What is it about the instant thrill of provocative headlines running across your Twitter/Facebook/Pinterist/Instagram feed that persuades you to click on it? Maybe it’s breaking news, a name that you recognize, or a memorable image? When the phrase new media became commonplace enough that old media was embracing it, it became clear that character limits were just one of the new telltale signs that you were savvy enough to operate in this fast paced interactive circuit of information. So the mode of storytelling changed, but what about the stories?
As someone in the field of communications I’m always thinking about how to tell a compelling story, and as a communications person in the field of social justice I’m especially enthralled by stories that draw on race, class and a host of other issues, and still manage to find an audience online. Is it the constant nature of updates and comment threads that allow a conversation to continue beyond the first post in a blog?
Or maybe it’s the ability to crowd source a conversation?
Or are we hearing new voices taking on thorny issues in different ways?
It’s an exciting time to test different approaches to storytelling, and one thing that’s immediately apparent from the proliferation of online platforms is that we’re going to see a lot of innovation. People are gravitating towards an online-only approach with news, so how do we help shape the options out there for people interested in the intersections of race, class and culture?
–Rekha Radhakrishnan, Advancing Justice—Chicago Communications Coordinator