Multimedia Storytelling

The emergence of the internet, news websites and social media has paved the way for a multidimensional way of conveying stories called “multimedia storytelling”.

Multimedia storytelling is the art of narrating a story through various elements such as text, video, audio, infographics, pictures, links and others on a website. Multimedia stories follow a non-linear format and are interactive with the viewers. Multimedia journalists have to follow the same laws and ethics that any other journalist has to.

In the non-linear form of the story, the viewer navigates through the story and decides which element to consume. Multimedia stories are versatile and the journalist can choose the elements that are best for the story. Each medium has its own strength and weakness, hence it has to be chosen wisely.

This interactivity is an important feature that allows the engagement of the audience and helps to seek their input and feedback. Inserting clickable quizzes, comment boxes, and graphics provides an exciting way to get the audience to participate in the story experience.

Multimedia stories have grown popular in the last few years giving an opportunity for journalists to experiment with conveying their stories.

The leading newspapers of the world such as The New York Times, The Guardian and others also have multimedia websites. The New York Times released a multimedia story in 2012 called “Snowfall” by John Branch. This piece is a story about Tunnel Creek Avalanche through pictures, audio, graphics and video. Professor of Journalism, Jay Rosen called it “a breakpoint in online journalism.

Another great example of multimedia storytelling from The New York Times is “ Women are making the best in the band”. It is a combination of audio, video, slideshow layouts and audience interaction through story-scrolling.

Haiti, a story from Reuters about the struggles of people living in Haiti. This story stands out from the rest as it gives the ability to make decisions to the audience. The story is basically a quiz with two options for every question. Each segment of the story changes on the basis of the answers given in the previous segment of the story.

While Multimedia story has been a great platform for journalists, it also comes with a lot of challenges. 

To begin with, the links posted in the story for references might come as a threat because it is a distracting feature. When a person clicks on a link and ends up finding something they are interested in, there are chances that the person might not come back to the original story. 

The production cost of producing a multimedia story is higher than the others as it involves a wide range of resources and mediums. While producing video content, the problem journalists face is that many stories do not lend themselves to videos. Producing audio and video elements requires different software such as Adobe is expensive and requires a good skill set to produce worthy content. 

The gathering of information and producing each element of the story is time-consuming and takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of time to put together the original draft. As each element is produced differently. The raw files need to go through many stages of cuts such as rough version, fine version before finalizing the version going online. The creation of graphics and research of information drains a lot of time and energy. There might be an overload of information. The division of content between audio, video, text and infographics can be difficult because the repetition of the content has to be avoided. To make sure all the elements are used, journalists tend to provide too much information to consume.

The size of the audio and video elements has to be reasonable. The longer the videos and audios might result in a loss of interest. The little part of all the elements would do the job rather than having boring long elements. Multimedia journalism has to face attribution challenges. Pictures or videos can be acquired from other peoples’ sites and can go online without credits or attribution. This accounts for ethical issues. 

The shooting of the video element can be difficult according to the situation. Getting the best quality of videos and shooting appropriate situations might distract the journalist from the story.In today’s time, a journalist has to be equipped with skills to fulfill all the elements of the multimedia story. As it is one person who has to deal with reporting, researching, photography, videography and others, some of the little yet important information might be forgotten.

Even with the challenges, multimedia storytelling will remain a huge part of journalism in the future because of its uniqueness.