Simultaneous, Concurrent & Meshing Usage

Why is cross-media storytelling more than an artistic choice? People are crossing media already, using many types of media everyday and using more than one at a time. There has been plenty of industry research (particularly from the advertising industry) about media usage, but the following are significant. The latest one was released on the 26th September this year and is described as ‘the most comprehensive observational media use study ever undertaken’. The Ball State University study, Middletown Media Studies 2 (MMS2), followed about 400 ‘ordinary people’ in Muncie and Indianapolis, recording on a PDA every 15 secs what media they were using. they observed them from the time they woke up until the time they went to sleep, observing on average for 12.9 hours per day and ending up with over 5,000 hours of observation and 1.2 million pieces of data. Conducted by Mike Bloxham, Robert Papper, Mark Popovich and Michael Holmes, it found a high occurance of what they term concurrent media exposure: ‘exposure to content from multiple media simultaneously available through shared or shifting attention’. They found 120 possible different combinations of concurrent media exposure. That is 120 different possible stereo experiences and cross-media configurations.

Some Stats:
* 96.3 percent of the sample indulged in concurrent media usage 30.7 percent of the media day;
* The average person spends about nine hours a day using some type of media;
* 39 percent of the day was spent with media while involved in some other activity;
* 30 percent of all media time is spent exposed to more than one medium at a time;
* Levels of concurrent media exposure were higher among those 40 to 65 than people 18 to 39;
* Women spend more time multitasking with two or more types of media than men (we all knew that!);

Sources: Online Publishers Association, Media Week, MediaPost, Christian Science Monitor.

The other significant research I’m aware of is the research into simultaneous media usage. Some findings were published in the paper ‘Simultaneous media usage: A critical consumer orientation to media planning‘ in Journal of Consumer Behaviour. The study looked at 12,322 respondents, ‘sampled via an online network’ and was published in 2004. A very cheerful American presenter will explain the BigResearch survey here. This survey is interesting because it delves further into the media combinations.

Some Stats:
* 70% of consumers, at one time or another, use media simultaneously;
* Going online top simultaneous medium for radio listeners;
* Newspapers best companion for television watchers;
* When listening to radio 57.3% simultaneously go online, 46.9% read newspaper and 17.7% watch TV;
* Newspapers are a TV watcherÂ’s best friend;
* For those online whilst watching TV: they prefer documentaries on the background;
* Movies are the preferred programming for people who read newspapers and also watching TV (64.3%) followed by police detective shows (56%) and situation comedies (51.5%.);
* 52.4% of newspaper readers say they watch TV and 49.6% say they listen to the radio when reading the newspaper;
* More women (52.4%) than men (49.6%) prefer reading the newspaper and listening to the radio simultaneously;
* When online, 61.8% say they also watch TV, 52.1% listen to the radio and 20.2% are reading the newspaper.

What the report also stated was that the 18-34 year old television viewer was down 8.8% and 25-34 year olds were down 12.2%. ‘What are they doing instead of watching TV while online? They are playing video games.’ Now, the news that this age-group were playing video games is no news, but I’m wondering. In the context of CME/SIMM/MM, are video game players not multitasking?

In a Video Gaming Industry Benchmark Report on Emerging Markets, Spending, and Cross-Media Ownership for Interactive Entertainment conducted by Nielsen Entertainment (which still isn’t avialable) the question still isn’t answered. The report was conducted by a random digital dial frame (RDD) (is that a random phone call?) of over 1500 respondents during January and February 2005. The study looks at Gamer demographics; Penetration figures; Cross ownership; Purchase behavior along with rental and usage behavior; Purchase motivators; Attitudes towards next generation hardware. Although the cross ownership stats will be interesting, I’m hoping with will be coupled with information about usage behaviour and particularly tracking consumption within a franchise.


Some Stats
:
* There is a strong connection between DVD and game consumption to be exploited in marketing and cross-promotion;
* 40% of U.S. households own at least one of the following game systems for game play — PC, home console or handheld device.
* 23% of gamers own all three types of gaming devices — PC, console and handheld;
* Among those who own a gaming device, 89% own a console, 65% own a PC, 36% own
a handheld;
* Active gamers typically spend approximately 5.2 hours playing by themselves with a large proportion also being spent playing socially (3.07 hours per week with friends and family or online);
* Among females, the split between solo and social game play is even more equitable with younger females 13-17 tending to play more with friends or family (54% of the time) and women 25-34 playing almost as much socially as alone.
* Males and females 45 and older are markedly different, spending almost all their time (79%) playing alone.

Released on 27th Sept was an ‘in-depth study’ of 13-24 year olds in 11 countries: Truly, Madly, Deeply Engaged: Global Youth, Media and Technology. The report, by Yahoo!Inc. and OMDWorldwide, was qualitative and quantitative. The former had 16 focus groups and 15 in-home ethnographies in six countries (Chicago, Mexico City, London, Berlin, Seoul, and Shanghai) with participants representing teens, aged 15-18, and young adults, aged 20-22. The quantitative component was an online survey with over 5,334 respondents, aged 13-24 and was conducted in Julyand August this year. This generation, what they term the My Media Generation: who are ‘highly motivated by the need for community and self-expression’, ‘have developed an immense capacity to multitask’.

