increase participation and support. What can other non-proﬁt organizations learn from experiences of professional media actors?

Academics role is to conduct research that furthers understanding of current issues—knowledge that can benefit actors across sectors, such as media professionals and non-profit workers. While the immediate appeal to join a good cause online seem apparent, the flux of new media related to non-profit organizations calls for investigation. Why should a non-profit compete for attention with Netflix, a global, entertainment platform? Research is needed to make sense of what is happening and how it ultimately afects industries, and society as a whole (Collins, 2010:8). Therefore, this thesis poses the research question:

How can non-proﬁt organizations navigate a new media landscape framed by the new power model?

1.3. New Media Efects Timms and Heimans explore cases through the concept of new power to portray how the media landscape is empowering actors and social movements. The authors examine contemporary media efects, not as a zero-sum game where digital media is the sole contributor to empowerment, but through interactions between humans, digital resources, and social media (2018:41). The authors argue that new media will afect all media actors in the coming years, and old institutions, e.g., The Economist (founded in 1843), will need to master some of the skills that have made leading digital companies such as BuzzFeed (founded in 2006) or Reddit (founded in 2005) so successful.

When BuzzFeed was created the media establishment considered the company an unserious news outlet. Today, the digital company is a prominent platform with a net worth of 1.5 billion dollars. BuzzFeed has been named one of the ‘Most Innovative Companies’ by Fast Company, who describes BuzzFeed as ‘the envy of the media world’ (Timms & Heimans, 2018:40). What sets the company apart from old institutions is that: “BuzzFeed considers how action by its community can be embedded in the very structure of its communications. It is a philosophy, not a technology, with the core principle that community members are there to do more than consume” (Timms & Heimans, 2018:43).

Figure 2: Example of new power language from BuzzFeed article

!9 Figure 2 demonstrates new power language indicating the value of the community as contributing to content, rather than consuming it. The ‘new’ in new power, is a change in mindsets on how people collectively can build new structures. Philosopher Pierre Lévy argues that “our world is being transformed by participatory knowledge cultures in which people work together to classify, organize, and build information collectively” (Lévy (1997) as cited in Delwiche & Henderson, 2013:3). Participatory knowledge cultures are efecting routines and requirements for media institutions and non-proﬁt organizations alike forcing old media institutions to pay attention to the media transformation taking place.

1.4. Research Questions | Navigating a Changing Media Landscape I have chosen to study the phenomenon of new power as a concept contributing to the existing theoretical field about new media and participatory cultures. For this thesis, I am interested in exploring issues of empowerment, influencers, communities, and how new media tendencies can prove beneficial for non-profit organizations. In line with the new power framework, Lévy argues that “a new communication space is now accessible, and it is up to us to exploit its most positive potential on an economic, political, cultural, and human level” (Lévy (1997) as cited in Delwiche & Henderson, 2013:8). The research question is designed to support the same positivist approach—to ofer non-profit organizations an interpretation for navigating a changing media landscape with the potential to gain impact.

Research Question:

• How can non-proﬁt organizations navigate a media landscape framed by the new power model?

Supportive Research Questions

• What trends and tools are current media actors using to beneﬁcially drive attention to their cause? • From the spreadable media principles; actionable, extensible, and connected, what characteristic is the most common trait found in the case study of MAD, and how does that support the qualitative data?

I intend to reply to the research question through a mixed methods approach of qualitative and quantitative data. Twelve media actors share their experiences of working in the new media environment through semi-structured interviews. The ﬁndings will be supported in a complementary mixed methods data investigation by a case study of digital scrapings resembling a niche, online community practicing digital storytelling. For the wording of the research question, I have used the

!10 new power model articulated by Timms and Heimans (2018). For the supportive research questions, I deﬁne media actors as anyone participating in producing digital content. Lastly, I use the word beneﬁcial with the understanding of actions resulting in favorable conditions for the actor.

!11 2. Context | Inﬂuential Participants in Networked Communities

2.1. The Harvey Weinstein Example October 5, 2017: The New York Times printed an article about the Hollywood ﬁlm executive Harvey Weinstein in which dozens of women came forward with allegations against him ranging from sexual harassment to rape. One week after the article was published Weinstein resigned. Actress Alyssa Milano wanted to demonstrate the scale of the problem and took the conversation to Twitter. Here, she encouraged any woman who had experienced sexual harassment to share the hashtag #MeToo. In twenty-four hours half a million people responded to her call (Seales, 2018). Terri Conn was one of them. Early in her career, she was harassed by the director James Toback in New York. Conn began researching online on the #MeToo hashtag together with the tag #JamesToback, and found others whose stories were similar to hers. Together with other victims, she formed a private Twitter group where the women supported each other . They brought their stories to a journalist at the Los Angeles Times, and within days an article was published about Toback. After the release, three hundred women came forward with stories about the director. The Conn campaign logged twelve million Facebook comments, posts, and reactions during the ﬁrst day (Timms & Heimans, 2018:3).

The amount of people using the hashtag #MeToo, and the communities created because of it, demonstrate how quickly people can mobilize in the era of Web 2.0 because of ideas spreading through networked communities. In the hyperconnected society, the movement #MeToo grew with unprecedented pace, and a considerable number of perpetrators were forced to resign. The perpetrators symbolize old power actors who before the development of digital, participatory cultures would not have lost their jobs, but because of collaborative action online they lost their power. Examples of influential people who have resigned in the wake of #MeToo include UK defense minister Michael Fallon, Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey, Canadian comedian Louis C.K., and celebrity chef and author Mario Batali. So far, it has not been possible to locate a definitive list of people who have resigned; however, one article from the news site Vox claims that since October 2017, 219 people in the U.S. have left their jobs as a direct efect of #MeToo (North et al. 2018). September 25, 2018, Hollywood actor Bill Cosby was the first perpetrator to be sentenced to jail with three to ten years (Allen et al., 2018).

New power is not necessarily a favorable condition; the opposite is found as well. One example hereof is the terror organization ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria): As an organization, they use media to spread strong beliefs that promote reactionary politics and religious fundamentalism. The group actively uses social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, to recruit new

!12 members by sharing images and streaming professionally ﬁlmed violent videos, explicitly targeting young and impressionable people. ISIS tries to persuade with a glamorized and ‘cool’ image online of ISIS ﬁghters as the new rock stars of global cyber jihad (Awan, 2017).

Figure 3: Example of terror organization ISIS’s social media usage

As a phenomenon, new power has many faces—this thesis sets out to create knowledge about the positive and negative efects thereof. In contrast to the empowering promise of new media, Web 2.0 is also referred to as the post-factual era, where fake news circulates in a fast-paced landscape making scientiﬁc facts even more critical.

2.2. An Expectation to Participate

Inherent to new power is a change in mindsets bound in participatory cultures:

“It is a shift in people’s norms and beliefs about how the world should work and where they ﬁt in. The more we engage with new power models, the more these norms are shifting. Indeed, what is emerging—most visibly among people under thirty (now more than half the world’s population)—is a new expectation: an inalienable right to participate” (Timms & Heimans, 2018:19).

Social media practices are intertwined with the workings of participatory cultures, deﬁned by media scholar Henry Jenkins as “relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of information mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices" (2013:3). For non-proﬁt organizations, the digital age is appealing because of the possibility to reach new audiences—and potential supporters—through the modus of participatory cultures.

!13 Platforms today are designed for participation, making media systems more than merely the technologies supporting them. The culture behind platforms is what drives change. As Jenkins argues “the growth of networked communication, especially when coupled with the practices of participatory culture, provides a range of new resources and facilitates new interventions for a variety of groups who have long struggled to have their voices heard” (2013:15). The expectation to participate is fostering the perfect conditions for a lush media landscape where participants can be deﬁned as ‘makers’:

"We can think of maker culture as the ‘do-it-ourselves’ mindset… We see this come alive in everything from ‘amateur’ pornography, to people printing shoes in their garages using online templates, to GynePunks, groups of women taking care of their reproductive health via homemade incubators and 3D printable speculums… Makers are less dependent on institutions. They ﬁgure out how to avoid the intermediaries.” (Timms & Heimans, 2018:24)

2.3. Influential Participants Every year, the Swedish institution MedieAkademin publishes a report named the ‘power barometer’ listing the ten most influential media actors. In the 2018 edition, seven out of ten positions were held by civil actors that have gained a following on social media, particularly on the video platform Youtube. The remaining three positions were held by media companies embracing digital transformation (Karlsten, Martner, and Rosenqvist, 2018). The report depicts the transformation of media and the shift in power balances supporting the new power theory. Ordinary people have seized opportunities through social platforms to create personal media channels, and individuals have built media universes that exceed the reach of television channels. In 2010, Swedish Felix Kjellberg created a Youtube account under the name PewdiePie, producing and uploading videos, where he comments on video games. Today, Kjellberg, 28, has a following of 61 million subscribers and is listed the fifth most powerful media actor in Sweden. Youtubers are characterized as influencers because of their potential to influence large audiences. The term ‘influencer’ demonstrates the valuable position users possess in new media. Citizens are inhabiting new roles as participants, makers, and influencers.

A web of ﬂuid careers are made because of the changing media industry, and traditional media careers are taking on new meanings. Consider how a journalist today is required to master new disciplines, such as social platforms, digital design, and multi-media training. An example is how the contemporary photojournalist Paul Nicklen works: he is a contributing photographer for National Geographic and supplies content for their social platforms. Because of Nicklen's fellowship with the

!14 organization, he as an individual has gained considerable traction with 4,5 million followers. As a journalist, he uses storytelling on his personal channels where he takes his followers on a journey through nature with a mix of images and text to highlight issues of climate change, overﬁshing, and the increase of plastic in the oceans. In the new media landscape, Nicklen is empowered by his afliation with National Geographic, and is positioned as an advocate for change departing from his work as a photojournalist. His work and creative storytelling for National Geographic has resulted in Nicklen co-founding his own non-proﬁt organization SeaLegacy (Nicklen & Mittlermeier, 2018).

Figure 4: Example of creative storytelling | Paul Nicklen

Technological changes are giving birth to new models, that “thanks to today’s ubiquitous connectivity, people… organize themselves in ways that are geographically boundless, highly distributed and with unprecedented velocity and reach” (Timms & Heimans, 2018:1). The transformation is relevant because it indicates that media actors can grow into inﬂuential, powerful voices with the help of digital tools and creative storytelling.

2.4. The Creative Industries

The contemporary media landscape has been born in the interface of the creative economy, deﬁned by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development as the cross-section between creativity, culture, economics, and technology, in a contemporary world dominated by images, sounds, texts, and symbols (Collins, 2010:vii). New media is closely connected to the ‘creative economy’ and the growth of the creative industries, especially in Western countries, but also in Asia where China and India are playing critical roles in the development of media platforms and, technology. In the United Kingdom employment in the creative industries is growing at four times the rate of the entire UK workforce. Almost two million people are employed in the creative industries, with three million jobs in the broader creative economy including creative roles in non- creative organizations (UK Creative Industries, 2017).

!15 New media endeavors are based on the cross-section between images, sounds, texts, and symbols. Davies and Sigthorsson (2013:10) deﬁne the creative industries by three features: “First, they all require some input of human creativity; second, they are vehicles for symbolic messages as carriers of meaning; and third, they contain, at least potentially, some intellectual property that belongs to an individual or a group.”

A cornerstone of new power is the transformation of consumers to makers. Today, anyone can ‘do- it-yourself’ by ﬁnding creative solutions online powered by collective knowledge cultures. As a result, civilians are innovating entire industries. Consider for example the GynePunks (Section 2.2), where groups of women, instead of seeking professional help, are tending to their reproductive health through homemade incubators. Creative solutions is a crucial principle for innovation, as Davies & Sigthorsson (2013:13) argue:

“In practice, creativity has a lot to do with the context in which it resides—it is far more than simply the “input” of the creative industries (with innovation as its “output”)… Creativity can be seen as the skill to make useful, enjoyable, or beautiful things or a ﬂair for making interesting things happen.”

In this sense, new ways of creativity can sustain audience interest by making useful, enjoyable, or beautiful, digital content (Jenkins et al., 2013). The creative industries and media innovation is broadening the possibilities for making ‘interesting things happen.’ Researchers have found that online knowledge sharing and vivid content draw a higher level of user attention, and initiate “a synergistic escalation of the sense of interactivity” (Yun (2007) as cited in Gao 2016). For non- profit organizations, creative communication can serve as vehicles for symbolic messages with the potential of making ‘interesting things happen,’ like the #MeToo movement managed to overthrow one of the most powerful Hollywood producers by spreading ideas based on the input of human creativity. For the non-profit organizations able to utilize strategic, creative storytelling it might prove beneficial for their cause.

!16 3. Literature Review | New Media Theory

3.1. Manovich and the Language of New Media

Communication in a hyperconnected world is discussed vividly in media literature. When media and computer technology began to converge, academics debated whether a transformation of media was occurring. Lev Manovich is one of the ﬁrst scholars to propose that media is taking on new meaning. In The Language of New Media (2001), he argues that new media represents a convergence of two separate histories: media technologies and digital computing. Manovich refers to media technology as media representations translated from analog to digital code and thereby turning the media into numerical data—allowing new media to be measured. He refers to the computer as a device for calculation:

“The two do not imply each other… Since digital media… most often is used in conjunction with computers, the two ideas became conﬂated. Still, the set of qualities which we attribute to digital media is eclectic, referring to both the idea of digital coding and to the idea of computation. However, the idea of digital by itself can hardly separate new media from the old. What is essential is not that media is translated into a digital code but through this translation it becomes subject to computation" (Manovich, 1999).

Manovich ideas are crucial for the distinction between old and new media, because of the transformation he formulates: when media is put into digital code together with a device for computation, the output is transformed, and the content is innovated. Digital content is therefore subject to endless possibilities of new formats that difer to old media consumption.

New media is still reliant on some old media conventions, e.g., the rectangular frame. Manovich (2001) argues that new media is unique because of technological features such as interfaces and databases which allows users to be addressed individually. To demonstrate the change, consider a family in the 1990s joined in their living room, consuming media through one outlet, a television. Today in the 2010s, the same family might still be joined in the physical space of the living room, but will likely consume media through several devices such as tablets, smartphones, computers, and a television. Each of the individuals can interact with their networked community on the devices. Now, individuals can curate their own space by personal interests with content that, in theory, can be produced by anyone.

!17 3.2. Three Key Points For New Media Literature

The evolution of new media is essential for the phenomenon of new power. Below are three key developments that have occurred because of the transformation from old to new media:

Shifting from Mass Scaled Production In the early stages of the industrialized society, Frankfurt scholars Horkheimer and Adorno (1944), criticized industrial production of culture. They argue, when culture is produced on mass-scale to gain proﬁt for the owners of the industry, rather than using culture as a way of expression, the originality of culture vanishes. In theory, new media represent a possibility to alter the hierarchic monoculture of media production in the sense that accessible digital resources ofer individuals the tools to express themselves creatively and produce cultural content. This development can be considered a democratization of media that extends to non-proﬁt organizations. Examples hereof are citizen journalists that collect and share information to report on news afecting their local communities. Or humanitarian workers around the globe who use mapping technologies to monitor elections, coordinate relief eforts and identify looming environmental disasters (Delwiche & Henderson, 2013;3;4).

Strategic Communication and Individual Agency In the industrial society, a dominating theory about media efects was symbolized by a hypodermic needle. The theory suggests that mass-media can influence a large group of people by uniformly ‘injecting’ appropriated messages designed to control the masses. The framework of new media stands in contrast to the passive portrayal of media users. The shift in focus from the power of the industrial producers towards participants serve a notion of practice “as part of [a] strategic process that influences society and in turn, is influenced by society. [It] allows scholars, rather than studying communication practice as an organizational function, to study how communication practices transform both organizations and societies” (Hallahan et al., 2007:14).

Strategic communication, Hallahan argues, can investigate the tactical level of communication practices and thereby legitimate the work of practices at all levels (2007:14). This approach is crucial because it establishes the participant as a powerful agent that will “inﬂuence the agency itself.” Hallahan adds that societal norms, values, and culture will play a role in how agency is executed. Inﬂuencers are agents that can and will be used by people with more power to cement that power and individual wealth (2007:16).

!18 New Social Structures Caused by Internet Communication Technologies When media technologies and computation converged, the networked society arose. As a term, the networked society characterizes the changes brought about by internet communication technologies, ICT, in which individuals and groups are organized around digital information networks. All members of society have access to high-quality content, and imperative structures and activities become critical for individuals as well as organizations (IGI Disseminator of Knowledge:Networked Society deﬁnition, n.d.). With the language of new media, Manovich (2001) argues: “Every citizen can construct her custom lifestyle and “select” her ideology from a large (but not inﬁnite) number of choices. Rather than pushing the same objects/information to large groups, marketing tries to target each separately.”

Clay Shirky supports the perception that ICT’s are changing society and argues that: “Society is not just the product of its individual members; it is also the product of its constituent groups. The aggregate relations among individuals and groups, among individuals within groups, and among groups forms a network of astonishing complexity” (2008:14).

What the developments have in common, is that the contemporary media environment places the agency of the individual as a crucial feature. The distance between idea and production for individuals is continuously shortened which helps to foster dialogue online and contribute to reciprocal relationships between media agents and ordinary people (Falkheimer & Heide, 2014; Kent & Taylor, 2002).

3.3. Convergence Culture and Spreadability

Jenkins introduces his theory on convergence culture (2006) as a new paradigm, and a framework for understanding the evolution of social media practices: “The idea of transmedia storytelling requires us to think about the ways content is produced, delivered, and consumed via diferent media silos [that] might nevertheless be working together to achieve an accumulative impact” (Jenkins, 2010).

