April 20th

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE AUDIENCE (Key Concept)

1. Who are the audience and how do I find them?

The audience is a group of people, or sometimes one person, who participates or
encounters some form of content. In literature, this is called the reader. For music, we
describe the audience as the listener. For video games, we call this person the player,
and so on.
Finding a potential audience is easy, just look to your competitors and their
contemporaries. Their current audience will hopefully be your future one. A transmedia
audience is an audience that participates or encounters content in a multimodal way.
They may experience related content from a singular thematic narrative across many
mediums and even senses.

 For instance, there might be a comic book character that you enjoy. You might
see an ad on film for a TV show on the same comic book hero. You might read
fan fiction on a fan site, participate in the conversation on a topic in Reddit, play
a video game based on the hero.
We also see these types of multimedia engagements from startup companies using
several online media platforms to publicize their product or service. And even artists
engaging with multimedia in order to communicate an idea or concept to a wider
audience. And even politicians and presidents using many simultaneous platforms to
communicate a primary narrative. More so these days, we see user generated content
becoming a very important way to engage with an audience.
Organizations are learning that by providing platforms for their audiences to develop their
own narratives within a wider metanarrative is beneficial overall for their product
awareness. All of this is done with careful consideration to the types of audiences
available to engage with.
What is unique about a transmedia audience compared to an audience of a story being
told via a single type of media?
They may experience related content from a singular thematic narrative across
many mediums and senses

2. Why is it important to understand your audience?

Knowing your audience, things like their general age, gender, education, religion,
language, and culture, can be the single most important aspect of developing your
transmedia experience.
Analyzing your audience will reveal information that can be used to build common ground
between you and your audience.
This will make your transmedia experience more effective as you will be able to target
and curate the audience experience. There are several methods, both formal and less
formal, that can be used in order to understand an audience better.
Many of the current formal techniques we use are inherited from fields such as
marketing, human-centered design and psychology.
A couple of the formal examples that we'll look at include ethnography and
participatory design.
Another way to gain some insight into a potential audience is through engagement with
them using social media tools. This includes Twitter, Reddit, and others. With these
tools, you may gain soft insights in a potential audience, but less hard data.

ETNOGRAPHY
(Def.) Ethnography is the systematic study of people and cultures. It is designed to
explore cultural phenomena where the researcher observes society from the point of
view of the subject of the study.
Ethnographic research usually involves tools such as surveys, questionnaires and
interviews. The selection of your test audience is also important. This is sometimes called
a focus group in marketing research.
You can also get a loose feeling for the cultural makeup of a particular audience by also
looking to social online media and how they would use that to engage with the
transmedia narrative.

 Check out fan sites, blogs, subReddits, Twitter, YouTube to see how audiences
interact with the narrative organically.
Ethnography relies on not only good collection of data but also the interpretation of said
data and how it can be used to improve your offering. Using tools like surveys and
interviewing, we can gain insight into the behavior, cognitive mechanisms and
psychology of an audience.

PARTICIPATORY DESIGN
(Originally cooperative design), is an approach design attempting to actively involve all
stakeholders, for example employees, partners, customers, citizens and end users, in
the design process to help ensure that the results meet their needs and is usable.
Prototypes: In order to involve other stakeholders, including potential audience
members, participatory design is often done in an iterative fashion. It usually
involves the element of quick prototype of your product or service based on the needs
of your audience, then testing your prototype with a particular audience in order to gain
insights which you then use to develop a new prototype to be tested by the same
audience and so on and so forth, until you develop the perfect product or service or run
out of time or money.
Participatory design process:

 Develop prototype
 Test prototype with audience
 Develop new prototype based on insights learned
 Test new prototype with audience
 Repeat when necessary
Participatory design enables potential audiences of your transmedia project a chance to
be involved in the process and in the development of your project, with the hopes that
their input informs future development, so that you can better cater to your target
audience.

Ethnography and participatory design are complementary. For instance, when

conducting a participatory design workshop with potential audience members, you would
use surveys before and after the workshop to learn more about your audience, that's the
presurvey. And maybe about their experiences of the workshop, that's the post-survey.
You could interview some audience members to get a deeper understanding of them
and their experiences.
All of this can provide insight in not only developing your transmedia project, but will
also help you develop your testing methods in order to get more useful results.
Understanding your audience can help you develop your transmedia project in many
ways. By understanding your audience and their needs, wants and desires you can
begin to develop and curate an experience that best suits your target audience.
SUMMARY:

 A transmedia audience participates in a multimodal way

 Ethnography and participatory design can help you understand your audience
 Enabling you to cater your transmedia project a specific audience

Brian Seth Hurst on Storytelling (Connecting audience with story vid)

There are four levels of storytelling:

 The first is, here's the story which is just broadcast media or any sort of mass
media.
 The second one is I'm listening. That's an engaged audience with the story
teller through social media.
 The third level is my world and welcome to it. That's when you open up what I
call a participation gateway. And you let the audience into the storyworld to
participate.
 And the fourth world is take it, it's yours, or they'll steal it. And that's where the
audience basically takes over the storyworld. And they start creating fan fiction.
They become, they've got their own job. They become ambassadors for the
world. They maintain all the fan groups. As a matter of fact, many television
writers when there is a solid wiki, many television writers over a number of
seasons will go to the wiki. Like they created the phone number for a character
or something. They'll check the facts that the fans have documented it to keep
the story true and authentic. If I am a story teller, I'm going to take my audience
on a journey.