Some Stats:
* Can fit up to 44 hours of activities in just one day;
* Ability to perform up to three tasks simultaneously, using multiple technologies;
* On average the global My Media Generation performs approximately three to four other tasks while surfing the Internet and approximately two to three other tasks while watching television;
* Traditional media are often pushed to “background” status in the “media-meshing” hierarchy;
* Turning to the Internet for content;
* TV serves as a mechanism for escape and entertainment…

Source: Finanzen.

RECAP ON TERMS
Simultaneous Media Usage: “multiple exposures to various media forms at a single point in time for the same media consumer” [source]
Concurrent Media Exposure: “exposure to content from multiple media simultaneously available through shared or shifting attention” [source]
Media Meshing: “is a behavioral phenomenon that occurs when people begin an experience in one medium, such as watching television, then shift to another, such as surfing the Internet, and maybe even a third, such as listening to music. The explanation for this behavior is the constant search for complementary information, different perspectives, and even emotional fulfillment.” [source]

Don’t let me let you astray you though. Cross-media storytelling isn’t just about using more than one media at once, and it isn’t just about media convergence (rebroadcasting the same content over multiple media). Cross-media storytellers recognise that messages are delivered in many forms, and can combine them in symphonic experiences: sometimes in stereo and sometimes one after another. Gary gives more info and an experienced analysis at his blog too.

Some Links on Kids Entertainment

I’ve been asked from a few sources about what works I’ve come across that are Quality Kids Entertainment. The following is a list of such works, however, many I have not viewed first-hand (TV shows) and so I cannot attest to their quality. Just about all, however, I’ve read reviews on or noticed they’ve won awards, or I think they’re innovative. They are also for different age groups.

Degrassi (Can)

Angela Anaconda (Can)

This is Daniel Cook (Can)

‘To Love Veronica Bee’ is a book by Sarah Boland that has an accompanying
website that readers can contribute too. It is not available OS but I
think it is a good example of a cross-media work using print. (Aus)

Noah and Saskia (Aus)
Noah and Saskia Teaching Guide

BBC’s Jamie Kane (UK)

ABC’s My Playground (Aus)

BBC’s Ceebies (UK)

Noggin (US)

Eye to Eye (UK)

Winged Sandals (aus)

Canadian Geographic’s Kid’s Atlas (Can)

SFU Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology’s Journey to a New Land (Can)

Kids’ CBC (Can)

Brady Beasts (Can)

ABC’s Long Journey, Young Lives (Aus)
SBS’s Swapping Lives (Aus)

There are others that I’ve forgotten I’m sure, so please let me know of any you suggest.

Another Cross-media Researcher: Ruppel

I’m thrilled to say there is another cross-media researcher in cyberspace: Marcus Ruppel. He is a PhD student in Textual and Digital Studies in the Department of English at the University of Maryland, College Park. He has started a blog, Triggers and Traces, to share his thoughts for the next couple of months:

Welcome to Triggers and Traces: Narrative, Media and Consciousness in 20th Century American Literature. Over the course of the next two months, I’ll be using this site as a means to work through various issues related to my upcoming Comprehensive Exams in the English Dept. at the University of Maryland College Park. My current focus in the readings is the ways that media, or an awareness of media, serve to shape and structure the narratives of each work. What sorts of connections are there between, say, an awareness of the materialities of print and the narrative scope of a given work? Can we attribute the presence of certain modes of consciousness (i.e. perceptual, action-based, etc.) to an understanding (or lack of understanding) into the workings of a larger medial ecology? In what ways can we begin to chart the presence of various media in narratives (in content, in remediation, in transmediation) as we move towards increasing media convergence? How does one medium work to accomodate/ destabilize another?

Marc’s other blog, Things as They Are?, has an interesting post about a papers he will be giving:
Abstract 1

This paper looks at multi-sited narrative networks, in which a narrative sequence is distributed across varying media channels (film, web, music, video games, print, live performance, etc.) that the user must negotiate in order to extract pertinent information. These networks do not constitute simple “retellings” — stories told and retold down a chain, mimicking oral forms. Although these networks seem to take on two specific structures — vertical (expansive) or horizontal (redundant)there is also a convergence of form that irretrievably alters each successive channel’s content. In other words, the distribution of narrative across media engenders an engagement of the sequence that requires the user to process and account for not only the order and frequency with which she receives the constituent narrative parts, but the materiality of the presentational format itself. Examples will include the Matrix series, Neil Young’s “Greendale,” Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves, and William Blake’s Book of Urizen.