With the theory Jenkins aims to alter the approach of academics toward digital content by encouraging media scholars, and the broader public, to pay attention to the interrelationship between platforms and practices. Jenkins argues that this approach will: “help audiences [to] better understand the shift from a culture shaped by the logics of broadcasting toward one fostering

!19 greater grassroots participation. [The framework] examines how people are playing a more active role in shaping the ﬂow of media for their own purposes in an increasingly networked culture” (2013:15).

Van Dijck (2012:5) argues that social media channels are built on “human preferences, tastes, desires, and interests, that are profoundly maneuvered by the interface features that direct online behavior, while users’ behavioral metadata in turn help to reconﬁgure the very algorithms steering the site.” Platforms are constantly redesigned to accommodate user needs in the form of accessibility and participation mechanisms: “These technical innovations make it much easier for [content] to spread” (Jenkins, 2013:24).

3.3.1. Spreadability

What difers in a new media environment, is that value is placed on making ideas spread—a development caused by the overload of content ﬂooding platforms: “In a world of manic participation, awash in information, and when people are no longer satisﬁed with simply consuming ideas… what makes a winning idea in the 21st Century?” (Timms & Heimans (2018:37).

According to Jenkins (2006; 2010; 2013; 2017), and Timms and Heimans (2018), the answer is held in the concept of spreadability. Storytelling practices are transforming the average user to equal part participant and producer through digital actions such as sharing, commenting, and remixing (Timms & Heimans, 2018:38). This structure forms the basis of spreadable media with the assumption that stories spread through communities as a form of social currency within a networked culture (Jenkins, Ford, & Green, 2013). Spreadability is concerned with the ﬂow of ideas that ampliﬁes on platforms, and Jenkins argues that “spreadability may still include quantitative measures of how frequently and broadly content travels, but it makes important actively listening to the way audiences make media texts circulate through audience interactions” (Jenkins, 2013:20).

3.3.2. Storytelling Practices

Storytelling practices on the most signiﬁcant social platforms such as Facebook (2,2 billion global, active users), Youtube, (1,9 billion global, active users), and Instagram (1 billion active users) (Statista, 2018), build a structure of convergence culture where digital content is remixed, shared, and spread multiple times between platforms. When audiences repeatedly encounter messages and content on several platforms, the visibility of content increases.

!20 Figure 5: Social media platforms listed by most active users (September 2018)

Digital storytelling practices “can now encompass a broad range, including both those that are well established through nondigital platforms and those that have been “born digital.” Digital storytelling could include stories generated via digital tools, stories that involve various forms of networked participation or interactivity, stories distributed via digital platforms, or stories consumed on digital platforms. Digital storytelling could include every television show, ﬁlm, or audio recording, but it could also include media that will be experienced nowhere else than through networked computers” (Jenkins, 2017:1).

Storytelling practices are vital principles for the language of new media because they are meaningful to those who produce and consume them. As Jenkins argues: “Storytelling practices… satisfy our sense of what it means to be a human living in a particular cultural context… We want to use stories in a more social context, as resources for social exchange with people who matter to us... So we may think about storytelling in terms of its cultural/social functions" (2017:6).

A study from the Massachusetts University of Technology shows that “people actually begin changing behavior when [an idea] gets validated by their community, rarely when it has not” (Pentland, 2015).

!21 It is through the concepts of convergence culture, spreadability, and storytelling practices, the understanding of new media is evolving. Social actors can use spreadability and storytelling practices as a tool to mobilize people in support of their cause (Timms & Heimans, 2018:43).

3.4. Criticism of the 'Digital Promise’ The new media landscape do not pose a complete solution to societal challenges. The Arab Spring in 2011 is an example of both positive and negative implications of networked communication. All over the Middle-East, people revolted against dictators. Citizens used digital platforms to spread ideas and critical content about governing forces and to mobilize people by coordinating demonstrations online. Tahir Square in Cairo became a global symbol for social mobilization when thousands of people in Egypt joined protests promoting democracy. By the end of February 2012, rulers had been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen; civil uprisings had erupted in Bahrain and Syria; major protests had broken out in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, and Sudan; and minor protests had occurred in Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, and Djibouti (*Wikipedia, 2018). During the years that followed the Arab Spring, the political landscape has been unstable in large parts of the Middle-East. In Egypt, the democratically elected president Morsi was forcibly removed in a military coup in 2013. Islamist "state-building" have been rising where "state failure" has taken place—most prominently in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen. In Syria, a seven-year war has ruined the country because dictator Bashar Al-Assad refuses to step down, and in 2018, the war has claimed more than half a million lives and made refugees of millions (McDowall and Roche, 2018).

The promise of social media supports means of mobilization; however it does not ofer a solution to political stabilization. Authors, such as Malcolm Gladwell is critical of digital mobilization. He argues that online activism makes it so easy to participate that it all ends up being ‘weak ties,’ as opposed to ‘strong ties' activism where people risk their lives and form deep, face-to-face relationships with each other (Gladwell, 2010). Gladwell argues: “it is simply a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger. It shifts our energies from organizations that promote strategic and disciplined activity… It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact” (2010).

Seven years after Gladwell denounced online activism, the #MeToo movement formed and is to the present day growing. The movement suggests that the digital sphere can function as a stepping- stone to real-life action where people are forming ‘strong ties’ activism in the form of face-to-face relationships, e.g., the Conn campaign. What began as a private Twitter group resulted in 300

!22 women coming forward and supporting each other of- and online, putting their careers and livelihoods at stake.

3.4.1. Online Transparency and Future Prospects

A consequence of the amount of digital content is that transparency is compromised. Who is behind a particular message and why? Suzanne Scott is critical of Jenkins’ positivist approach to participatory cultures, arguing that “new media has encouraged a closer more conversational relationship between producers and consumers, but it has also enhanced the fanboy auteur’s ability to survey his audience" (Scott as cited in Delwiche & Henderson, 2013:47). In this context, to survey is to obtain knowledge about users that potentially can be used by corporations and power actors to target speciﬁc audience. Scott considers how capitalistic forces are using participatory cultures as a strategic solution by exploiting the fanboy auteur addressing fans as friends rather than consumers (Scott as cited in Delwiche & Henderson, 2013:47).

Considering the long-term implications of the changing media landscape, Evgeny Morozov is critical of the prospects of technology. In his book To Save Everything Click Here (2013), Morozov argues that the tech-world in Silicon Valley strictly works for economic growth:

“In the near future, ‘smart’ technologies and ‘big data’ will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions in politics, culture, and everyday life. Technology will allow us to solve problems in original ways and create incentives to get more people to do the right thing. But how will such ‘solutionism' afect our society, once deeply political, moral, and irresolvable dilemmas are recast as uncontroversial and easily manageable matters of technological efciency?” (2013).

The critical approach by Morozov is understandable—the implications of new media should not be considered an utopian ‘promise’ or a normative solution to the problems of the world. However, the changes are happening now with incredible speed, and therefore, media transformation must be taken seriously to accommodate it in the best possible way.

3.5. Literature Review Summary

New media literature on how the digital is changing societies ofer both positive and negative theories. It testiﬁes that mobilization is plausible with new media tools, and ofer valuable explanations on digital utilization for non-proﬁt organizations. As Morozov points to, technology is creating new incentives to get more people to do the right thing. Foreseeing the exact irresolvable dilemmas caused by technology are challenging because of the constant evolution of digital

!23 platforms and media innovation. Instead, I intend to investigate new power as a current phenomenon to reveal tendencies of new media, and thereby exploit the most positive potential for non-proﬁt organizations to gain impact. As Timms and Heimans (2018) point to, the future will be a battle for mobilization—how do we ensure that the right actors are the ones who will ﬂourish?

!24 4. Theoretical Framework | New Power

4.1. Framework Purpose

Timms and Heimans are experienced with social mobilization through digital platforms that extend into live action. Henry Timms co-founded #GivingTuesday, a charitable campaign currently enrolled in 150 countries, where people across the globe financially support causes and non-profit organizations, and spread stories about the donations on social platforms. On Instagram alone, more than 500,000 hashtags have been shared with #GivingTuesday, excluding alternated hashtags in foreign languages, such as #DiaDeDoar in Brazil or #ЩедрыйВторник in Russia. Jeremy Heimans co-founded the political movement GetUp! in Australia in 2005, encouraging citizens to communicate with politicians online. Today, GetUp! has more members than all of the political parties in Australia combined (Timms & Heimans, 2018:58). The authors involvement with digital action and entrepreneurship serve as powerful insights into the practical field of new media.

The new power framework ofers an explanation to the question on why non-profit organizations should compete with global entertainment platforms, in that they argue future power schemes are held in the battle for mobilization for all actors including non-profit organizations. Digital advancements and social media practices will continue to develop, and the future media landscape will likely force media agents to adapt to new power schemes. To answer the research question—how can non-profit organizations navigate a media landscape defined by the new power model—Timms and Heimans' framework is selected because of the relevance for contemporary digital content creation and social mobilization. New power combines concepts such as convergence culture, spreadable media, social mobilization, and participatory cultures, into one theoretical framework— new power—which allows media tendencies to be analyzed from an overarching perspective. In addition, I have chosen to analyze the empirical data through concepts of new power because the framework extends across the spheres of academia, the media industry, and non-profit organizations.

4.2. New Power Values

What separates the old from the new is a change in mindsets. Old power works like a currency. It is held by few. Once gained, it is guarded, and the powerful have a substantial store to spend. It is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven. It downloads, and it captures (Timms & Heimans, 2018:19). Old power is exempliﬁed by the industrial society controlled by corporations who designed the

!25 structures of society, from the work-force to consumers: “To keep the machine humming, ordinary people had critical, but small and standardized roles to play” (Timms & Heimans, 2018:19).

New power operates diferently, it is like a current made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. It uploads, and it distributes. Like water or electricity, it is most forceful when it surges. The goal with new power is not to hoard but channel capabilities.

The distinction between old and new should not be considered in normative terms. Timms and Heimans argue “while these two mindsets often come into conﬂict, we should not see the values as binary” (2018:20). Instead, the two mindsets should be regarded as a spectrum where actors and organizations can consider where their value set matches.

Figure 6: Old power values vs. New power values

New power values the role of ordinary citizens as critical components in a maker culture. Consider how individuals have built YouTube channels that exceed old media in viewing numbers, like Swedish Kjellberg aka PewdiePie, who runs a media company that ‘broadcasts’ to 61 million subscribers on Youtube. Kjellberg built his career as a digital content creator, producer, and distributor, on platforms where his content surges through networked communities. Online, PewdiePie has found a “thrill of unlimited creativity and immediate validation from an online community” (Timms & Heimans, 2018:19). His career departs from old power values of professionalism—instead Kjellberg is a ‘maker’ who taught himself skills online through collective knowledge on media production, video gaming, and so forth.

!26 Another example of the shifting societal values are portrayed in the downfall of Weinstein, the example in section 2.1. Corporations built on old power structures, such as the Weinstein Group, are governed with values of discretion and conﬁdentiality by separating the private and public spheres. In the new value mindset, victims of Weinstein challenge the power of large corporations by demanding radical transparency, empowered by the support of online communities. Through collaborative storytelling, self-organizing communities forced one of the most powerful men in Hollywood to resign. Shirky argues that the new forming structures in society are profound, "because they are amplifying or extending our essential social skills, and our characteristic social failings as well” (2008:14).

4.2.1. Participatory Cultures

The connecting factor between technological advancements and new media is participatory cultures characterized by “relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement.” Participatory cultures is associated with strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of information mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices” (Jenkins (2007) as cited in Delwiche & Henderson, 2013:3). Participatory cultures are the contributors to digital content that multiply across platforms and “further shape the new power mindset” (Timms & Heimans, 2018:19). They are relevant because they form the social current that surges in the new power framework. Lévy specializes in knowledge cultures, and describes participatory knowledge as transforming our world; people work together to collectively classify, organize, and build information—a phenomenon he characterizes as the emergence of collective intelligence (Levy (1997) as cited in Delwiche & Henderson 2013:3). Participatory cultures should be understood as communities where “members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connections with one another” (Jenkins (2007) as cited in Delwiche & Henderson 2013).

4.3. From Making It ‘Stick’ to Making It ‘Spread’ | A.C.E.

Spreadable media departs from previous marketing mechanism of ‘making ideas stick.’ (Timms & Heimans, 2018:37). In the old media landscape, sticky media resemble excellent content, created by professionals, and broadcasted by institutions. While great content is crucial for excellent storytelling, the dynamics of new media awash in information will feature the content that is most popular with communities. In networked communities, storytelling practices are understood through three principles: Actionable, Connected, and Extensible, as the guiding principles of how digital content travels.

!27 Coined by Timms and Heimans (2018) the three principles cover:

Actionable • Designed to make the user do something—more than admire, remember and consume. At the core is a call to action, beginning with sharing, but often going further. Connected • Promotes peer connection with the people users care about or share values with. Connected ideas make users feel part of a like-minded community and set of a network efect that spreads the idea further. Extensible • Can easily be customized, remixed, and shaped by participants, structured by a standard form that encourages communities to alter and extend it.

A remarkable example of digital content spreading through communities is the Ice Bucket Challenge. In 2014, the non-proﬁt ALS Association, who supports people sufering from the muscle disease ALS, made a video with a simple message that spread around the world. They encouraged everyone to support their cause with a simple gesture: make a video with one individual getting a bucket of ice water thrown at them, then share the video with their social network, and lastly, nominate a friend to do the same. According to The New York Times more than 1.2 million videos were created and shared on Facebook during the period between June 1 and August 13, 2014. At its peak, the challenge generated more than 70,000 tweets per day with hashtags such as #IceBucketChallenge and #ALSIceBucketChallenge (*Wikipedia, 2018).

The Ice Bucket Challenge masters the three A.C.E. principles. The campaign was actionable because the core message of the video asked others to join the global afnity group ALS Association. By encouraging people to contribute to a social cause people became motivated to join the ‘movement' (Timms & Heimans, 2018:38).

It was connected because it allowed interaction on several levels bringing people closer and making them feel part of a like-minded community:

1) To their immediate peer group, 2) By linking ordinary people to famous people taking part in the challenge, e.g., Lady Gaga or LeBron James.

Lastly, the Ice Bucket Challenge was extensible, because the format allowed users to remix the content, and produce videos with a personal touch. Examples are diverse ranging from Star Wars fans dressing up as their favorite characters getting water thrown at them, to a man standing on a

!28 mountain with a helicopter throwing water at him, or a scuba diver doing the challenge under water. A.C.E. is the mechanism that allows ideas to spread and as the Ice Bucket Challenge shows is a profound tool for mobilization.

In addition to the three principles, it is essential to consider which technological advancements are needed for ideas to spread. Jenkins argues:

“Uses of particular services should not be viewed in isolation but rather in connection, as people embrace a range of technologies based on if and when a particular platform best supports the cultural practices in which they want to engage” (2013:24).

Today, digital campaigns must be tweaked particularly for the platform actors intend to publish content to. In this sense, great content is not sufcient. Instead, the digital packaging that allows content to travel—elements of action, connection, and extension—will enhance the visibility of the story and ensure it does not go unnoticed.

4.4. The Participation Scale

The new power model is built on a participation scale—the higher level of participation integrated into the structure of an organization the more successfully it will perform. The participation scale is explicatory for how participatory cultures ﬂourish.

Figure 7: The Participation Scale

!29 Step 1: Sharing Connected Connectors To grow in engagement the ﬁrst step is to connect to a broader audience by identifying connected connectors: the immediate peer groups connected to the core audience. Noma, a ﬁne-dining restaurant located in Copenhagen, demonstrates this approach by linking their work-force as connected connectors with their niche community. Their core audience is represented by the guests dining at the restaurant, who share content with peer groups. Noma extends their storytelling by including stories of the noma ‘family,’ on their social media channels. As a result, the digital content becomes a vehicle for symbolic messages about their philosophy connected to the humans behind the restaurant. Consider a mother to a chef from Australia—she might not be passionate about the food served at noma, a restaurant in Copenhagen, per se, but she will feel passionately for her daughter. Potentially, she will engage with the digital content created by noma and share the post that is depicting her daughter. In the mother’s peer group, others will likely feel passionately for the Australian noma chef. The new peers will then follow noma on social platforms, not because of the food they serve, but because of the human connection. Approaching participants of a core community as connected connectors create a shared identity that will strengthen community values and help spread the story about an organization.

Figure 8: Spreadable media in networked communities

Step 2: Shaping Building a New Power Brand The second step claims that new power organizations must build participation structures that allow users to rise in the participation scale. Users are motivated to remix and adapt content by shaping the format of a platform. Reddit is a great example of an online platform that invites users to take part in shaping their community:

“Users share links on Reddit that they ﬁnd elsewhere on the internet. Users then ‘upvote’ their favorite content (or downvote what they do not like), essentially curating their own website with almost no editorial interference… On the platform, more than 21 million votes are cast every day. To

!30 put that in context, one week of voting on Reddit chalks up more votes than a U.S. Presidential election. It is a huge engine of participation.” (Timms & Heimans, 2018:83).

Step 3: Crowd Funding Lowering the Barrier Organizations welcome user needs by lowering barriers and increase accessibility. Accessible mechanisms invite users to join a cause which beneﬁts the experience of participating. Lowering barriers is understood as eliminating obstacles between an organization and a crowd: reaching out to crowds for support, either in the form of ﬁnancial crowdfunding or knowledge-funding and thereby elevating the user to a ‘co-founder.’ It is a symbolic gesture that transforms the donor into a stakeholder for the organization and in return serve the person a sense of agency.

