Designing, Implementing and Producing for Participation: Media Convergence in Practice
In today’s hybrid media landscape the previously distinct borders between production and consumption blur. Convergence may be created intentionally by media companies, or happen as a bottom-up social process initiated by media users searching entertainmen
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Introduction One day a few years ago a young woman disappears from her wedding without a trace. The case gets attention when a drama series based on the event is promoted. A group of people claims that the woman became a victim of a conspiracy, and when the husband tries to prove them wrong there are no traces of her having existed at all. What is the truth? Is it a game or is it a true story? The mystery is a fact! What is the truth about Marika? SVT opens up a web office with the mission to seek out the truth, engages the audience in the quest. /.. / As the team starts to investigate the matter, traces and evidence of Marika’s existence begin to pop up. The question the team tries to answer is: Who lies behind her disappearance and why does someone try to hide her traces?. . . The treatment: 11
In Sweden around 20,000 people have disappeared since the mid 1960s. And year-to-date, many of them have actually still not been found. The lines above depict the base story of an unusual and somewhat crazy hunt for a disappeared person that took place in Sweden during 2007. Thousands of people followed the hunt online in forums and chatrooms, and searched webpages for traces. Some of them also scouted streets and woods all over the country, guided by the disappeared woman’s friend. The hunt was a hybrid media production created by Swedish Television (SVT), the largest public service television broadcaster in Sweden, and the small experimental games producer, The company P1 (P). ‘Participation drama’ was the format name given indicating that it was more of a story than a game. A drama series was created around the disappearance and debate programs dealing with the issue were set up. Background facts of the production were interwoven with made up fictional content, communicating a dispersed narrative
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This is how the company spelled its name at the time.
M. Denward (*) Interactive Institute Swedish ICT, Box 1197, 164 26 Kista, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 A. Lugmayr, C. Dal Zotto (eds.), Media Convergence Handbook - Vol. 2, Media Business and Innovation, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-54487-3_6
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using various platforms such as television, internet, mobile technology and gamelike online and physical world activities. Social media like YouTube, Flickr and Google Maps were used too. It was claimed that it was a real investigation, and that the disappeared woman existed. At least this was what some participants thought. All was set up to help find out if she had existed at all, and if so, trying to find her whereabouts. Up to that date the production did not resemble anything ever experienced in Swedish media. The aim was to create a (pilot) format that would invite a mass audience to more than ordinary TV spectatorship. Inspired from a range of emerging games, the idea was to support a variety of engagement levels, based on the consumer’s choice of frequency, depth and immersion. It had no clear (game) conditions regarding winning or losing. Instead it offered
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