Incidently, I’m just reading House of Leaves, which is amazing. did you notice the new term? ‘Multi-sited narrative networks’. So now we have:

Multi-sited narrative networks
: ‘a narrative sequence is distributed across varying media channels (film, web, music, video games, print, live performance, etc.) that the user must negotiate in order to extract pertinent information.’ [Ruppel]

Cross media communication
: ‘Cross media communication is communication where the storyline will direct the receiver from one medium to the next.’ [De Haas]

Distributed Narrative: ‘A new kind of narrative is emerging from the network: the distributed narrative. Distributed narratives don’t bring media together to make a total artwork. Distributed narratives explode the work altogether, sending fragments and shards across media, through the network and sometimes into the physical spaces that we live in. This paper explores this new narrative trend, looking at how narrative is spun across the network and into our lives.’ [Walker]

Entertainment Supersystem
: ‘A supersystem is a network of intertextuality constructed around a figure or group of figures from pop culture who are either fiction […] or “real” […]. In order to be a supersystem, the network must cut across several modes of image production; must appeal to diverse generations, classes, and ethnic subcultures, who in turn are targeted with diverse strategies; must foster “collectability” through a proliferation of related products; and must undergo a sudden increase in commodification, the success of which reflexively becomes a “media event” that dramatically accelerates the growth curve of the system’s commercial success.’ [Kinder]

Inter-media world franchises: Proposes ‘a “multiplicative model” of multi-media meaning effects’, the need to look for ‘instances of cross-modal subversion of consistent meaning effects’ and to develop ethnographic methods to capture ‘”traversal” analysis’. [Lemke]

Networked Narrative Environments
: ‘The network provides the technical backdrop that enables a remote and open-ended dialogue between these spaces. The resulting narrative demonstrates interactivity as a user-controlled construct. The environment presents itself as a physical installation architecture that creates a stage for real and virtual role-play, with site specfics underpinning metaphors and supplying ‘plots’.’ [Zapp]

Transmedia Storytelling: ‘In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best–so that a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics, and its world might be explored and experienced through game play…. Reading across the media sustains a depth of experience that motivates more consumption…. Offering new levels of insight and experience refreshes the franchise and sustains consumer loyalty.’ [Jenkins]

Transmedial Worlds: ‘[A]bstract content systems from which a repertoire of fictional stories and characters can be actualized or derived across a variety of media forms. What characterises a transmedial world is that audience and designers share a mental image of the “worldness” (a number of distinguishing features of its universe). The idea of a specific world’s worldness mostly originates from the first version of the world presented, but can be elaborated and changed over time. Quite often the world has a cult (fan) following across media as well.’ [Klastrup & Tosca]

Citation details, and more terms, on my Polymorphic Narrative site on the concepts & researchers pages. (I’m actually in the process of migrating alot of the info on that site onto a CrossMedia Wiki!) What about my term I hear you ask or moan? Polymorphic Narrative: narrative in many forms. I could go on for years, and I will. There are other terms too, and ones I am yet to hear. But back to Ruppel.

Abstract 2

In her recent article “Narrative and Digitality” (2005), Marie-Laure Ryan describes what she calls texts that think with their medium. These texts possess properties of interactivity/ reactivity, variability, multi-sensorality and networking capabilities. Unique to these sorts of texts is the “ability to create an original experience which cannot be duplicated by any other medium, an experience which makes the medium seem truly necessary” (516). Implicit within this statement is the notion that a thinking text is one that not only requires that a medium’s materiality be incorporated into the exposition of a narrative but that, crucially, this materiality is foregrounded as the key component of interaction.

Keeping this distinction in mind and drawing upon Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner’s work on congniti

on and conceptual blending, this paper intends to look at the interplay between the film and video game adaptations of Batman Begins as a function of what I call expansive spatial materialities, the modes through which a narrative is deployed within the space of a medium (such as a frame of a film or the mapping of a game level). In this specific case, the narrative of Batman Begins is altered by the variant spatialities of each particular medium. The game, for example, contains significant narrative departures from the film due to the presence of vastly expanded and interactive architectures such as Arkham Asylum, whose sheer size necessitates and alteration of the film’s content. Although neither channel needs to be experienced in combination with the other (as is required in works like The Matrix), a network still exists between the two sites that creates an ideal narrative site, in which a new, combinative narrative sequence is processed and blended by the user as a consequence of this spatial-material variance. Even though a single narrative altered by its diffusion through different media necessarily entails an engagement with a medium’s materiality, the ideal site exists entirely transmedially, unbound from its carrier. In other words, the presence of both film and game in Batman Begins works to isolate narrative from form, where neither site is an adaptation of the other but, rather, a thinking, material piece to the whole of the story.

I can’t wait to read Ruppel’s papers. Besides my own reserach, Ruppel would benefit from looking at that of Drew Davidson (who I’ve spoken about before) and Tom Apperley (again).

I’ve posted an hello on Marc’s blog, so hopefully we’ll hear more soon.

Thankyou Jeremy, once again for the wonderfully relevant headsup.