That weird web thing

mixedrealities:

I’ve been rather silent on this blog for the past few days, that’s because I’m attending a master class about immersive storytelling at Metanomics in Second Life and because I try to apply these ideas on journalism and blogging.

This post on MediaShift is about affordable ways to increase the engagement of the newspaper or blogging community, using gaming, virtual environments, but also by providing more context and by using more traditional ways to engage the community.

1. Provide context.

2. Ask people for their take.

3. Live-stream your newsroom.

4. Use video.

5. Use video collaboratively.

“This may prove to be the more controversial part of my post. It’s about how journalists and bloggers can use the rapidly growing ecosystem of virtual objects, casual games, games on social networks and virtual environments to increase engagement.
This is what some call “immersive journalism.” I also think that augmented reality presents many opportunities for increasing engagement. […]

Using this kind of platform, you could superimpose facts and narratives on structures and places within a neighborhood, and invite your community to add their own comments and notations. You could create location-based games using reporting and other information. You can even have your layer behind a pay wall (for those who find that of interest).”