Step 4: Producing Moving people up the participation scale In the new power model, there are three types of participants: owners, super-participants, and participants. Timms and Heimans argue that the dynamics of a community occur in the interaction between the three types of participants. In the participation scale, the owners of an organization are the ones who facilitate platforms, content production, and events. Super-participants add value to the organization through roles as community managers, and event organizers. The participants are users engaging with the content of an organization, and participating in events. Building structures that allow users to become super-participants who take part in producing and curating content will shift the core values to opt-in decision making based on open source collaboration.

Step 5: Co-Owning Achieving Ownership The ﬁnal step on the participation scale is to participate as a co-owner. It separates new power organizations from old corporations by emphasizing networked governance. The digital encyclopedia Wikipedia is co-owned by the contributors, which serve as a motivator for the community maintaining the platform to excel. Ownership is the ultimate level of agency.

4.5. Theoretical Summary

The structure of a new power brand deviates from a model of consumption and is based on an organization's eforts to accommodate user needs. As Jenkins argues: "the companies that will thrive over the long term in a ‘spreadable media’ landscape are those that listen to, care about, and

!31 ultimately aim to speak to the needs and wants of their audiences as crucially as they do their own business goals” (2013:13).

The theoretical framework ofers three concepts to frame the new media landscape: new power values, spreadable media in the form of A.C.E., and the participation scale. These concepts are vehicles for symbolic messages in the creative industries that depart from old power values of exclusivity, competition, and authority. Instead, it welcomes users to connect by bringing them closer to other people and make them feel part of a like-minded community. In this sense, it increases the strategic communication of organizations, by considering media practices “as part of [a] strategic process that inﬂuences society and in turn, is inﬂuenced by society” (Hallahan et al., 2017:16). Therefore, new power as a framework allows investigating how communication practices are transforming both organizations and societies.

The role of individuals as participants contributing with creative storytelling can be considered a development of new media efects, where creativity is the “skill to make useful, enjoyable, or interesting things happen” (Davies & Sigthorsson, 2013:13.) How societal norms, values, and culture are changing in the light of new power, is playing a role in how agency is executed, where “inﬂuencers are agents that can and will be used by people with more power to cement that power and individual wealth” (Hallahan et. al, 2007:16).

!32 5. Mixed Methods | Empirical Data Representing Experiences Of New Media

5.1. Phenomenology and New Power

The research of this study has been chosen to create knowledge of the fast-changing media landscape and how this ultimately afects industries, and society as a whole (Collins, 2010:8). From the outset of the theoretical framework, tendencies such as the participation scale, suggest that new media tools can result in empowerment. New power as a phenomenon has occurred during a relatively short period during the evolution from Web 1.0 to 2.0. Because of the innovative nature of technology, the future efects of new media is challenging to predict (Manovich, 2001; Jenkins, 2006; 20013; 2017; Scott: 2012; Morozov: 2013). It is likely that new media and participatory cultures will develop into Web 3.0 built on entire new formats. Therefore, I have chosen to study contemporary experiences of new media, to investigate the potential for non-proﬁt organizations to increase impact.

While statistics show extreme reach and activity for new media actors (hence the 21 million votes in one week on Reddit; Figure 1 portraying most followed Instagram proﬁles in 2018), I am interested in learning more about the experience of working with new media, the potential for broader outreach, and the positive and negative implications hereof. The phenomenological paradigm allows data to be analyzed “in response to the social constructionist observation that our meanings are shaped by enculturation, and calls for us to ‘get back to the things themselves’; to arrive at new, more immediate meanings by allowing for a direct experience of the objects of our perception” (Collins, 2010:32).

The nature of this project is built on a phenomenological philosophy to “accept the social constructionist understanding of the interrelationship between human beings and objects in the world” (Collins, 2010:32). Phenomenology can be applied to research by examining 'black boxes' as an object of human perception arriving at new understandings, by understanding current ones of new media (Topological Media Lab, n.d.). Inherent to the paradigm is the study of series of ideas or movements that have developed in diferent directions across time, such as the power of participatory cultures.

!33 5.1.1. Mixed Methods and Design of Study

I have used mixed methods to analyze empirical data of media tendencies for “breadth and depth of understanding and coronation” (Johnson (2007) as cited in Schoonenboom & Johnson, 2017:108). Johnson and Schoonenboom argue that through a mixed methods research design the end result entails: “heightened knowledge and validity. The design as a product should be sufcient in quality to achieve various validities legitimation, which refers to the mixed methods study meeting the relevant combination or set of quantitative and qualitative validities in each research study” (2017:110). For this study, there are two entry points of data that represent multiple angles of knowledge around new media. Qualitative data serve a top-down approach in the form of semi- structured interviews with media professionals experienced with digital content creation. Knowledge extracted from the interviews serve as inductive data, as Morse and Niehaus (2009) refer to as exploration-and-description. Oppositely, the quantitative data serve as knowledge points from a niche community as a bottom-up approach of the types of digital content that spreads in the current media environment. In this sense, the quantitative data is deductive and works as a testing- and-prediction process.

5.1.2. Purpose of Mixed Methods Study

Greene et al. (1989) argue there are ﬁve reasons to conduct a mixed methods study. For this thesis researching through multiple data entry points serve a complementary purpose, that “seeks elaboration, enhancement, illustration, clariﬁcation of the results from one method with the results from the other method (Henderson, 2017:110). New power is not a spectrum that can be measured; it is a concept that can be studied to gain relevant knowledge on how to navigate the current media landscape and future implications of media transformations. By designing the study from two diferent outlets, the data complement each other and deepens the knowledge surrounding the black box of the digital promise and empowerment.

Lastly, the study design is a mixed methods approach with one core component, and one complementary component. Although this approach by Morse and Niehaus (2009) has been challenged with the argument that mixed methods should be equal in relevance and data, I ﬁnd that in the complementary purpose qualitative data can be supplemented with quantitative data in a sequential study, where the quantitative data follow the qualitative data. By doing so, the multiple data points ofer knowledge on new media from several levels: the media actors working in the creative industries, and members of a niche community sharing digital content on social media.

!34 5.2. Qualitative Interviews and External Validity

Twelve media actors have been selected to share their experiences of working in the new media landscape. The participants have been identified through one primary criterion: they are currently enrolled in work within the creative (media) industries. This criterion secures that the observations from the interviews are relevant for digital content creation in 2018. The external validity is established through a range of principles of diversity for the selected participants. Participants are gender balanced, with nearly half of the participants being female, 42%, and 58% male. Ages span fifteen years with the oldest participant being 41 and the youngest 26 to ensure the interviews cover a broad specter of experiences, including professionals experienced with old media formats, and a younger generation native to the digital landscape. The participants are employed in a broad range of positions which support an extensive understanding of new media, making the data mirror general tendencies from several entries of the media industry. Examples of participants include Anders Bruus, working as a TV and documentary film editor, Lars Hinnerskov, who works as an editor of a digital food magazine, Anna Skytte, who works as an application Consultant for IBM Innovation Center, Bella Napier, a non-profit worker at Sydney policy lab, Sebastian Gabe, a project manager of a Snapchat channel, and Arve Krognes, a community manager for one of the world’s best restaurants.

The range of media professions show “the environment where creativity is practiced, involving organizational structures, workﬂow, people and their associated networks, all of which may have an impact on creativity” (Collins, 2010:8).

5.2.1. Semi-Structured Interviews

Semi-structured interviews will allow the research to explore particular themes by not limiting respondents to a set of predetermined answers, e.g., a questionnaire (Evaluation Tool Box: Semi- structured interviews deﬁnition, n.d.), and will help participants to elaborate on their experiences working with new media. Each participant is asked similar questions, tweaked to their profession. Lastly, the choice of semi-structured interviews admits respondents to discuss and raise issues that would have gone unnoticed in a ﬁxed interview structure.

5.2.2. Categories, Coding, and Participants

Participants are divided into three groups categorized by tendencies from three distinctive outlets: production, communities, and digital packaging. By dividing the participants into groups, the categories provide a structure that serves as a helpful guideline in the analysis of media and the new

!35 power model. The categorization aid the understanding of the creative industries as developing in the cross-section of multiple sectors; technology, media production, and creativity. The new power concepts of values, spreadable media (A.C.E.), and the participation scale, are used to code the data and divide them into three categories. Below are the participants and the respective categories listed:

• Anders Bruus, Danish, 38 Editor of Dokumania, an award-winning series of documentaries broadcasted on the Danish tv channel DR2. Dennis Petrus, Danish, 29 • Holds a bachelor in Creative Communication from the Danish School of Media and Journalism. Today, Petrus works as Art Media Production Director for the fashion brand Han Code: Spreadable Media Kjøbenhavn Kirstine Bjerre, Danish, 41 • Founder of the festival CPH:Transform, a conference focusing on the digital transformation of the media landscape. Sebastian Gabe, Danish, 28 • Project Manager for a team of eight people producing digital ‘mini-magazines’ for the Vice Snapchat channel in the UK.

!36 Arve Krognes, Norwegian, 30 • Head of PR and Community Management for the Danish restaurants noma and Barr. Chris Ying, American, 36 • Editor of Dispatches, a book series evolving around pressing issues in food published by the non-proﬁt organization MAD. Niche Communities Isabelle Napier, Australian, 26 Code: Participation Scales • Napier holds an undergraduate from the Sustainable Food Program at Yale. She is Project Manager at the Sydney Policy Lab and has a broad background in non-proﬁt work. Nancy Lee, Australian, 32 • Ph.D specialized in gender roles in the media with a special attention to chefs.

Anna Skytte, Danish 29 • Application Consultation at IBM Innovation Center Andreas Digens, Danish, 33 • Director at Splay, a new media publishing Digital Packaging group functioning as an umbrella platform Code: New Power Values between Inﬂuencers and brands on Youtube. Kasper Boll, Danish, 28 • Social Editor for the Danish Vice channels on all social media platforms. Lars Hinnerskov, Danish, 41 • Editor of the digital food magazine Munchies.

5.2.3. Questions

Each interview is structured around ﬁve questions with the category determining the focus of the interview. For the record were none of the participants introduced to the concept of new power, nor did I pose questions about the theory itself. Instead, interviews within each category were designed to foster dialogue about new media and the category topic, e.g., media production, or, niche communities. Examples of media production questions include: Where do you see the media industry heading? or, Can you give one example of your work with new media that was particularly successful, and why? For questions related to community: In your opinion, how can non-proﬁt organizations use the

!37 media environment to beneﬁt their cause/work? For interviews related to future digital packaging, a central question was: What do you think will be the primary communication platform in ﬁve years?

5.2.4. The Role of the Interviewer

As an interviewer, I have been open and attentive to every reply and followed up on relevant details. I kept silent when interviewees replied to questions to ensure participants talked freely and had the space to follow up on details. The pace and timeframe of the interviews were set by the participants.

Personally, I work in the field of new media as Social Editor for the non-profit organization MAD. I joined the organization as a communications intern in the fall of 2017 as part of my master education in Media and Communication from Malmö University. Through the position, I gained valuable insights about spreadable media and community management. For that particular reason, I chose to study digital content creation, to scrutinize learnings from the media industry obtained by media professionals and utilized in the academic sphere. As Jenkins argues, the tandem between media scholars and the industry can help students turn the thinking they do in the classroom into “thought leadership that can support the media transformation and marketing industries upon graduation” (2013:15). Because of my background in media, my objectivity as an author can in theory be compromised. That is why I adopted the diversity principles to ensure the broad range of professions and experiences from the creative industries. In addition, for the author to be experienced in the media field serve a purpose of familiarity with the work processes and concepts of new media, that helps to foster enlightened conversations.

5.3. Case Study of the Non-Proﬁt Organization MAD

One non-profit organization that seizes media for social campaigning is MAD: a non-profit with the mission to transform food systems by giving chefs and restaurateurs skills, community, time, and space to create real and sustainable change in restaurants, communities, and across the world. The organization is built on three pillars to stimulate new conversations and perspectives: dynamic network, events, and media. The vision is to nurture transformative ideas and galvanize the creative potential of the global cooking community (MadFeed, 2018). Their social media footprint covers 200,000 followers, and in 2017 their videos on YouTube were viewed more than 1,5 million times. Audiences across the globe express support for the organization through a multitude of narratives, such as sharing content on social media platforms, individuals writing blog-posts about the organization, or remixing of original MAD content. The MAD community is ideal to study concerning spreadable media because of three factors: 1) followers express high-level of support for the non-profit and their mission, and are eager to contribute to their work. One example is Prof.

!38 Aaron Prater from the Johnson County Community College in Kansas, who contacted MAD in March 2018:

“I have been trying for several years to ﬁnd ways to integrate MAD Symposium talks and articles into the Culinary Arts and Hospitality curriculum at my college. I would also be curious if MAD would be willing to have a discussion about the changing state of culinary education and how the changes MAD aims to bring about can be taught most efectively in the classroom. I currently show videos and read articles in my classroom, but I would like to get more involved.”

2) It is a niche community connected by like-minded people with a mutual interest in food, working in a tandem of live and digital interaction. And, 3) a signiﬁcant number of users post about MAD on their personal channels, spreading the story of the organization.

The non-proﬁt encourages collaborative action as part of its mission: “MAD unites a global cooking community with a social conscience, a sense of curiosity, and an appetite for change. Together, we envision a better, healthier, more sustainable, more delicious world for cooks and eaters alike.”

5.3.1. Participatory Community, Live Events, and Quantitative Data

The study of digital content posted by the community members of MAD serve as complementary knowledge to the experiences of media actors. Where the qualitative data serve as indicators of tendencies and tools used in the contemporary media landscape to drive attention, the quantitative data serve as supplementary data, that works as a testing-and-prediction point for characteristics of spreadable media. I have made 200 digital scrapings of content posted by the MAD community to utilize quantitative data as additional knowledge to test the theoretical framework of spreadable media, and the three principles Timms and Heimans define as generators for digital narratives. The non-profit organization is highly active on several platforms: therefore I narrowed the field of the selected data by analyzing social media statistics of MAD over a period of twenty months. It is clear that their Instagram channel received most traction around a signature event—the MAD Symposium, August 26 and 27, 2018. In the nexus between the digital and the live, the MAD community became increasingly active, which calls for further investigation of the digital content posted connected to the event.

!39 Figure 9: Social media statistics: Non-proﬁt organization MAD

5.3.2. Digital Scrapings | Quantitative Data

To find the answer to the second research question—from the spreadable media principles, actionable, extensible, and connected, what characteristic is the most common, and how does that support the findings of the qualitative data?—I have adopted a quantitative approach to gain knowledge on spreadable content beyond media actors experiences. As the MAD community was most active in August and September 2018, I have identified the hashtag for the event #MAD6 as the primary indicator for the community’s digital actions. In Timms and Heiman's framework for new media, they argue that actionable, connected, and extensible characteristics are the guiding principles of how digital content travels (2018). The three principles of A.C.E. have been applied as codes for the digital scrapings, to investigate what traits are most common among the quantitative data and thereby ofer learnings on digital storytelling practices of a niche community, who share digital content about the organization with their immediate peer group.

5.3.3. Coding

I have made 200 scrapings of the hashtag #MAD6 for the Symposium. The samples consist of screenshots posted before, during, and after, the MAD Symposium event. In total 1396 pictures and videos have been posted (2018.10.15) accompanied with the hashtag, with additional 120 photos not related to MAD. The 200 screenshots out of 1276 resemble 15% of the content posted on Instagram with the hashtag connected to the event, and resembles a sufcient amount of quantitative data to suggest characteristics of spreadable media.

!40 I manually picked every seventh photo to make sure the scrapings were randomly selected. The quantitative data will portray the digital actions and storytelling of the MAD community and provide additional data to the knowledge puzzle about new media and participatory cultures.

Actionable Content with a message that encourages users to do something—more than admire, remember and consume. At the core is a call to action, beginning with sharing, but often going much further. Examples could be reposts but also posts with captions encouraging other people to act.

Connected Connected posts are mainly concerned with messages linking the user with the MAD community. Referring to Timms and Heimans (2018), connected media is an expression about shared values. Connected ideas make users feel part of a like-minded community and set of a network efect that spreads the idea further.

Extensible Content with a message that has been customized, remixed, and shaped by participants, structured by a standard form that encourages communities to alter and extend it. Examples hereof are content with messages beyond the Symposium but linked to the hashtag, such as restaurant visits, or events created in the aftermath around the world. 5.4. Ethics

All participants have given their consent to take part in the study, and to have their interview recorded. One participant kindly refused to take part in the study, arguing that he is not allowed to take part in academic research for the company he works for. When the participant rejected my proposal, I respected his position. Another participant asked that I didn't share any numbers or speciﬁc data in the study, which I kindly respected. As a researcher, I value the participants integrity, and I ensured that all communication was friendly and respectful, and that the participants were treated with dignity. In the analysis, I only quote the participants directly, to ensure no exaggerations or misunderstandings are made. The 200 digital scrapings have been pulled online

!41 from participants who have shared the content without privacy settings. Because of this fact I obtained the scrapings, however, I have strictly used them for the quantitative analysis of this study and not for any other purpose.

5.5. Data Integration In the analysis, the qualitative data of experiences is presented first and followed by sequential data on spreadable media. The aim is complementary and “seeks elaboration, enhancement, illustration, clarification of the results from one method [concerning experiences] with the results from the other method [concerning spreadable mechanism]” (Henderson, 2017:110). By using a complementary purpose, the multiple data points ofer knowledge on new media from several levels where contemporary media actors both function as media producers, working in the creative industries, and participants of niche communities, sharing digital content on their social media platforms. The mixed methods approach aim is to reply to the research question on how non-profit organizations can navigate a media landscape framed by the new power model.

