The NewsArcade Project
Media companies are facing a fundamental challenge: the questioning of their legitimacy. The rise of disinformation, the increasing challenges to democracy and its principles, the ideologically driven questioning of science, the constant criticism and increased pressure on journalists have been encouraging distrust in the media for years.
Media companies must reaffirm their role in democratic societies by strengthening connections with their audience and reaching out to those who have fallen away from them. Top-down approaches are ineffective; instead, media companies should engage with their audience, listen to their concerns, and prove their relevance. This requires explaining their purpose and demonstrating their value to the public.
In response to these challenges NewsArcade has developed a gamified news format that allows journalists to create interactive stories, engaging audiences in a fun and immersive way. This tool aims to improve news literacy, build critical thinking skills, and strengthen media outlets by increasing engagement. By using creativity and gamification, the NewsArcade tool seeks to empower its users to better understand the journalistic process.
Objectives
More specifically, the project will:
Target Groups & Stakeholders
Results
Expected outcomes:
1. The NewsArcade Authoring Tool, a web-based Content Management System which allows journalists and editors in re-purposing existing content into interactive flows, that can be experienced in the gamified news stories (e.g. articles, notes, video and audio streams, images etc.). The tool will be released iteratively, at the end of the project aiming to have TRL8, ready to be introduced to the market.
2. The NewsArcade Gamified news story format: an innovative interactive format for multimedia news. It represents the main interface for the user/reader and is the main application using the NewsArcade Format. The interactive story can be embedded on the websites of content providers. It allows the end-user to play as the journalist, choosing between the different content, and angling the story, to fit a motive and an agenda. The experience creates an understanding about which information to trust, that there often is more than one truth and that true objectivity might be an illusion. It covers the need for improving critical thinking as technology makes it easier to produce and publish information worldwide.
3. Results from the development process will be posted continuously in transparent and easily accessible blog formats allowing potential stakeholders, media professionals, students and – eventually – end users to brainstorm and collaborate on newscrafting as an engaging method in journalism.
4. Upon the final launch of NewsArcade a White Paper with findings and modelled practices of how to NewsArcade is published.
5. Postgraduate online course for journalists and editors to get started with news crafting as a new editorial methodology.
6. A business plan for introducing the NewsArcade innovation to the market, including IPR agreements between partners.