Add meaning not media

The old adage too many cooks spoiling the broth, could be applied to Transmedia practice. In other words if you over egg your cake, speaking metaphorically here of course, then perhaps your message will be too difficult to digest leaving the audience wondering what on earth you are talking about.

We are now faced with “Prosumers”, so an audience that can produce as well as consume. In the introduction to Rethinking the Media Audience the editor Pertti Alasuutari cites Hall (1999, p 3). “At a certain point [….] the broadcasting structure must yield an encoded message in the form of a meaningful discourse. The institutional-societal relations of production must pass into and thorough modes of a language for its products to be ‘realized’.” He continues: “Before this message can have an ‘effect’ (however defined), or satisfy a ‘need’ or be put to ‘use’, it must first be perceived as meaningful discourse and meaningfully de-coded”.

Bottom line people have to feel that the message is worth engaging with. So we need to add benefit in meaning and not just scatter gun a wooly or weak message.

The transmedia message that my group is getting its teeth into, is to deliver information about the arts in the Bournemouth area to an audience of 30+. The challenge therefore is to make the information appealing. We’ve got to go beyond the ‘so what’ factor and create engagement and demand.

Concept v content

The old chicken and egg question now relates to Transmedia. If you’ve got something to say should your message drive the format or should the format drive and develop the message? A dilemma that hopefully will have resolved in the next four weeks.

As the writer in the group I’m already finding that we’re not all singing from the same hymn sheet. There seems to be confusion over the meaning of concept and the meaning of content. The definition of the two words seems to be merged in people’s minds. Oh dear. No white board in sight and a content offering that is already well ingrained in the group, who are new to writers and not sure what kind of beast we are. I have major concerns that this project is going to be content led because of this lack of basic clarity. No energetic brainstorming as the content flag has already been placed in the ground. Disappointed but maybe my fears will be unfounded.

I have however dug out a piece of artwork from my school days. This is called Dischord, but is the very picture of the concept content dilemma. Pieces may fit together, but what is the picture? And more importantly what does it mean?

A picture of dischord - items that fit on one level but don't make sense