!42 6. Analysis | Experiences of New Media

Comparing the content from the three categories—media production, niche communities, and digital packaging—reveal that the growth of niche communities is a crucial feature currently shaping the media landscape. Participant Ying exempliﬁes the trend by highlighting ‘The Adventure’ podcast as the most innovative form for media storytelling he has experienced lately:

“Honestly, it was this podcast about Dungeons and Dragons. The McElroy Brothers are three guys from West Virginia who have made thirty podcasts. They did one podcast over the course of three years where they played Dungeons and Dragons with their dad, and it was the most moving, interesting piece of ﬁction I have heard in years. They created this complex story arc in 80 episodes that were hilarious, moving and super creative, and something about this live-action, cooperative storytelling leaped out to me as really important in the moment. I realized I was not the only one listening when I saw that they had released a graphic-novel version of the podcast and it was instantly a New York Times bestseller. So there you go a podcast about a role-playing game that became a graphic novel” (September 2018).

Ying taps into a tendency of like-minded communities thriving online. Because of the contemporary hyperconnected society, global users can efortlessly locate fans with a shared passion, i.e., fans of Dungeons and Dragons. New media allow fans to connect, transforming hobbies and passions to assets for powerful communities correlating to the framework of new power. Passionate people are active about their hobbies, and its super-participants drive the energy of a new power community as “the most active contributors to the platform, often those who create the core assets that power the platform and creates its value” (Timms and Heimans, 2018:89).

6.1. Media Production: The Increasing Relevance of Spreadable Mechanisms

In conversation with a Snapchat magazine editor, a visual art-director, a documentary broadcaster, and the founder of CPH:Transform Experiences of changing practices were exposed through conversations with actors currently working with media production. The media production category includes Bjerre, founder of digital conference CPH:Transform, Gabe, project manager for Vice UK Snapchat channel, Nguyen, graduate in creative communication, and Anders Bruus, documentary ﬁlm broadcaster.

Digital content production is growing noticeably in size, workﬂow, and structure. Gabe explains that his team typically amounts to eight people producing content for the social platform Snapchat.

!43 Everyday Vice UK publishes editions of ‘mini-magazines’ specially designed for the platform. Five designers produce the graphical content, including a motion-graphic, a VFX’er (animator), and an illustrator visualizes the content graphically. A video team shoots moving images, and an editor edits the content to fit the format of the ‘mini-magazine.’ Gabe explains: “Think of every daily edition… as a magazine with animated pages. As a user, you click through one page at a time, with a structure we design. We animate stories with a broad range of tools—from animation to graphic design, and videos.” What has changed, Gabe argues, is that “the old website is dying, and today it is more relevant for media actors to publish content on a multitude of platforms” (August 2018). Concerning statistics, Gabe will not share the daily views of the ‘mini-magazine,’ but points to a significant figure compared to websites of Vice.

Considering the evolution of Web 3.0, new production methods suggest that digital communities will be present on social platforms alongside media houses where media practices between organizations and individuals will become increasingly intertwined. It is a tendency of digital storytelling with a creative packaging based on an instant mix of text, images, and videos. New media efects propose that organizations working strategically and efectively with networked communities will increase their reach on social platforms, and in return, the organization will expand their digital production eforts. The gap between organizations adapting to current media practices and the ones who are not will likely grow, and the less-digital organizations will experience decreasing visibility of their message.

6.1.1. Taking the Digital Seriously

Previously, Bjerre produced shows to four existing broadcasting companies in Denmark. When video platforms like YouTube started evolving, producers of non-digital content had to rethink their production methods. She explains: “We saw production prices and viewing numbers decrease and were forced to think about how to gain new customers, and how to produce media content in new ways for a broader number of clients” (August 2018).

The approach to digital transformation formulated by Bjerre is a testimony to Jenkins’ theory on spreadable media. She argues: “What has changed the most in the way we tell stories is when we change platforms. When we shift, we change the way we build the narrative of a story. We might tell the same story as we did on television, but digitally the story should be told in a short-format designed for a specific social media platform—revealing the most interesting points in the first three seconds. Storytelling is turned completely upside down compared to the storytelling in film and television” (August 2018). For Bjerre, the transformation happened not necessarily because she wanted to produce content for digital platforms, but because she was forced to take the digital

!44 realm seriously. As Timms and Heimans argue, digital media practices are forcing actors to rethink how they work and adapt to the workings of new media.

Documentary broadcaster Anders Bruus argues that the digital transformation is not only forcing actors to take the digital sphere seriously, it requires media actors to raise the stakes regarding fact checking. He says actors have a growing responsibility to make media available for the public: “Since a few big global players (namely Netflix and Amazon) began acquiring feature documentary films for astronomic numbers, public service broadcasters are working much closer together to invest in meaningful and relevant projects with a broad global appeal. The SVOD players may have helped put documentaries into the spotlight; however, it is worrying that there are no ethical or editorial guidelines—meaning Netlifx and Amazon are making films available that are factually wrong or based on conspiracy theories with no documentation (e.g., Conspiracy, Zeitgeist)” (August, 2018).

6.1.2. The Tandem Between Live Events and Digital Content

A tendency that is highlighted through the interviews, is the importance of the ‘live’ and the digital realm working in symbiosis. Nguyen expresses how the value of live events will contribute to visibility in the digital realm: “You get the best from both worlds: people can show up in person, and sense the real-life experience. That experience can extend to the social and digital universe, where individuals can share content about the event” (August 2018).

Today, live action, if strategically planned, will afect the digital space and spread on the internet. To demonstrate his point, Nguyen exempliﬁes with a campaign made by the New Yorker brand Supreme:

“Supreme went the opposite way of digital. They bought the front page of the newspaper New York Post and covered it with their logo. Whenever Supreme launches a new product, their fans are ready online for purchasing, and normally their product is sold out in a few seconds. That day, The New York Post was sold out in a couple of minutes. It was a cool stunt because it made a Supreme item afordable for all fans (one paper costs 2,5 dollars). Connecting the brand Supreme with a signature New York newspaper increased a sense of locality for the fans. Today, the Supreme newspaper is a collector's item. What is interesting is how the stunt spread all over the internet. I think people are longing for something to happen outside their screens. Supreme recognized that longing and went ‘old school,’ but because the timing is now, it went viral.”

The key to navigating content production in the new media landscape is argued by Gabe, Bjerre, and Nguyen, to take digital content production seriously. To invest the time to understand the workings

!45 of speciﬁc platforms, and most importantly, to ensure that content is built on a core story, that surprises, sparks fascination, or in some way attract attention in a packaging customized to the intended platform.

The interviewed media actors are experiencing the digital as an opportunity for transformation to create content in a creative way, resulting in an increasing reach on platforms through new media storytelling. As Hallahan (2017:16) points to, digital media cultures as a societal norm are playing a signiﬁcant role today regarding agency both for individuals consuming media and for the producers. For non-proﬁt organizations, advances in media production suggest that new media tools are not only necessary but inevitable for social mobilization in the digital age.

Figure 10: Example of ofine media going viral

6.2. Creating a Sense of Agency: Engaging Niche Communities In conversation with a book editor, a non-profit worker, a Ph.D, and a community manager Several participants point to non-profit organizations as having the possibility to play a significant role in the media landscape. In the category of niche communities, participants shared their experience on engagement, including non-profit worker Napier, book editor Ying, community manager Krognes, and Lee, Ph.D in Gender Studies.

Napier argues that digital tools can be used by non-profit organizations to polish their appearance and thereby resonate with new audiences: “Other non-profits could learn… by putting more money into branding and cool-factor, as much as that might feel like deviating from important work for some NGO’s, I think they would find that occupying a trendier space… could probably give organizations more space to do the work they want to do” (August 2018). Napier point to digital tools in line with Jenkins’ theory about the ability of spreadable media: “[To] help better understand

!46 the shift from a culture shaped by the logic of broadcasting toward one fostering greater grassroots participation.” (2013:15).

In the digital realm, Napier argues, non-profit organizations should aim to find shared languages: it is through commonalities that people with diverse backgrounds connect, and that will enhance user experiences in like-minded communities bound in a commonality of traits between niche communities and non-profit organizations. Bjerre argues: “Passion is the essence of the purpose of actors. Today, media audiences are fragmented, but no matter how niche a non-profit organization is there will always be an audience in the online world” (August 2018).

6.2.1. Participation Scales

Community manager Krognes has developed the communication strategy for restaurant noma (noma, September 2018), which today has more than 500,000 followers. Krognes explains, that creative storytelling can work as a connecting tool for engaging niche communities. For the restaurant social media has made it possible to connect with people in a more relatable way:

“How we engage with our followers on social media is the most important thing for us. We do that with humor and by showing the people behind noma: We show our followers what dishes did not make it on the menu (“We tried, but it tasted awful!”, “It did not turn out great!”). In a world where everyone want to show a “perfect image" on social media, it can be engaging to show the imperfect” (August 2018).

Krognes demonstrate that a tactic in communication strategy can invite people behind the scenes, and take part in conversations about shaping the restaurant—a symbolic message that invites followers to move up the participation scale. The gesture recognizes followers as active, opinionated participants with an interest going beyond consuming the food served at the restaurant. They want to take part in dialogues about menu creation, ingredients, and workﬂow.

The creative storytelling of a restaurant exemplify two methods to engage a niche, food community: 1) It demonstrates intimacy by sharing stories from the restaurant that users would not typically have insight to, and 2) The storytelling lowers the barrier by making the restaurant and the people behind it more accessible. Followers can actively comment and engage, and the restaurant can crowd-fund ideas for menu development through online dialogues.

!47 6.2.2. Producing Content Intended for the Audience

Demands for entertaining digital content is a tendency referred to by Krognes, Napier, Bruus, and Nguyen. Short-format media is structured to present the key points during the ﬁrst three seconds: “It is crucial to get familiar with platforms, and to ﬁnd a fun way to surprise. People are accustomed to scrolling through Instagram with a majority of similar content. The task is to think, how can we use this in a creative way to surprise?” (Nguyen, 2018).

Easily accessible content is popular with users. Even though the Ice Bucket Challenge supported a severe issue around an invalidating disease, it was presented in a fun and engaging way. A tendency TV broadcaster Anders Bruus points to as well:

“The most important cause is to reach the people that normally do not watch documentary ﬁlms or interested in complex, inaccessible issues. By showing a broad variety of ﬁlms on diferent subjects over time audiences can build a habit or appetite for more complex subjects—both on linear TV and digitally. However, the right approach is not high-eye-browed complex documentaries on subjects far away, where it is too difcult to engage emotionally.”

Navigating the new media landscape requires actors to a) be familiar with the traits of each platform, b) ofer content in diferent formats that accommodate accessible and humorous content, that will allow the user to engage with more serious content. And c) familiarizing with the perception of the core audience of a given organization to improve reliability of the content: “As our magazine grew, we came into contact with more collaborators and audiences, and learned that we were not nearly as emphatic as we thought. We saw our shortcomings and learned that considering how others might view things is essential—even if you disagree with them. Empathy can only strengthen or improve your argument” (Ying, September 2018).

6.3. Digital Packaging: Communicating New Power Values

In conversation with a digital video director, an innovation consultant, a social editor, and an editor of a digital food Magazine The third signiﬁcant tendency revealed in the interviews testiﬁes that good content, making ideas ‘stick,’ is not sufcient in a new media landscape. For the category of digital packaging, the participants include Digens, video director for Danish Youtube company Splay, Skytte, a consultant for IBM on future platforms, Boll, a social editor on numerous Vice channels, and Hinnerskov, editor of digital food magazine Munchies.

!48 Digens argues that algorithms and shareable dynamics are crucial for digital content today and will be more important in the future. He shares how he interviewed for a position as a middle eastern correspondent for an NGO with a large following on Youtube: “They were interviewing me as if I would be hired in the 1980s. I tried to tell them, yes, I am a journalist, but that is not why I am here. I wrote an application on digital packaging, and how to get people to watch their videos. Even though their content is not bad, no one is watching their videos—and their channel has 225,000 subscribers. The problem is that they are communicating their content wrong… Producers can make great content, but if nobody watches it, then it does not matter. In journalism you are taught that good content self-curates: if you make something that is good it will go on top, and poor content will sink to the bottom. However, that is not true if you do not consider how people consume media today” (September, 2018).

6.3.1. Navigating Platforms By Listening to Audiences

Skytte holds an MA in Innovation from the IT University of Copenhagen. She has studied technological innovation and tendencies shaping society in the future. She argues that digital packaging is imperative—but before producing content, actors must make a strategy for the channel they want to pursue: “All major players are trying to be on every platform at once… Many publishers are talking about doing mobile ﬁrst—but that is an old way of thinking about it because that makes us think we are going to work with our cell phones the same way in ten years that we do today” (August 2018).

Skytte is experiencing new power in the form that actors must listen to audiences, and how they consume media. Media actors will be vulnerable if they focus on one particular platform without ‘analyzing’ the new tendencies in which their audiences are interacting.

Listening to audiences, Boll argues, is where ‘exciting things happen’—a crucial element for the creative industries: “Our audience is young and digitally native. We write for our audience, but also about them, and stuf that interests them. They are the best source of inspiration and knowledge on diferent topics in a combination of them telling us something and us telling them something” (August 2018).

Media actors today are experiencing that through dialogues with audiences, the editorial team will create the most powerful content, a feature resonating with the new power model. Approaching a community by ‘writing for’ and 'about' them, actors can create social currency within a networked culture (Jenkins, Ford, & Green, 2013). The people being written about can use the stories as a social currency and a form of creative storytelling about their persona. Users are prone to use the

!49 stories in their storytelling practices, because of the social context, where the story symbolize a resource for social exchange with people who matter to them (Jenkins, 2017:6).

6.3.2. Co-Creating

Media actors are experiencing the efects of the influencer culture, where the role of individual agent is increasingly influencing the agency itself (Hallahan et al., 2017:16). The expectation to participate can be seen in the shift in people's norms, as Timms and Heimans argue: "the more we engage with new power models, the more these norms are shifting” (2018:20). Hinnerskov argues that new media unfolds a “new palette of impressions and impulses that are quite hard to convey in writing. It is an intimacy and immediacy we can use to create a diferent, more appealing and engaging story for our viewers to see” (August 2018). He uses an example of creative, digital storytelling that Munchies produces: “On Instagram Stories, Munchies US, will make a recipe live, where they will post the first ingredients, and have users communicate what to make. Then the Culinary Director will make a shoutout to the user with the best suggestion, and the responses will keep ticking in, while she starts cooking according to the suggestions” (August 2018).

6.4. Implications of Observations

Digital media cultures are developing as co-constitutive between agents and the agency itself, meaning the participants and the new media landscape. By scrutinizing the experiences of new media actors working in the ﬁeld of creative industries, it is clear that the changing media landscape is afecting societal structures. Phenomenology has helped to understand new power as a response to the “social constructionist observation… which calls for us to ‘get back to the things themselves” (Collins, 2010:32). By using a theoretical framework made by digital and social entrepreneurs Timms and Heimans, key tendencies of the value for media actors of the new media landscape has been outlaid.

The qualitative data confirm that digital tools are powerful for social mobilization and that digital actors increasingly receive attention, becoming more visible and thereby increasingly influential. While the findings of the qualitative data support the new power framework, it does not argue against Morozov and his critical theory on technological ‘solutionism' (2013). Power structures occur with incredible pace around influencers, but what security measures will be applied if the actors’ power ‘run’ out of control? The Swedish organization MedieAkademin holds that seven out of ten of the most powerful media actors in the country are ‘influencers,' who has the potential to spread personal beliefs and potentially afect a broad range of people.

!50 Lee is a Ph.D. at the University of Sydney focusing on class mobility, media, and masculinity. She points to the visual media serving individual chefs a whole new role in society. Lee is partly critical of the celebrity chef, using the example of Australian chef Pete Evans, who is opinionated about nutrition: “He has a following, and it speaks to the kind of authority that celebrity can give to a chef. I am sure he has some expertise in food, but it gives him a license to talk about things he might not necessarily be qualified to talk about” (September 2018). What happens if the ‘current’—the symbol of new power used to portray how ideas are surging through communities—becomes too strong and society has placed trust in technological platforms and influencers to solve pressing dilemmas? This scenario underlines the role of non-profit organizations—with the mission to improve living conditions, human rights, and environmental rights—as even more critical in the current media environment. Non-profit organizations do not only have the potential to become influential voices online, but also to play a leading role in what stories are spreading among networked communities.

6.5. Quantitative Data | Spreadable Media Analyzed By analyzing digital scrapings through the coding of three categories collected from the platform Instagram, logical structures of spreadable media is explained. Using the framework of A.C.E and the three categories of actionable, connected, and extensible media, I have been able to study the characteristics of spreadable media through digital storytelling practices of a niche community through the content they post to their accounts on Instagram. The behavior is valuable because it serves as a testimony to the forces that power participatory cultures.

The MAD Symposium is a live event that gathers a community of 600 people from 60 diferent countries in Copenhagen, Denmark. In addition, the two-day event was live streamed with 2500 people joining the event online. Data obtained from the communications department of the organization portray how the community actively participated in the storytelling about the Symposium, and is a testimony to the ﬁndings of the qualitative data that points to a signiﬁcant tandem between the live and the digital:

Symposium Communications MAD6 turned out to be the Symposium with the most reach on Instagram in the history of the event. MAD gained 6.000 new followers, increasing from 69.000 to more than 77.000. During the event, 65.000 accounts were reached, with more than 32.000 proﬁle visits. Comments online read:

• Glad to have been at #MAD6 and in my own way become an agent of positive change

!51 • What an honor to be there, an extraordinary impact on all ❤ • Best MAD ever! Congratulations again, feel so honored to be a part of it all

The commentary is valuable to show how participants spread stories about the live by commenting in the digital sphere. One participant from the event shares how the experience has fueled the user's sense of agency to feel re-positioned as a stakeholder and testiﬁes to the promise of the participation scale by inviting users to form the organization, and empower the individual through the community.

