Interacting with New Audiences
Robin Kwong – The Uber Game
Caroline Kamya – Future Planet: Global Storytelling for Gen Z
Katja Schupp – How would you like to interact – and why?
The Uber Game
The Uber Game is an interactive news game that puts the player into the shoes of a full-time Uber driver. Based on real reporting, including dozens of interviews with Uber drivers in San Francisco, it aims to convey an emotional understanding of what it is like to try to make a living in the gig economy.
We made this news game because we wanted to explore new ways to help people emotionally understand a subject. We believe that games and play are an important but under-explored use of interactivity in journalism.
People tend to put an emotional distance between themselves and others people’s stories as a defence mechanism to keep from being overwhelmed by the world. They read the news with dispassion, or seek out stories that confirm rather than challenge their worldviews. Games can help close that distance by shrinking the complexity of our world and creating a safe arena to put our selves into. They give permission for us to reconnect with our sense of curiosity. They engage our imagination.
This is what we hoped to accomplish with the Uber Game. By creating a fun experience, we hope to spark people’s curiosity and prompt them to critically examine the constraints and biases of systems like Uber and other gig economy platforms. By asking them to make meaningful choices as an Uber driver, we hope to shift their perspective away from their own as customers and passengers, and to see things from the driver’s perspective; or at least to recognise that there is a fellow human behind the wheel.
Driving for Uber seemed an apt subject for an interactive news game, because Uber was already using the language and technique of gamesin its driver app. Making a game about it uses the medium as part of the message.
Our hope is that this form of storytelling would extend the role of journalism beyond just giving people the right answers, to one where we can equip people to ask the right questions and start important conversations.
How would you like to interact – and why?
A case study on success criteria for interactive formats on the example of award-winning current German webdocumentaries
A research project by Prof. Dr. Katja Schupp, in cooperation with Markus Reuter (M.A.), Susanne Vollstädt (M.A.), Lukas Herzog (M.A.) and Mayra Maegli (B.A.)
Interactivity, non-linearity and gamification – that have been the big buzzwords of digital documentary making within the last years. But interactivity only works, if authors and producers find the right tools and the right language to actively engage the audience: The greatest idea of interaction fails, if users and readers do not get involved. Within our current research project on visual aesthetics of webdocumentaries and digital storytelling we discovered, that apparently after years of a trend, in which it could not be interactive enough, producers now tend to question the acceptance of interactive features. Alexander Knetig, arte creative, for example, said in one of our interviews: “I think, that within the future (of webdocumentaries) interactivity and non-linearity will not be the big buzzwords any more.” And Michael Hauri of 2470.media mentions: “If I had to decide between interactivity, playfulness on the one side and clarity and a red ribbon on the other, I would decide for clarity and the red ribbon.”
For our research project we already talked to nine different authors and producers of web documentaries in German language, such as Alexander Knetig/arte creative, Michel Hauri/2470.media, Saskia Kress/Filmtank und Severin Klaus/HinderlingVolkard. More interviews are under way. At the same time we analyse the webdocumentaries by these authors and producers concerning their interactive features and the use of moving image – considering the fact that the use of moving image in non-linear surroundings and in an interactive way is a particular challenge, since moving image is and always has been a linear medium.
We would like to present and discuss interim results our current project, which started in 2016, and
a set of findings on i-docs 2018.