Collaborative Co-Design and Co-Journalism: Hybrid Multimedia Narratives

Description

Our panel discussion will address the theme of hybridity by exploring the new and speculative potentials for interdisciplinary collaboration between design and journalism, in our current cultural moment—as well as speculative potentials for these boundaries to become more blurred and synergistic in the future. We will discuss specific design and journalism collaborations utilizing a variety of types of media and experimental formats in order to push both disciplines toward new creative forms.

We are faculty members in Journalism and Design at the same university, currently working on a hybrid multimedia project using a unique campus political archive of materials about labor history including labor strikes and labor conflicts that have been erased from mainstream history. This archive holds great cultural importance as a counter-historical narrative. While the material we are working with is important, in its current format it is largely unengaging to broader audiences outside of academia. We are working to utilize the best practices of both the design and journalism fields in order to make this labor archive digitally accessible and engaging for larger audiences— including younger and future generations. We will introduce our collaborative multimedia project and discuss how it is expanded even further through related projects such as an upcoming collective hackathon.

After a brief introduction to our own project and experiences as collaborators from different but complementary fields, we will open up the panel discussion to broader questions about collaborations between design and journalism. We intend to invite three additional panelists to join our conversation. These invited panelists will be practicing journalism designers as well as scholars who have created design and journalism initiatives at their own universities. For each of the topics listed on the timetable, we will invite insight from the invited panelists. We will also invite participation in the conversation from all attendees at the end of the panel.

We will speak to the challenges and necessities of sharing the editorial and curatorial responsibilities as co-authors from different disciplines. We will discuss the current necessities for media to be flexible and engaging across format and media, and the need for a creative voice. How does a hybrid team work together to create engaging and unique narratives, using a variety of still and static source material that while not visually or audibly engaging is an essential historical counter-narrative that must be preserved for future generations?

How can hybrid interdisciplinary practices better respond to the media tactics of our current age, and work to preserve, energize, and challenge? We will discuss what is gained and what may be lost when content is translated to new formats. We will look at how elements including motion, pacing, and sound change the manner in which archival material is experienced. And, as educators, we will introduce the question of how to best encourage hybrid experimental media practices and ethical co-authorship from our students.

Timetable

Sharing of panelists’ current co-design co-journalism projects (5 mins) Ethical and practical challenges of repackaging historical and archival material in new multimedia formats (5 mins)
Challenges and benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration between design and journalism (5 mins) Design + journalism co-authorship and co-design speculative practices for the future (5 mins) Q&A and community conversation (10 mins)

Takeaway

The takeaway from our session will be that the digitised collective requires new forms of collaboration and new media practices. How can we collaboratively design for the future while remaining true to the original content? By sharing creative responsibility across an interdisciplinary team with different skills and creative tactics, the potential for experimental and collaborative co-authorship and co-design increases. This co-design has both limitations and possibilities for format and technique—as well as providing a system of checks and balances. Through hybrid design and journalism initiatives intended for younger and future generations, important cultural archival material can be preserved and shared in new and more accessible and engaging formats. How can journalism and design collectives utilize the unique skills of each collaborator in order to balance form and content in experimental multimedia journalism? And how can these teams ethically amplify underrepresented narratives rather than the voices of the powerful?

Abstract

How is co-authorship redefined by hybrid design and journalism collaborations? And how can we collaboratively design for the future while remaining true to the original content? By sharing creative responsibility across an interdisciplinary team with different skills and creative tactics, the potential for experimental and collaborative co-authorship and co-design increases. This co-design has both limitations and possibilities for format and technique—as well as providing a system of journalistic checks and balances.

Through hybrid design and journalism initiatives intended for future generations, important cultural archival material—including counter political narratives and first person accounts of labor and class struggle—can be preserved and shared in more broadly accessible and engaging digital formats. How can journalism and design collectives utilize the unique skills of each collaborator in order to balance form and content in experimental multimedia journalism? And how can these teams ethically amplify underrepresented narratives? We will analyze a variety of hybrid interdisciplinary approaches to journalistic / design collaboration that intend to respond to the pace and format of our current mediated moment while preserving important historical voices.

We will also consider the ethical responsibility of repackaging cultural and political archives. What is gained and what may be lost when historical archives are digitized and made broadly accessible in new formats? We will speak to the challenges and necessities of sharing the editorial and curatorial responsibilities as co-authors from different disciplines. We will discuss the current necessities for media to be flexible and engaging across format and media. We will explore how hybrid teams may work together to create engaging and unique new formats for essential historical counter-narrative source materials. By doing so, we hope to define a set of best practices for design and journalism collaboratives looking toward future media, while preserving archival historical counter-narratives in accessible and evolving formats.