Livestream For the ﬁrst time, the Symposium was live-streamed. More than 2100 people tuned in from all corners of the world. Below are some random locations to paint a picture of the reach: Seoul (Korea), Tirana (Albania), Central District (Hong Kong), Ølstykke (Denmark), New Plymouth (New Zealand), Bangkok (Thailand), , San Fransisco (USA), Rio de Jainero (Brazil), Madrid (Spain), Santiago (Chile),, Stavanger (Norway),, Rishon Le Zion (Israel), Caen (France), Montreal (Canada) and the list continues.

Comments from users read: • Greetings from the US! This is great, thanks for making this LIVE! • Congratulations on another triumph. Thank you for the live feed. • I am going to repeat.... This talk (ref. Dan Giusti) right here has to be shared and spread in EVERY SINGLE HOSPITALITY ENVIRONMENT around the world.

The last comment is made by a user who encourages the organization and viewers to share a talk, emphasizing the value of digital content produced by the non-proﬁt organization. The user ﬁnds it important in the moment, and shows how new media can spark engagement with users through the sense of interactivity. It is a similar experience as Ying had when listening to The Adventure podcast: “there was something about this live-action, cooperative storytelling that leaped out to me as really important at the moment” (Ying, referring to Dungeons and Dragons, September 2018). Both experiences relate to the study of Yun ((2007) as cited in Gao, 2016), where research found that online knowledge sharing and vivid content may draw a higher level of user attention, and initiate “a synergistic escalation of the sense of interactivity.”

!52 6.5.1. The MAD Community Studied

200 scrapings from a total of 1276 images or videos accompanied with the hashtag #MAD6, the study reveals that almost two-thirds of the scrapings were related to digital content characterized as ‘connected.’ In the case of the MAD niche community, the data point to digital media portraying connections as the most crucial factor for the live event.

The second most occurring characteristic of the digital content is extensible media. The community has extended the digital storytelling practices surrounding the event, which relates to the notion of a new expectation to participate by remixing content. Extensible media posts resembles 21,3% of the digital scrapings exemplifying content that expand the story of the MAD Symposium. Examples hereof is users sharing their top 5 highlights from the event, see Figure 11.

Figure 11: Example of extensible message

Lastly, the category with fewest messages occurring in the digital scrapings were ideas from the Symposium spread as actionable messages with 16,6% of the content used to foster debate or action.

!53 Figure 12: Social media posts categorized by Actionable, Connected, or Extensible messages

An example of the 16,6% actionable content is the user ‘Veggiebadman’ who reposted a post from the MAD Instagram profile to his personal channel. The post is portraying chef Dan Giusti, a speaker at the Symposium, with a quote from his talk. By reposting the user is encouraging action for others to engage by ‘watching’ digital MAD content. By sharing the post, ‘Veggiebadman’ is ‘participating’ in the MAD community by spreading ideas shared by the non-profit with his peer group. The category of actionable media shows how a characteristic of spreadable media is helping to foster dialogues, by sharing a narrative made by a non-profit organization with peer groups, where another user comments his photo. Like with the case of noma, and as Krognes argues, social media is a connecting tool for engaging niche communities.

Figure 13: Example of actionable media post

!54 Another example of a user taking action online is ‘Katie Bell’ who shared an image of the Symposium accompanied by a caption of how she will spread the ideas from the event and implement them in the work structures of her daily life. The post is is significant for two reasons: First, Bell has made the post because she finds it valuable to share the story of MAD with her community. Second, the post is used to reach out to the people she has met at the conference for further engagement in the future in the light of the non-profit.

The tandem between the live event and the digital is enforcing the power of the community, allowing people to connect after the event because users are extending the storytelling of the original MAD message. Bell writes: “My mind is happily blown. I am determined to prioritize spending time with my community (and not when one of us is working). We must not let the hours win and remember all the energy + ideas from these last days and keep them!” (August 29, 2018).

Figure 14: Example of extensible media post

The power of the community is the primary interest in the storytelling of the community. For every three posts with the hashtag #MAD6, two contained messages connecting users as a like-minded community. Figure 15 shows a group of twenty people smiling at the camera while enjoying a beer. The caption reads: “The delirious faces of MAD6 volunteers” (Jaime Lyn White, August 30, 2018). The symbolic message of the post signals how a group of people has invested their time to volunteer at a Symposium, and because of the experience they are ‘delirious.’ MAD as a nonproﬁt organization is beneﬁtting of this image, because each person in the photo has the potential to share it with their network, sending the signal of the joy and meaning MAD has given them with their respective twenty peer groups.

!55 Figure 15: Example of connected media post

Bjerre argues that non-proﬁt organizations are particularly prone to the new media landscape, because of the fragmentation of audiences. She argues that users today are critical to digital content because of branded content and fake news. Non-proﬁt organizations on the contrary: “aim at educating, serving knowledge and insight for users to help make the world a better place” (August 2018).

The quantitative data of posts with the hashtag #MAD6 acknowledges how social media can be used as a tool to create and maintain connections, as the majority of posts had traits of being connected, and thereby becomes beneficial for the non-profit organization (Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012), in the sense that the community has created a favorable narrative online. To add to that, Figure 16 shows the power of a connected media post. User ‘Manolo.jpeg' is standing in front of the signature MAD tent. The post is accompanied with the caption: “Kærlig hilsen! Honored to be part of themadfeed in Copenhagen and be amongst chefs from 58 countries. The global food community is strong!” (August 26, 2018). The caption suggests that MAD as a non-profit organization is connecting a food community that is ‘strong,’ meaning powerful.

!56 Image 16: Example of connected media post

!57 7. Future Perspectives | Digital Content Creation

Gladwell expressed in 2010 that social movements without an organizing structure, will not amount to powerful impact. Also, he argued that the digital sphere has the potential for tweaking bumps on the road, but he is critical that digital transformation will ever reach the levels of activism as before the age of the internet. He argues that people will not risk their lives for a cause in what he considers 'weak ties.’ Developments of the #MeToo movement showed women risking their careers and their livelihood, ofine and online, in the name of justice. After being recruited online, digital jihadists have taken action by leaving their home and depart to Syria, something that constitutes ‘strong ties’” (2010).

New media literature is focused on the concepts of convergence culture, participatory cultures, storytelling practices, and collective action to frame the digital promise. New power has combined these considerations to explain societal developments with an overarching term for all of the structures. From the outset of the two supportive research questions, 1) What trends and tools are current media actors using to drive attention? And 2) From the spreadable media principles; actionable, extensible, and connected, what characteristic is the most common, and how does that support the qualitative data?, the data point to new media as benefitting the actors embracing the digital, as exemplified by Bjerre, Napier, Krognes, and confirming Timms and Heimans argument that the future will be a battle for mobilization: “Those who flourish will be those best able to channel participatory energy. This battle will have big implications for people, organizations, and for the world at large” (2018). It is a tendency of digital storytelling empowering actors through creative packaging based on an instant mix of text, images, and videos. The actors adapting to the participation scale, Boll, Krognes, Hinnerskov, are experiencing flourishing collaborations with audiences resulting in increasing creativity by making exciting things happen. As the quantitative data point to, a community is active when it can connect through a participation scale.

This approach is in line with the theory of mediatization (Hjarvard 2008) in that new media is leading to the subordination of the power of prevailing inﬂuential (media) institutions; however, it will not necessarily be the institutions playing the majority of roles. Considering the evolution of Web 3.0, new production methods suggest that digital communities will be present on social platforms alongside media houses where media practices between organizations and individuals will become increasingly intertwined. The data propose a future media environment where digital platforms will evolve into a co-constitutive digital sphere where media actors and individuals alike will take action in shaping the digital culture of media, as in the cases of BuzzFeed, Reddit, and MAD.

!58 7.1. The Role of Non-Profit Organizations The quantitative data of the behavior of a niche community in support of non-profit organization MAD revealed that the primary driving force for participants to post digital content is based on connection. It shows a motivation of being connected to actors working for a better world, hence the comment “Glad to have been at #MAD6 and in my way become an agent of positive change” (MAD Communications Statistics). The user engagement support that non-profit organizations can become influential voices by spreading stories among networked communities in a co-constitutive environment.

The research question: How can non-proﬁt organizations navigate a media landscape framed by the new power model, is answered by the experiences of actors working in the creative industries, and the quantitative data of media connecting users to like-minded communities. Navigating the media landscape requires actors to take the digital realm seriously by a) being familiar with the traits of each platform, b) ofer content in diferent formats that accommodate accessible and humorous content allowing the user to engage with more serious content, c) familiarizing with the perception of the core audience of an organization to improve the reliability of the content, and d) allow users to move up the participation scale.

Phenomenology can be applied to research by examining 'black boxes' as an object of human perception arriving at new understandings, by understanding current ones of media culture (Topological Media Lab, n.d.). The understanding of the phenomenon of new power underlines the crucial role of actors working for transparency, hence Bruus comment on media actors important role in disseminating statistical facts, and the good cause. In the dystopian picture put forward by Morozov (2013), technological solutionism has made people trade irresolvable dilemmas with accessible technological advancements. In return, individuals are becoming powerful agents as influencers with the ability to mobilize crowds. National Geographic was early in recognizing the importance of staying relevant for its users and is taking on a leading role of a nonprofit organization advocating for change in the digital realm. Other actors can play a crucial role as influential voices by navigating the new media landscape through elements of the new power framework and by studying examples of niche communities. Hopefully, this can alter the shifting power balances in a media landscape defined by the power of influencers.

7.2. Future Research of Inﬂuencers The qualitative and quantitative data testify to the framework of Timms and Heimans, that participatory energy and community strengthen media actors. I believe we are only experiencing the tip of the iceberg of the efects of new media. In an individualized society, where every user on interfaces is addressed individually (Manovich, 2001), personal digital spaces are accustomed to personal interests. As a results people are able to connect to like-minded communities and people

!59 whom they share values with. But how do these communities and individuals connect to opponents? The current digital environment support niche communities who are able to foster dialogues about topics they are passionate about. In a fragmented society where social divides are increasing (consider the American political landscape after the election of president Donald Trump), social mobilization resemble actions for like-minded people, but is not necessarily uniting societies as a whole. As people increasingly control their own feed, when do they actually engage with issues extending their own interest ﬁeld. Future implications might very well result in powerful niche communities fueled by their own interests, without social interactions across communities. Therefore, I suggest that future research should be conducted on the role of inﬂuencers and niche communities.

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!61 Jenkins, Ford, and Green (2013): Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York University Press. New York and London

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!63 Endnotes *Note: Use of Wikipedia for Truth by Consensus Wikipedia has been used for information for facts on the Ice Bucket Challenge and the Arab Spring. It can be claimed valid in the sense that collective knowledge communities are fact checking sources through a philosophy of truth by consensus, meaning that the crowds have testiﬁed to the numbers brought forward in the articles.

!64 Appendix Figures and Images, Appendix A

Figure 1: Most followed proﬁles on Instagram, Retrieved from Wikipedia, October 19, 2018: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most- followed_Instagram_accounts

Figure 2: Example of new power language, Retrieved from BuzzFeed, October 19, 2018: https://www.buzzfeed.com/scottybryan/27- podcasts-you-need-to-start-listening-to-in-2018

Figure 3: Examples of XXX, Smith (2018): Social Media: The World’s Newest Weapon of Mass Destruction. Retrieved from American Center For Law and Justice: https:// aclj.org/jihad/social-media-the-worlds-newest- weapon-of-mass-destruction

McDowell et al. (2017): Beating ISIS in the Digital Space. Retrieved from International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism: http://www.icsve.org/ research-reports/beating-isis-in-the-digital-space- focus-testing-isis-defector-counter-narrative- videos-with-american-college-students/

Figure 4: Examples of Creative Storytelling, Retrieved from Instagram, October 19, 2018: https://www.instagram.com/paulnicklen/?hl=da

!65 Figure 5: Social Media Platforms Listed By Most Active Users, Retrieved from Statista,, October 19, 2018: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/ global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of- users/

Figure 6: Old power values vs. New power values, Timms and Heimans (2018): New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World--and How to Make It Work for You, Penguin Random House LLC. New York

Figure 7: The participation scale Timms and Heimans (2018): New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World--and How to Make It Work for You, Penguin Random House LLC. New York

Figure 8: Spreadable media in networked communities, Retrieved from Climb Digital, October 19, 2018: http://www.climbdigital.co.uk/ social-media/

Figure 9: Social media statistics: Non-proﬁt organization MAD, Supported from MAD with consent to use, October 19, 2018

!66 Figure 10: Example of ofine media going viral, Image by Brian Zak, Retrieved from New York Post website, October 19, 2018: https://nypost.com/ 2018/08/13/new-york-post-cover-reigns- supreme/

Figure 11: Example of extensible media Digital scraping from user ‘Jwculinarynow,’ Retrieved October 19, 2018: https:// www.instagram.com/p/BnbXe2pAPyT/?taken- by=jwuculinarynow

Figure 12: Social media posts with #MAD6 Percentage of digital scrapings in the three categories: actionable, connected, extensible

Figure 13: Example of actionable media post Digital scraping from user ‘Veggiebadman,’ Retrieved October 19, 2018: https:// www.instagram.com/p/BnVilS_BKy7/? hl=da&taken-by=veggiebadman

!67 Figure 14: Example of extensible media post Digital scraping from user ‘Katiebell,’ Retrieved October 19, 2018: https://www.instagram.com/p/ BnE4uibhurk/?hl=da&taken-by=katiebell

Figure 15: Example of connected media post Digital scraping from user ‘Jamielynnwhite,’ Retrieved October 19, 2018: https:// www.instagram.com/p/BnE4uibhurk/? hl=da&taken-by=katiebell

Figure 16: Example of connected media post Digital scraping from user ‘Manolo.jpeg,’ Retrieved October 19, 2018:

!68 Transcribed Interviews, Appendix B *Please excuse typos—the interviews have been transcribed with care and attention, however there might occur errors.

Anders Bruus, August 2018 Working in the cross-ﬁeld between TV and documentary ﬁlms, how does the new media landscape afect your role as an Editor?

Since a few big global players (such as Netflix and Amazon) entered the scene some years back and began acquiring feature documentary films for astronomic numbers, many public service broadcasters have started working much closer together already on film at early stages in order to invest in important and relevant projects with a broad global appeal. The SVOD players may have helped put documentaries into the spotlight. However, it is a bit worrying that there are no ethical or editorial guidelines – meaning they are making films available that are factually wrong or based on conspiracy theories with no documentations or proof. (eg. Cowspiracy, Zeitgeist). Therefore I believe fact checking and making documentaries available for the broad public (not hidden behind pay walls) is more important than ever, so people can navigate in a rapidly changing landscape, where it can be difcult to fact check sources and credibility of films shown online or posted on social media, YouTube etc. What do you think the role of documentaries will be in the future? There will always be a place for documentary films – in those times of “war of truth” there is a greater appetite for nuanced feature documentary films, that also shows that the world is not always either black or white. Still, it is becoming more difcult to produce or acquire documentaries that gather big audience and gets very high ratings and becomes “talk of the town”. In general people are moving more in to their own spheres of interest – but also open up for new exciting way of storytelling.

How do you think non-profits can use documentary films to strengthen their narrative/cause? It depends on the subject and case. There are often great partnerships and coordination for launches – however, sometimes the involvement of “do-gooders” can take away the focus on reaching the broader audience outside the big cities as I think they to sometimes focus on opinion makers and decision makers (and often also other documentary filmmakers and creative people). As a TV broadcaster the most important cause is to reach the people that normally do not watch many documentary films or are interested in complex or inaccessible issues. But with hard eforts and showing a broad variety of films on diferent subjects over time a broadcaster can build up a habit or appetite for more complex subjects – both on linear TV and digitally I believe. But the right approach is not high-eye browed complex documentaries on subjects far away, where it is too difcult to engage emotionally or see the relevance in your everyday life.

From an editorial perspective, how do you work with social media? DR have moved from using Social Media as a marketing tool to use unique content and often edit long form documentaries into short form - and we are currently focusing a lot of “shareable moments” om social media.

Can you give an examples from the documentary world of excellent digital content? At DR we recently began publishing 7 new high quality documentaries every Monday as a “package” on the frontpage of dr.dk/tv (DRs online streaming platform). The ambition is to start a habit that the audience know that there are new high quality documentaries available every Monday. The collection is varied in genres, style and subjects and a mix of Danish content and the best international ﬁlms. We don’t expect people to watch all of them, but if there is just one or two for the person checking, then we have succeeded.

The basic guidelines are we every week need a “A+” - big broad programme often with Danish context- (such as the Hash documentaries series on DR1) “B” – more specialized – eg on global politics, arts, culture, current afairs. Anything from “The Fourth Estate” to portrait of Danish poet Michael Strunge. For a specially interested audience.

!69 “C” Titles aimed at a younger audience. Eg. “Gina” + 4 other specially selected ﬁlms.

Where do you see the media industry heading? No idea. To hell probably…

Andreas Digens, September 2018 First question: can you give an example of creative media storytelling that you’re working with? Right now I’m working with two large danish brands doing community content through their request forms on youtube. Part of this strategy we have to be present on these platforms to generate trafc on to these companies to their own youtube websites and to their community. We have diferent Kpi for each of these clients in regard to what they want. Were working with a soda brand and they need to get subscribes, recurrent users and diferent users on their youtube channel. What we’re doing is more than just releasing the videos we make, we also make sure to versionize, diferent versions, on diferent platforms to drive the trafc for the youtube channels. At the company i work at, Splay, we also publish the first episode of this series, we released that on our site at the same time we release episode two on the soda brands channel to drive our users to their site, and hopefully they gain a lot of subscribers. Can you see that working? The second season of a show called “XX” where some danish influenser you tubers are trying to make some internet records. The first show we published on the company own channel in three weeks have 175,000 views, which is very high for a company owned youtube channel - i think it is the highest in Denmark. That really did work. Youtube as a future media platform, what role do you think the platform will play in the coming 5 years? First of all, this term of being a youtube or rebranded as influencer, is maybe 5 or six years old, and what we’ve seen in my opinion, that the people who have started without Splay in Denmark, that they grow along with their audiences. Of course, there will be younger influencers coming in and they will attract a core audience of younger people than the people who have been in the industry for 5-8 years. i’m pretty sure, we’ll see their core audience will be older, people grew up with these people. It is the reliability that makes these people and famous and well-known in the first place. A lot of the influencers will be like the friends you grew up with, and when you start playing football and drinking beer, you will see youtube your followers will start do the same. On Facebook, they’ve rolling out advertising that you can’t skip. On youtube a video will only have advertising in them, if its monetised, meaning the people who made the video contacted youtube and they made an absent agreement, they get money from the retailer, that ’s why there is no adveritising on music videos for instance. You will see on Facebook it is non-discriminatory, i think a lot of the video trafc from Facebook, will move back to youtube again. I think youtube is the big online platform for video. You mentioned it is community-based, can you talk more about the role of community? if you’re talking about, who is our core customers, e.g., the soda brand, who do we want to associate Face kondi with, and we’re thinking FK has always had a foot in sports, we want young people who play sports, mainly guys, but we also want girls. so who do we find, which influencers do we see have the core audiences that matches what we want and we predict our core customers to be. We try to make not only content, the whole platform, the community, to be attractive to the consumers we want to attract. For instance, we have Christian Kulbart, which is by far my favourite danish youtube, he is funny, a bit quirky, he is very much his own. You can go no where else online or ofine to find anybody whose got what he’s got, he’s got completely his own brand and own way of doing things, he has young people 14-22,60% male, 40% women. that’s pretty ideal, let’s put him on a content-based show online and see if he can attract an audience to generate some good will for Face Kondi. You can look at a lot of other productions that’s going on as well, meaning that were shooting on broadcast equipment, we have lights, we have sound guy, what I do for youtube would be ready to put on flow tv. there’s also a lot of influence from marketing, where you give a product to a young youtuber and he has to make 5 videos in 10 days, there’s the market for advertising. That’s not what i do….

!70 Do you see Youtube heading in to a format working as flow-tv online? Flow tv has been declining, what can you get on flow tv that you can get when you want it? Whats the upsets to flow tv, opposite VOD. for a lot of years the thing that has been attracting people is sports, because it is happening live and all the rights they’ve been bought by tv stations. We see that moving as well. How do you create this water cooler moment, that people have to tune in to watch to be able to talk the next day. We’ve been seeing that a lot of reality tv on flow tv but that also moving over. Paradise Island, Daily episodes, now they’re producing and uploading daily, they want to create a water cooler moment. You will have to tune in to experience what will be the water cooler moment, you only have one day until the content of the information, is absolute. it is no longer what people are talking about… e.g. this person hit that person, that is old news by Tuesday. I think the dying embryos of reality tv, you can tell how more how young upstarts have started to publish on youtube and sell the rights afterwards. You see that happening with documentaries, with series formats, you see youtube like rasmus bro have, he hired a cameraman and he is doing this show, Breaking Up Me, and he spends the days as a police ofcer and the cameraman follows him and he’s the host, and it will be uploaded and get 350,000 views in two weeks - so that’s a show that’s not a vlog basically. You can tell more of these influencers becoming their own channels. Everything has de-centralized now, and you can become your own channel if you have the reach, and the talent to make sure that people actually watch your things.

I was shooting this talk-show for Guldtuben with Rasmus Brohave, ﬁrst of all, he can’t go anywhere without teenage girls panicking, and my name wasn’t on anything, but they saw us together, and these young girls found me and started following me because they saw me with Rasmus Brohave. It’s pretty insane.

What potential do you see for non-profit organisations on youtube? There is a lot of potential, but it seems that there is still no one who has found a way to do it the right way. Rasmus Brohav was actually in Africa, we we’re doing a big charity show, and you can tell as soon as stuf starts getting heavy and you’re trying to hit a target audience that is young, they will stop watching. You can see from episode to episode, viewing numbers declined and I think that something people haven’t found a way of how to dit. If you want to make serious content for a younger audience, how do you make that work? I understand Anna Skyttes position, but I don’t agree. Because you have all these data points of analytics on Youtube. You have to go back and analyse the data points, if i went back and watched the data points from the africa show, and we could do a re-edit and pretend that we never published this in the first place. With all the learnings from the analysis, i’m sure we could double the numbers. Producing digitally, and shorter formats, is a completely new way of telling a story. If you try to tell a story the way you used to do it to a younger audience, or even trying to tell a newsy story, not a heavy calorie story in the same way you do an empty calorie story, it will not work. You will have to find the way to tell the story to the audience. The whole art of storytelling is evolving, and this whole empty calorie, nobody invented that. Nobody sat down and said — ohh let’s try and … and what we’re seeing now that companies like Splay, and Smack and Hippo, they’re trying to capitalise on what was invented by itself, and they’re trying to take what works and finding a way of commercialising it. As soon as you do that with tougher stories, you have to find a new way of doing it, you have to constantly try to turn the knobs a little bit and do some fine tuning all the time. I was interviewing for a position as a middle eastern correspondent for an Ngo, and they kept interviewing me as i was interviewed and to be hired in the 1980, i kept trying to tell them, listen i am a journalist, but that’s not why i am here, i wrote you an application about digital packing, about how to get people to watch your videos, because people are not watching your videos. You have 225,000 followers, but people are not watching your videos. You’re content is not bad, but you’re telling it wrong. At least they were not living in 2018 in regard to what is most important, content or packaging, because of course you have to make good content and good content the way people uses content on social platforms. Because you can make good content and nobody watches it then it doesn’t matter. Everybody in journalism have always thinking everything self-curates, if you make something that is really good it will go on top, and poor content will go on the bottom. But that is not true, if you’re not working with how people are consuming media. Then you are going to loose out, no matter how great content you make. You can’t make a documentary how you did in the 90es or 80es and this is not how people watch today.

!71 Anna Skytte, August 2018 First question: What do you think will be the main mode of communication in the next 10 years? If you consider whether it is text or speech for example, I think that, for once, if you disregard the platform, every platform that has voice enabled of some way of communicating will be huge. We’re moving more away from the screen, so if you can talk to your device that can automatically translate into text or speech, that is gonna be major if we look ten years into the future. if we think about platforms it is really difcult to say — even though there are some very established players, like Facebook and WhatsApp, you never know what kind of players are gonna come in, especially if they have groundbreaking technology. If you can somehow integrate something that makes it easier for us to go around the screen, you can imagine a completely new player. What we know now, email is going to be less and less used, even though I would like to see Facebook go away, its not going anywhere. It will continue in being a major player and influence how companies and organisations can get in contact with, whoever they want to communicate with. I also think that print magazine getting a comeback. People are enjoying slow media and slow news, it’s definitely not where the money is, but it is where a lot of people who are very interested in certain subjects. It’s definitely not a big market, I can see, e.g., Japan, we talked to a lot of designers and people who work with visual representation in whatever they are doing, they find a lot of work and inspiration in their and other peoples magazines. In DK we are saying and the general west we’re saying print is dead, but i’m not sure it is. In many other parts of the world it has a role that we tend to undermine. Last thing, Id on’t want to say it is the format of podcasts, the medium really works well. We can go away from the screen and being enabled to listen to news or talk to people. Or maybe even listen to a meeting referral, if you could go through that just by listening to it, whatever platform that manages to get that integrated will be major. It is based on the way that people like to get their information, but the more we’re in transport to work or to school or wherever, it is just easier to double book your time with and transportation. The greatest resource we have is time, so if we could do anything to limit or could things together, that’s what really talks to people. What platforms will excel in news and knowledge sharing? For news it’s interesting to see how much panic there is, with newcomers and established medias on general how we want to get out the message. Again, you see that podcast is on a lot of people’s agenda. The old established media from the US, new york times, washington posts, that are still struggling, all of them they have podcasts now. having that platform and being enabled with technology when it comes to speech recognition, and voice to texts, you’re going to be able to have whole new formats. It is difcult, when I think about platforms I think about it in the traditional way, is it web, is it radio, is it TV, magazine, and I think obviously, mobile is major is not gonna get any smaller, at the same time you can continue to make the diferentiation between the platforms. They’re totally mushed up in each other. All the major players they’re trying to be on all the platforms on one. Some do it really well, they try to see what works on a website is not necessarily the same as what works on a podcast or an app, I think VOX and QUARTZ of never but established media houses, that are taking diferent approaches to how their website is structured and their Youtube presence. Video is a whole other area that will be huge, already is. It is about making a strategy for whatever channel you want to pursue. There is a lot of publishers talking about doing mobile first — that’s an old way of thinking about it. That makes us think we are going to work with our cell phones in ten years that we are today. We are saying all these watches and AirPods that I’m wearing right now — if i could give voice command without looking at it, and write an email and make an appointment in my calendar just by saying it out loud, whatever technology I was wearing would capture that, that would be interesting. you see Apple as a major telephone supplier, it’s like the biggest market they have, they’re making apps telling us to use our phones less. Which is quite contradictory, that’s what they do. That means they’re realising it is not the future, it will not be forever, us having this screen in our pockets all the time. They’re telling us, you have been spending this amount of time on productivity, and this amount of time on Instagram or social stuf. And seeing it is always scary, because then you realise you’re spending all this time. The fact that they want to make that clear for us is saying that they are moving in new directions and that will dictate platforms.

What do you see in the future for knowledge sharing environments?

!72 AS: We should put education and knowledge sharing in two diferent boxes. For education, I don’t think everything should be driven by technological advancements, but for knowledge sharing I think that we have to. For education it is this unique place where especially kids get to be whatever it means to be a child and it doesn’t need to be surrounded and integrated in technology. So, obviously, we’re are going to have to integrate it, and we’re already doing that around the world, but it should be a place where politicians and policy makers are very careful. When we talk about knowledge sharing and education in the sense, we pursue to know more about things we are interested in but we have our degree and career, or want to learn something new as adults or young people. I think the physical meeting is still really strong and I think it is going to continue to be, the more technology we have infused in our lives, the more we’re going out meeting our friends and being friends face to face. We might struggle with it because we’re strange all of us, with our social anxiety with FOMO and wanting to be somewhere else because we have instagram. At the same time, even for what appears to be a really niche meet-up for, let’s talk about how to build a hydroponic basement, there’s still 200 people showing up because that’s their passion. The physical space for knowledge sharing is not going to go away any time soon. But obviously, you need to have your digital presence and version of that. It is extremely difcult to find that equation, i’m not sure anybody has found it yet. There’s not one-size fit all — i think it depends on your size, and your community, and your coolness. For example, I work at IBM, there are a lot of people interested in artificial intelligence and the stuf that they work with, but they would never go to an IBM sponsored event, but somewhere like Space10. It is all about the coolness about the place that arranges it and a big corporate event can hardly be super cool, they really need to do something crazy.

The combination between digital cultural capital and hosting events —that works really well. Not trying to capture, the more niche it gets when it comes to the subject you want to share knowledge about, the more people tend to come. What would you say is the most innovative form for media storytelling you’ve seen lately?

I can’t think about anything that has stood out in a really clear way — in general I think that for Vice, e.g., they have a unique identity, and I’m not surprised they have one person who’s only in charge of Snapchat, that means they’re taking the platform serious. It depends what you want to communicate. When i was talking about this coolness, for many, especially consumers of news and content in general, people in their 20 and early 30s, our generation, we’re seeking authenticity, coolness in a way that is young and hip is not enough anymore. We would rather go fishing in the north of Norway or go to New York and going around shopping on instagram. We’re looking for uniqueness, if someone is telling a story, if it seems they are not too commercial or too mainstream, or at least staying true to their narrative, I think that works with our generation. When it becomes younger, you see, it is completely beyond what I understand, I’m still really worried about kids that are 15 years younger than us, it seems like whoever is vomiting on Youtube or is doing crazy stuf on snapchat, getting hurt for the followers, it is working for that segment. Those are going to be the ones with the influence, they will have purchasing power and consumption power and be educated. That worries me because than I don’t know what will happen, it seems to me, they’re influenced by completely other stuf — by reach and having a major following around your online/real persona. I’m not saying we don’t have that being born around 1990 because we do. I still think that there’s diferent generations, Z, we’re influenced by how much tech and social media we’ve been exposed to. What is not very innovative for me is what Vice is doing it. But I understand it is innovative why when it comes to a younger audience. But I like the fact that they take all platform seriously. There are definitely many publishers, people who push content, they are definitely a little bit conservative about where they want to do that, I understand why, but at the same time it is probably what will kill a lot of them. Entertainment, It feels like empty content,That is definitely a good way to put it, that you feel something when it happens but you don’t have to do anything about it. You can just sit back. That is in its way not very innovative in its core, but at the same time, if it works it is a commercial success. What I’m thinking, it’s some kind of cultural capital to be in the know about what is happening with the climate and our animals. The degradation of our planet, it shows that you care and educated, so, even though it might seem a little bit cynical, you should as an NGO still try to work with that. It doesn’t really matter the intent why we appear to be interested, NatGeo or Blue Planet, whether we do it because we really care or we want to show that we care, it doesn’t really matter, because the result is the same. It means that we engage with the brand or the organization, maybe we donate

!73 money or we talk about. The intent why we follow them on instagram doesn’t really matter, the fact is that we follow them and they should play all the cards they can play. Have you experienced any platforms that use participatory cultures in innovative ways

Everything that has to do with conspiracy theories are the most participatory platforms that I’ve ever seen. I’m not saying it is a good thing. Something happens for people when this idea orthougmht they have but it might seem too freaky or strange, racist or sexist, or unrealistic, but if someone shares that thought with you, and they say it out loud, you feel super empowered to do it too. That happens a lot around conspiracy theories. The ore mainstream people are telling you, you’re crazy, the more that being said, the more you believe they’re trying to hide something. I think, having these ideas and thoughts about stuf that is just, you think are too strange, but then someone engages with you, well it might be strange, but I agree, that’s where you really see people engaging and participating.

Like-minded I think, I hope, that communities are not like-minded will have a comeback. The more we talk about fake news and how divided we are in our politics, very inﬂuenced by what is going on in the States. But we’re also seeing it in Europe. Steve Bannon just came here, and he wants to start a right-wing agenda for all of the european parties. I think we’re going to see that happening here too, and that means, whenever something works in one direction ,there will be a counterreaction. And I hope, that it’s plausible that a counterreaction to this division in politics, will enhance the need for platforms where we can meet because we’re diferent. I know I will be a much better debater, around my ideas, for how many bicycles there should be in a city, but it is going to be way more difcult for me if I have that debate with a farmer than if I have it with my friend who lives across the street on N’rrebro. So, those kind of communities they’re popping up on the net and a little bit on apps. Where you state your politics and they match you up with someone with diferent politics and you can go at it - but the whole idea is that we learn from eacahother and we try to respect people more, we don’t only see politics, see people. It will be niche area, for a community to dare not only have one type of stance, very brave for someone to have a debate, a safe way or room, where they can meet up and they ‘re going to come because they trust the space.

Arve Krognes, August 2018 Working as “community manager” for a restaurant, what role does instagram play in your immediate connection with your environment?

«Instagram is crucial for us as a restaurant – it is the best way for us to reach our guests, future guests and to communicate to our followers. As PR Manager, I see that Instagram is the most down-to-earth way to convey a message to the world. We also see that our followers enjoy the way we deliver the message through a casual way – when replying to messages and comments, we see that people become engaged!”

How is the family, meaning the workforce at noma, playing a role in building a narrative online?

Arve: “The family is everything: Our chefs, waiters, and all other staf, mean everything to how we build the narrative online. Noma is all about the people working there; without them, there wouldn’t be any noma. Of course, as a restaurant, it might be important to communicate what we serve our guests, but first and foremost, I feel it is essential to show our staf who makes up noma as an entity. When building our narrative online – ‘the story of noma’ if you’d like – we tend to post photos with staf in them. Whether it is from our kitchen, the dining room or other areas, I find it important to show this to our guests. I feel our Instagram narrative should reflect how we welcome all our guests: When opening the main door to the restaurant, guests are met with warm and friendly staf that all go to the front to greet them with a big smile. In the same way, we see that the people behind noma – all from the dishwasher to our head chef – is important in the message we send online. It is something our followers can relate to as we are not an elitist establishment as such. It is all about the people.

Why do you think noma has such a broad reach on social media?

!74 “It might be difcult to say. On one hand, we have gotten a broad reach because of who we are and our status (former no 1. on World’s 50 Best Restaurants etc.). On the other hand, however, I think the most important thing, is how we engage with our followers in social media. Showing of the people that makes up noma, using a lot of humour. Also, as we have seen from René’s Instagram, I think it is important to show that we are not perfect: We show our followers what dishes didn’t make it on the menu (“We tried, but it tasted awful!”, “It didn’t turn out great!”, etc.). In a world where we all want to show a “perfect image” of themselves in social media, it can be engaging showing the imperfect. In a way, I think it makes us more human and people can relate to it.”

Having food as your speciality, how do you feel that serves as a connector to talk about bigger pictures such as food systems, sustainability etc.?

“As a restaurant, I believe we have a great opportunity to raise questions about the bigger picture – sustainability, food systems, work environment etc. Even though we do not necessarily have all the answers to these questions, it can be a good way for us to start the important discussions.”

- Where do you think noma would be without social media?

“Social media has made it possible for us to connect with people in a totally diferent way than we would have done without it. We can connect to our followers – and guests – in a down-to-earth way. I really think social media has helped us get more guests that normally wouldn’t visit us – and if not coming as guests, we have deﬁnitely made our restaurant more accessible through social media.”

Chris Ying, September 2018 From an editorial perspective, what do you think the biggest assets are when working with social media/ new media? From an editorial perspective, social/new media is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you can get too wrapped up trying to respond to the immediacy of social media or become fearful about what the trolls are going to tweet. On the other hand, social media gives you a direct line to the public and public figures who might otherwise be hard to reach. Social media is an incredibly potent tool for disseminating and gathering information quickly, but it also terrifies me for that exact reason. Can you give an example of digital content that received high engagement from the Lucky Peach community? And why do you think it ‘worked’? Not really. I don’t really know what it means for something to “work” or not work. Sometimes you tap into the zeitgeist or produce something really useful, and a lot of people see it. Sometimes you do nothing you’re especially proud of and people respond positively anyway. I’m not the right person to speak to that. How did the followers/supporters of Lucky Peach influence your work as an editor for Lucky Peach?

In the beginning, we made Lucky Peach for ourselves. It was all crafted in our voice and our image, and while we were all people who value inclusivity and diversity, we really didn’t think too much about it. As LP grew and I came into contact with more writers and artists and chefs, I learned that I wasn’t nearly as empathetic as I thought. I saw the shortcomings in my own perspective, and learned that considering how others might view things is important, even if you disagree with them. Empathy can only strengthen or improve your argument. What would you say is the most innovative form for media storytelling you’ve seen lately?

Honestly, and this is going to sound so nerdy, but it was this podcast about Dungeons and Dragons. The McElroy Brothers are three guys from West Virginia who have like thirty podcasts. They did one podcast over the course of three years where they played Dungeons and Dragons with their dad, and it was the most moving, interesting piece of ﬁction I’ve heard in years. They created this really complex story arc in 80 episodes that were hilarious and moving and super creative, and something about this live-action, cooperative storytelling leapt out to me as really important at this moment. I realized I wasn’t the only one listening when I saw that they had released a graphic-novel version of

!75 the podcast and it was instantly a New York Times bestseller. So there you go: a podcast about a role-playing game that became a graphic novel. Doesn’t get much more innovative. In your opinion, how can non-proﬁts use media as a tool to spread ideas? The way that MAD has. You have this very intimate in-person event that generates a lot of spirit and ideas, and you communicate it to the broader world through this cooperative publishing efort. I think Dispatches is just the tip of the iceberg for what’s possible for nonproﬁts like MAD.

Dennis Petrus, August 2018 Where do you ﬁnd inspiration to make new media formats? I think Lego has a really nice pay-of, Remember to Play, I think to get inspiration and understand the diferent media, it is about getting to know the culture of the diferent medias. so for example there is a diferent way of doing something on Facebook, and if you compare it to continents there is diferent ways of doing things in the diferent continents — what you do on Facebook is not necessarily what you do on Instagram. To begin with, it’s really important try to understand how people are engaging with the diferent platforms. When you a piece of communication for Facebook and you can’t take the same thing without twisting it for Instagram or Twitter. First of all, it really depends on the project. Now I’m in Fashion, sugar water, e.g., cocoa cola, the usb of the product is diferent, so everyone know that a winter jacket is warm for you in the winter, than tooth paste being good for your teeth.

You need to be very clear about what you’re communication? DP: The core of everything is to get the core idea. I would always choose the idea before choosing platform. Because the platform is a tool set. Personally, I like to get an idea before I choose if it should only be on Instagram or Facebook or TV or whatever. Do you think it’s important to use the platforms in diferent ways? For the fashion house I work for now, Instagram is the main platform we communicate on. It doesn’t make sense on Facebook anymore, people don’t use it to browse for shopping, where Instagram, Pinterest, and Magazines. Where do I find inspiration to communicate on the diferent platforms? First of all get to know the platforms and then find a funny way to surprise and use the platform in a diferent way. We all know scrolling through Instagram, every brand does the same. It is always the task to think — how can we use this in a diferent way? How can we surprise? And we’ve seen it with Instagram, back in the day there was no video, people were experimenting with collages or four pictures in a row, it looked nice with the grid, and now people are experimenting more with the snap (stories). An especially brands now adays, live events create so much content. To get back to non-profit organization, they often do live events and from that it creates a lot of content and you can think a lot of content around live events. You get the best from both the worlds, you get to show up live and get the feeling and the touch, and then you have another experience of the content that is created around it. Or a diferent feeling from the live event, you get more out of it, it generates more content. The old company I worked for, Vice, in the UK, they’re very much doing live events, they can sell a big package to the clients because from a live event you need all the practical stuf With only digital campaigns you can sell a few videos and some articles, and that’s it, but you can make it so much bigger doing it live.

Next question: Can you give one example of creative media storytelling you used at Vice? E.g. we had AXE as a client, and we wanted to target a younger audience and they are on Snapchat. Snapchat haven’t really been used for commercial use at the time, because it is not allowed to do adds on Snapchat, at the time. But we were so lucky that we are one of the media houses that have a channel on Snapchat. So we did live content with AXE, it’s hard to explain. It was in between our own content, that we did live content for AXE that felt not generic and didn’t feel like an ad. The content was integrated like a piece of content for the day on Vice. Like an article you could read, but it was about AXE. About something with stronger conﬁdence for Young Guys etc.

!76 Next question: Participatory cultures at Vice? We made a lot of content that very much related to the target audience, for us it was more about picking the right story — the core was to ﬁnd a story that was authentic to the target audience that you talk to. And because it was Vice and Vice had this story, being authentic and underground, it is not like that anymore, we could tell more edgy stories than the client could do on their own. i haven’t really been part of a project where we did that much for participatory cultures. Maybe with Sprite, we asked people to send stuf in. The thing is it takes a lot of content to get people to participate. Nowadays, you have a function on Instagram you have a function where you can ask someone a question, but back when I was doing it it took a lot for people to do something for brands. So we didn’t really have a project where it felt authentic to ask people to send something in. It was always in the back of our heads, it takes so much advertising to make people use a hashtag or interact for brands. That’s why brands sponsor people now — people would rather follow another person and interact with them than to talk to a brand. My good friend Ole, they had a meeting with a big bank, and in the future instead of using a tag line, they have to think like what kind of voice for Danske Bank, kind of like Siri. What kind of voice would it be, is it a woman, is it a guy, is it an old person or young, is a person from Jylland, we say that they are more reliable than people from Copenhagen.

Now there is really voice for the brands, physically. In the future we are going to interact with voice interactions it’s hard for the brands to actually have a voice. Where that is why you’re starting to sponsor people and tapping into the engagement that single handed people have gotten today. Using personal channels instead of big corporation channels.

Next question: the future, where do you see the media industry heading? I think we are going to have a problem, media companies are going to be smaller, and there will be more of them. There will not be big ones that you trust any more. Nowadays with the internet, even though you are a geek that likes to collect coins from the street, you would ﬁnd another geek in the other end of the world who likes the same coins of you. I don’t think we will have big media corporations dictating what people like anymore, I think it is going to be divided much more in niches. We don’t want everything given to us from one company any more. You can’t have Vice that has 15 channels anymore, you are going to have speciﬁc media companies whatever they are really good at and a lot more of them.

Last question: Have you seen any innovative, creative form of media storytelling you would like to share? Supreme, the clothing company and skateboarding, they went the opposite way of digital. Nowadays if you do something live it will have an efect and spread on the internet as well. They bought the cover of Times Magazine with a logo of Supreme — supreme is from new york, and known for being the new yorker brand, it was so nice stunt. Everything they put out are sold out in a few seconds and people sit online and wait. New York Times was sold out within a couple of minutes because news papers only cost one dollar. Now it is a collectors item, that news paper from that day. And it was all over the internet afterwards. Back to the live thing - we also miss that something happens outside the screen, this went the opposite way, instead of doing some digitally they made something ofine go digital. It was such a super simple thing, they just covered the newspaper with their logo on. it was such a brand thing, it is so well known for being the New Yorker brand, and now they capitalise on New York in crazy ass ways, like the times. it was a really cool stunt, and kind of old school way of doing it, but because the timing is now, it was cool that they went back and did something online which went viral afterwards.

!77 Isabelle Napier, August 2018 Why you think the content of non-proﬁt organization MAD continues to be watched year after year on platforms? It is watched year after year because it has a sort of evergreen resident with an audience that is looking for inspiration on a number of diferent levels. It is broad enough that it can apply to diferent age groups, dipperent junctions and careers across food systems and beyond who are looking to learn more about leadership. And I think stylistically it hits upon all sort of trendy, now aesthetic+s and topics that it mean it crops up on google searches with keywords such as sustainability and chefs, and various names like Ferran Adria, keep the material fairly well used upon the world wide web. People looking with inspiration for leadership, how do you see non-proﬁt organizations role providing digital content for that? I think MAD’s videos are inspired by a format which people have gone to for new ideas ever since media like videos and video sharing platforms, which is ted talks. It is a very familiar place to go for bite-sized lessons that you can take away and apply broadly in some aspect of your life. I think that the speakers MAD has put in the spotlight, or has done in its better known renditions, are people who are known for leadership in other areas, and not just in the food world but outside it. Example Joan Andreas is know as a leader in the humanitarian world, as well as a chef who leads a tight ship in his kitchens.

MAD does quite a good job in its branding. It is the work of people like Jan, him aesthetically in speaking to a broad audience that is not just high cuisine. I mean obviously part of the target and where some of the appeal comes from, but there is certainly a big intrigue from other professions and sectors as well. The emphasis I would put, they are produced on a familiar format or model, so people look subconsciously at a MAD video, they see one person on stage, it is all about the power of one,, and the narrative of one, and they think TED talks and the form that has excited in novels and narrative before videos where ever available as a place where you go for lessons in leadership. Where could MAD improve regarding their media content I think that MAD could easily its community producing more content for it. And there is ways of controlling and structuring it so it would be on brand. Of course, it is a lot of efort and evolves stratetigizing and rethinking a lot of stuf. But I do think that there are all sorts of opportunities for maD to create some very structured streams for both its events and its media. So that might a series a guest op-eds in NEW YORK TIMEs, if you’re able to secure that, financial times, or the guardian. And then positioning, curating this op-edas they accompany an event series which is tailored to deal with the issues in the opens. At the same time as you run the general streams of media and events, that is big talks, big heads on stage, videos that get ridicouls number of hits because they’re pretty or inspiring or big names. At the same time where you run streams of skill building or skill acquisitions for specific parts of the sector. If you could define those things well, MAD has this captive audience that it could invite in, not just to comment on, but actually be involved int he production of that content. And the technology is there for it, it would be pretty cool. All of that stuf could look like anything, it could be opens, or podcasts, or takeovers on instagram, it could be some sort form online for things to be streamed live, for people to be commenting and tweeting to be engaged in events, while theyre not actually there in person. It could be like university courses, where MAD is contributing a number of modules. Supposed to be in keeping with my suggestion that the community should be involved in that, you would also want to crowdsource from the community itself. Thoughts above other media actors could learn from MAD, particularly non-profits? The rest of the NGO world, from which MAD is quite disconnected, is very much about how do we help. It is a culture of helping, a culture of underfunded marginilazed people who are working at the edges to try and achieve something in a organisational structure that is not fostered by society at large. I think MAD folds out sides of that models, in that it is not about — it is an organization by chefs, for chefs, creates diferent sense of empowerment, it is more about how people help themselves. Rather than, donate money to us so that we can do this work for people who don’t have the means to help themselves. Which of course in some cases is actually the case, but I think other non-profits can learn a bit from this sort of inspirational, go-getting tone of MAD, which I think probably helps in its fundraising. MAD has this celebrity power, which does push it forward in realms, and presumably allows big events like lifestreams and where people will come all the way to

!78 Copenhagen for it. Other non-profits could learn from it by putting a bit more money into their branding and cool-factor, as much as that might feels like deviating from important work for some of the NGOS, they would find that if they could occupy a trendier space, as sad as that is, they could probably have more space to do the work they want to do. The attention MAD has paid to its audience and branding and to selection of speakers and venues and aesthetics and so on, it is not something that would resonate with traditional NGOS and they could make themselves more polished by doing that. How has MAD used a tool to spread their ideas and to share knowledge? I’m trying to make a distinction from the way Rene uses social media and the way that MAD does, and I don’t think they are that diferent. Rene sorts of takes his personal explorations and then shares them with the world, and that is his form of knowledge. I think, MAD encourages its audience to create the knowledge by a way of the composition of the audience. There is this one- man video that exists at the same time there are events where the feeling is quite participatory, intentionally so, and the sense is sort of, we create knowledge, when we talk to each other in the same room. Which is sort of the same feeling the organization i’m working at now too. I think it is the directions that power structures need to go generally in the world, and with the media tools that we have at our finger tips.

The organization i work for is called the sydney policy lab, at Sydney University. It exists to do a number of things, more broadly to create more space for really big ideas. At university and also in policy making arenas, which seem to be edged out by the day to day the politics are doing academic research. It exists to create partnership between people who usually work in isolation, in the sense that MAD has attempted to do that for chefs, by putting them in the same room, policy lab wants to do that by taking budding relationships between dademics and politicians, or academics and community groups, and having them carve out space for their research and the impact it might have. Say an academic has funding money to do research on the experience of disabled people in a state government context, they would be required to find the advocacy group who are working with those disabled people and involve them in the process from the very beginning as well as the policy makers. So you end up with a better chance of the political scene reflecting or being an accurate mirror of what is actually going on in people’s live. Media is an important tool, because most scholars don’t know how to communicate on it, and they live in a world of jargon and complex terms that can be very alienating to people that their academic research actually have a bearing on. Alienating to politicians and policy makers who are always encouraged to talk to elections cycles and voters who have very short attention spans who would want them get out and vote. Finding shared languages I think is where media play an important role for all of these people. And we are still trying to figure out how to do that, and part of that is simply, teaching academics to use Twitter, and Instagram, teaching them when they publish something they should also write a newspaper article that simplifies it for everyone to read. Part of it is much deeper relationship building work, and I’m not sure what media to use for that.

Lars Hinnerskov, August 2018 From an editorial perspective what is the most interesting when working with new media? LH: In a way, to be completely disappointing, I think good storytelling, coming from an old media background, I don’t see a huge diference between the way you want to tell a story, or at least the premise of the story, think of it as a classic written article, or whether it is a snapchat instagram story or whether it is a video, I still think the essence of a good story is universal, whatever what kind of shape or form you put stuf into. The problem working with new media, is that you always try and catch up with new media, so people put, not to get all marshal clewing, the media before the message, which is never going to work. We see it quite often with the videos we do, is that we must tell the story through videos or whatever, and again and again it comes down you have to tell a good story, in a clear, and concise and egaging and funny way. Not to go all beef on your question, but I think that when you work with new media you have to keep that in mind so technology doesn’t drive you to a point where the essence of good journalism is lost. Having said that, it opens you up to a whole new palette of impressions and impulses that are quite hard to convey in writing sometimes. This is an intimacy and immediacy we can use, especially working with something that is so viciral, like food and drinks, you can create a whole diferent much more appealing and engaging story for our viewers to see.

!79 You touched upon with new media, the interesting part is that you can tell stories from diferent places etc. I am researching in participatory cultures, and I wanted to hear if you can touch upon participatory journalism. LH: I’m not even sure we’re the best example in that way. It is something that we talk about, but I don’t think we utilise it enough here in Denmark at least. Our colleagues at the U.S. do it a lot more. Traditionally, we did recipe in a very straight up way. Chef stands up, cracks a few jokes, etc etc. Maybe it is a funny, rapper, or a clean cut chef from noma. But now increasingly our recipes are promoted on Instagram stories, where you can flip through step by step. What we’ve been trying to grabbing stable products in the test kitchen, they will throw out the first ingredients int he first post, tell us what we should make. Then our culinary director will take out and say this user suggested this, and the responses will keep ticking in, and she will start cooking with the suggestions and so forth. They’re not doing fermented carrot glazed in beach herb sauce, they’re doing icecream wafes and lots of sticky goodness that really appeals to our viewers. That is a really good form for participatory journalism and for a media. Our readers have a lot of inputs and opinions, but here they actually have an input on the creation, elevating their comments from the feed. And that is something we try to do here in Copenhagen as well. Where do you look for inspiration to develop media formats and to tell stories in diferent views? LH: I look across the table and look at my social editor and ask what are the kids up to these days. I must admit I am far from being at the fore-front of new media formats and the potential for some of these new channels. I think my main objective when I try to find a good story is the core of a good story. How we end up presenting that or working with that is much more by the inputs of my colleagues. I suppose in terms of researching stories and finding stories, Instagram is very essential. It is where you find out if a chef has come up with something really weird to do. There are private Facebook groups where people are obsessed with certain kinds of foods and eating behaviours. In terms of finding inspiration of the package, I think we are not at the fore-front, we’re playing catchup. I would love to do more, and look at Vox for example. The stuf they do, explanatory pieces and explainers and stuf like that, but you’ll get better answers

Last question: Do you think that food media is booming and if so why? LH: Of course, I think, this is the most interesting ﬁeld. Food media in DK has been stuck in such an aerhacic way of describing and talking about food. It’s been print it’s been bordeaux testing and reserved for graying demographics. It is such a contradictory issue, because food is super visceral, and visual, super emotional, and it is very hard to convey that. You can have great writers, there’s nothing better than sitting down and reading Marcel Proust if you want to read food as poetry, but I think new media has allowed people to create content that liberates itself from traditional print. Exactly because you can show videos, you can show images, you can show the colours and the steps, you can be out in a small boat in the middle of the arctic and you can see where a scallop is being caught, or you can be a kid in london and go around to every Kentucky Fried Chicken shop. You can run over the establishment and make them, including us, look really silly. I think that is why the boom has happened so much in food media, there’s been such a potential that has been unfulﬁlled. I think it is quite liberating and I mean there are new food websites coming up and I’m sure there will be someone to launch something soon. It will be the chicken guy in london or like my 12-year old niece wants to do cafe reviews in Amager with her friends there’s nothing cooler to do and I’m sure it will be way more successful than I can ever dream of. it is not to glorify amateurism in the sense that it is all about substantiated by good story telling or engaging presentations of food, that will prevail I think.

Kasper Boll, August 2018 Give a few examples of your work that use media in a creative way, diferent from old media? KB: The best example of creative media storytelling, recently we did a festival coverage on Roskilde Festival. One of the verticals from our four media outlets, which is vice.com, we’ve been down on resources recently. We didn’t have the resources to do video production for that speciﬁc media at the festival. We tried to brainstorm on how to make something that didn’t take any production time or resources, and we still would be able to push out video formats. I brainstormed on that, and we launched something called the Vice voicemail. The idea was to crowdsource, get our audience to contribute with content. We launched the voicemail, where people from the festival could call and tell us with diferent stories, with diferent angles for the before the festival and during. People called us and left a message for their mom who hadn’t heard from them in four days. And we we’re able to, with simple b-roll content, to push the audio out as video content. And that went really well and we didn’t really use any resources on it. In total I think we had a 100,000 views across

!80 platforms. That is an example where we could produce something we few resources and with the help of our media department. Another way of creative way of storytelling, we did a coverage of the recent burqa ban in Denmark. The combination of how we covered it - we did stuf before the ban became active, and we had opinions from people that would be aficted because of the law, and we went to a workshop with the people who were protesting against the burqa ban, and did like a photo- series where you could see how all the people would dress up during the protests. We did an instagram takeover with a journalist who followed the whole process. We had an illustrator who was working with a Facebook layover where you could apply a burqa or diferent kind of masks to your Facebook proﬁle picture. And that went really well. I think the combination of diferent kind of content on diferent platforms made the overall coverage very creative. Do you use participation as a tool to engage the audience? KB: Especially because our audience is pretty young, and social and digitally native. The people we write about in general, we write for our audience but also about them and stuf that interests them. They are the best source of inspiration and knowledge on diferent topics. It is a combination of us telling them something and them telling us something. The dialogue between us and our audience that’s where the best content is created. For example, on a daily basis we have our audience pitch ideas for us. They write our Facebook proﬁle or direct messages on instagram. Especially our music channel, has people writing to it and pitching their diferent projects in terms of music. That’s a valid source for us to dive into diferent projects. Of course there’s also a lot of trash as well that I’m gatekeeping. Then I’m also kind of the judge - is it something I should send through to the editors or if we should just say thank you for the notice and leave it. That synergy between us and the audience is pretty important.

Where do you see the media industry heading? KB: that is a very broad question, from my point of view, what I experience generally and on a daily basis, especially in terms of content, and content is king they say. I see a lot of branded content, it is important for us as a media outlet, of course there’s diferent business models, but for us it’s become important to earn some money to produce the content that we want. The whole synergy between advertisement and journalism has become a grey-zone and more branded content is popping up. In terms of articles we have advortial content, people paying someone, not the editorial team that would be illegal, but someone to write about some of their stuf in a tone of voice that resembles our media and then we push it out as dark posts on Facebook. Dark posts are when we don’t post directly on our Facebook page, not organically posted, but set up as a campaign through our business manager and through our add accounts. The quest here is of course, we’ve been doing it for a while, and we’ve become better at it, is to make stuf that our readers want to read even though it is sponsored for, let’s say Durex or JustEat, and the quest is of course, to make it resemble it stuf for that’s interesting to our readers, but to make sure they are properly and legally informed that it is of course advertising. That’s one thing - -there’s diferent types of advortorial or sponsored content. What we looking at, the most ideal form of content, we’re pitching in these days, e.g., Munchies guide to Norway, to find partners who are willing to cover our production costs, and then they get some kind of sponsor play on the programs we film, but we have completely journalistic freedom to do whatever we want. We’re all of a sudden we’re able to make five programs and all the costs are covered and we might even have some money left in the end as well, but we’ve had the journalistic freedom of which stories we want to tell. That’s the ideal form of sponsored content. I think that’s a general thing, especially with media, we look at how to make money in diferent ways. In Denmark it is not that big yet, there’s been a lot of legal grey-zones what is okay, what is not. I think that is something we are going to see a lot more of.

Also, less Facebook in terms of media industry. I know we’re looking at how to utilise other platforms because Facebook is a bitch. Is it still social media platforms you’re looking into? Yes diferent social channels in terms of activating our content live. For example with Youtube we have a big thing coming up, bigger local presence, and Instagram will be more in focus. With new updates which will help media outlets like us. We see a lot of difculties in working with Facebook

!81 Kirstine Bjerre, August 2018 First question: how did you start working with digital transformation? KB: I was working in a very traditional business, television production business. That is a business that is really being disrupted these years from all the change in viewing habits. Of course in the very young demographics, but also in the older demographics, so overall the viewing was dropping like crazy. So one second we would produce a show for primetime and we would have 1 million viewers and one year later that average would have dropped to 700.000 so in Danish viewing numbers and it is continuing. In most production companies we started talking - we only have 4 clients because in Denmark there is only 4 broadcasting companies in Denmark that we can sell our products to, so as we saw the prices were going down because the viewing was going, we were forced to start thinking about how to gain new customers and how to produce in diferent ways for diferent clients. That was the background for it. On a more hands on note, I would say that one approach from one of the Danish tabloid newspapers called Ekstra Bladet, they asked us if we could help them to brand their new TV platform, which is basically a video platform. We created a tabloid format for their platform, we live streamed 24 hours, and we followed a celebrity around for 24 hours and did everything with them. Those two things sort of pushed me towards thinking in a diferent way thinking about content.

Where do you see the media industry heading? KB: I think the media industry is in a very broad sense headed towards defragmentation. It will be a lot of niches. We’re already seeing that, look at the Youtubers, in a mini-universe. That push will continue and we’ll see more and more of the people reaching, in the old days we would call that the small audiences, but today it is quite large audiences. So a niche blogger on youtube, will have ten times the viewing some of the largest TV channels and I think that will continue. Can you give one example of an innovative form of media storytelling KB: I think when we went around chasing a the celebrity with a livestream video cam, that’s an innovative way of using media to tell a story in a diferent way. I don’t think that is what we see the most. The innovation is more in how you reach your audience, it is more around the story. If I should look at some of the more interesting content I see out there. I think it is really interesting that one of the most popular apps you can download for your phone is HQ trivia. Here you have a very old school, almost 90es like quiz show, you saw it on daytime TV in the late 90es early 00s. It is just a guy or woman standing there and talking and once in a while he’ll ask you a question. If you get them right you win a money prize. And that was interesting how a really old school way of thinking content really grew on a very diferent platform, which was something that took everyone by surprise. Of course there’s all the interactive stuf, but it is not really defining content of today. It is still very niche. What has changed the most in the way we tell stories, when we change platforms, we change the way we build the story. We might tell the same story about the same story about the same girl and boy who fell in love, but if we’re creating it on a short-format on a social media platform you’ll have to reveal the most interesting key point in your story in the first three seconds. Compared to film and television we’re we build up the story, here you turn it around and that is really changing the way we tell the story.

Is it connected to the fast paste of the tech environment? KB: It’s a matter — when I was a kid I would turn on the television and I would be ready for whatever they would serve me. And today, the situation is reversed, I’m constantly on my feet, I’m never really ofine, I am always online. That means I’m being exposed to tons of content and messages and that is basically very critical in regard to how I want to spent my time. You don’t have more than 2 or 3 seconds to catch my attention, because I have to curate my own content. If you’re watching TV you have a curator, if I am online by myself I have to curate everything by myself and I have to do it very fast because I don’t want to waste my time.

How would you say non-proﬁts can use this type of media environment as a way to spread ideas about their cause? KB: That’s a really good question. Because I think NGO have a better chance of reaching their audiences than they ever had. Our bullshit detector these days is so much more simple because we’re exposed to so much bullshit. Whenever we need something, and also because of the new generation, and how they act and their values, generation z primarily, that really connects well with being an NGO. You’re not trying to sell anything, you’re trying to educate them, trying to give them some knowledge and insight that they can use to help make the world a better place. You see all business today they’re trying to ﬁgure out how they can have a purpose and communicate that

!82 purpose. The ngo’s it is their essence of ebeing, it is their purpose, so I think it is really interesting because the media audiences are so fragmented so I think it is really interesting that no matter how niche your ego is you will always ﬁnd an audience out there. Nancy Lee, September 2018 First question: Where do you see the food media industry heading? I think in the last ten years, I can only speak from an Australian context, i dip in and out of American food media as well. With all the chefs on TV and chefs writing cook books, they’ve taken on an authority about food and other issues related to food. In Australia, there is a chef called Pete Evans, he’s very opinionated about things do with nutrition, they are not necessarily that well informed traditional research - for example, in australia our tap water is chlorinated, they’ve measured it to be the right amount to protect our teeth. Pete Evans says the state is trying to poison us, and what kind of foods we should consuming. Another thing that he says, instead of breast milk, we should feed our babies bone broth. That’s crazy. But he does have a following, and it speaks to the kind of authority that celebrity can give to someone like a chef. I’m sure he has some expertise in food, but it kind of gives him a license to talk about things he might not necessarily be qualiﬁed to talk about. That’s one end of the spectrum but on the other end, yo’ve got chefs like Kylie Kwong, Dilan robertson, Tom quilocoio, whoa re very outspoken about some subjects. Kylie Kwong likes to promote indigenous culture in australia, she likes to share the stage with indigenous artists and indigenous ingredients, someone like tom qulicio in the states is quite outspoken about politics, that kind of exposure I’ve noticed have given chefs that kind of freedom to speak out about things they care about. At the same time, you have chefs that don’t think it is their role, so I guess you have all types. Certainly the landscape of social media, and being on tv, cookbooks, and being invited to speak at events, kind of put chefs into that spotlight. And have those expectations at place. In the future there is some prospect, that some chefs will use this media environment as a way to have impact? I think you have a prime example in Rene Redzepi. He’s really taken that on board and done a lot of things to amplify certain issues. If you look at someone like Ben Shewry, who recently has taken on that role, with his instagram post that he talked about at MAD.

Next question: How do you see MAD’s role in society? Before I knew anyone at MAD, I thought it was a really, i wrote about mad in my thesis in 2014, i was following mad ever since it existed. I spoke to Annelise Gregory from Australia. She went to the very first MAD, she was telling me how it was ground breaking — it was a conference that wasn’t boring. The more I get to know mad the more i feel like it has more potential to push the boundaries a bit. sometimes i think they try to make everyone happy, and i don’t think they need to. mad has the profile to set the agenda, rather than going along with, not that is has, but rather than being reactive it has the potential to be proactive. This is me as an outsider, i spoke to a chef in sydney who’s girlfriend did a stage at noma for three months. He said this is what chefs do, they go to copenhagen for three years, pay out of their own pockets and work for free. I thought that is insane, because i don’t know that many industries that where that is a usual thing. i think, and this might be an extreme view, because i am a socialist/ marxist. I think that mad or noma, it underestimates its power. there is a lot it could do, and potential to get financial support to make sure that mad is setting an example when it comes to minding the gap. In the aftermath of the symposium and you think about it in a global perspective, and people who have never come across in regard to their digital content, how do you see their role?

I think it is about an entry point into some of the big pressing issues around food security or even security of the labor market, in terms of the restaurant industry. I think it comes back again to setting an example or a model of best practice. If mad wants to mind the gap, and improve the industry, it has to provide examples or tools that people can use to practically implement these kinds of ideas. example, when sherry says my staf has three days of and work four days, it would be interesting to learn how do you do it? what kind of ﬁnancial structures do you work with. The MAD school idea, that’s the kind of stuf you want to bring out, people say that’s great he gives them three days of, but I can’t aford that, I’m a small business. Ben sherry can do that because he owns attica, which is crazy booked out, but for the guy who owns the restaurant down the road, what can he do. I think with mad as a big organisation, people think mad is a big organization, people have that impression, because you have such a big community globally. there is potential you can build a

!83 database, a hive-mind where people can access that kind of expertise and experience to work towards that model. If we take that into the digital universe, what would that look like? a library, ten-step how to make better work conditions? I think case studies would be great. In the restaurant world there are small business, slightly bigger ones, and then there are giant ones, like attica and noma. If you have interactive case studies - they ask you a question, you have choices, and the answer you click on leads you to next option and ideas you can work with, to click through a journey of what your business is and what it could be, based on all the diferent types of restaurants and business. and expertise you have to draw on. i think i might have seen something similar. Have you seen any examples food-oriented non-profit organisations that have been successful with creative storytelling? There’s a little organization in Sydney called TwoGood, they sell soups and salads and the packaging is a jam jar of soup, every jar you boy, they donate one to a women’s shelter. Women who have escaped violence and harmful relationships. They are very low-key, i think the way they communicate what they do is very efective. They have many chefs on board who chip in and make receipts, you have kylie kwong soup and you can buy that. all these chefs do a bunch of recipes for them, like salads and soups. when you have a very specific goal, all they do is sell soup and donate it to women shelters. The core is very specific, and the action is very simple and that makes it so efective. When you’re buying twogood, you’re supporting women who are escaping violent relationships. Sometimes i think that is enough, that’s what they do, and it has helped them sourcing support because everyone knows exactly what they do.

Sebastian Gabe, August 2018 First question: Give a few examples of the work that you’re doing, that is using new media as creative storytelling SG:What we do, we have this channel on snapchat, which is a platforms, together with 20 other publishers, in the UK, we’ve got NYT, MTV, Vice and asome other. We publish daily editions as we call it, which is basically a mini-magazine. Which consists of a minimum of 10, snaps, or like pages, a combination of animations, motion-graphics, video, editorial, and written articles. And the work is a combination of original stuf we’ve made for that platform, and stories that already originate on VICE site online. Why do you think VICE has decided to have a Snapchat channel? SG: Its a very big platform. Basically, you can publish these numbers, but for context, we have twice as much trafc on snapchat, than all websites combined int he UK. If you take the five big sites, Broadly, Munchies, you still have doubled on that on Snapchat everyday. It is a very big platform and a lot of people. And the audience is mainly young, but very interesting platform, because VICE wants to be the media platform for young people. That demographic grows older, 35 year olds in 5 years will be 40, how can you engage the young generation who are young? One platform that does that is snapchat, people who are 18-24 years old to engage new audiences. SG: we want to be the dominating platform for the young generation, definitely. It is a very good platform that is good for having a lot of trafc and a good way to get users who are not familiar with the brand at all. How do you develop new content in your job? SG: You would have a brainstorm on editorial ideas, you would come up with an idea for a video. Than you pitch it to the board of directors, then you start producing and shooting it. For written stories it would be like you would do with any other story, once you have that you would take the words, then you would take those rods and edit them to the form of the platform. That could be on the platform we only have 10 seconds, so we would take the longform and then animate and illustrate everything. Each edition every day, we have 5 designers dedicated to snapchat everyday, they make motion-graphics, animations, and illustrations that fit those stories. And then you have these animated pages, because you click one page at a time, with a “general” structure. Animate the stories and shoot the videos.

!84 How many people work on the snapchat channel? About like 7 all the time, but we will be 3 people some time, and then we will be 8 or 9 depending on the projects. For instance, we’re working with Munchies daily show for snapchat, then you have the Munchies editor in chief, and a writer. We just ran this campaign called Come Follow Me, which is Netflix afused with a media called broadly. The core team is about 7. How do you find inspiration to produce your stories? SG: obviously, we keep an eye on competitors. But mainly we just want to stand out. To be honest, we haven’t found any other example of, ohh what they did was really cool. I mean, obviously there are few times where we think it is quite interesting, mainly on snapchat we try to do our own thing and try to be better than everyone else. What would you say is the most innovative form of media storytelling you’ve seen lately? SG: In terms of on snapchat, there is this function, we’re you can swipe up and the user will look at their camera and you have all of these objects and you can use that for narrative. It feels like you’re using Where do you see the media industry heading? SG: Facebook is pretty much dying, I love how companies have counted on Facebook the last five, seven years, and it has been the main trafc towards media companies. An now Facebook is like nothing compared to diferent platforms like Snapchat, Ethel News. The old website is dying, and it is more about having the content on diferent platforms. it doesn’t really matters driving trafc to websites, the whole idea of having a website or a magazine, is old school, a materialistic view of the media. I think it is more about thinking how to get the brand out on diferent platforms.

How do you ﬁnd new ways of telling stories that are innovative? SG: I guess we constantly try and change what we do and do it better. I can’t really say what making it diferent from before.

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