Thoughts on Spreadable Media - Part 1 and 2
Thursday, March 12, 2009
In case you missed it, or haven't had a chance to read the 50+ page 8-part essay, Henry Jenkins and his team at MIT's Convergence Culture Consortium have written If It Doesn't Spread, It's Dead.
I'm going to share a few of the things that stuck with me, in an effort to help me wrap my head around such a comprehensive and insightful new paradigm for how content and messages are spread on the web.
Part 1: Media Viruses and Memes
Viral is dead. It has been deservedly murdered because it proliferates a few important fallacies about how ideas spread on the internet.
Part 2: Sticky and Spreadable - Two Paradigms
Stepping in to replace this washed up frame Jenkins gives us Spreadable Media.
Spreadable Media embraces the role that people play in creating value for pieces of content, the role that people play in passing along content in order to affect their relationships and membership in communities, the qualities - both technical and aesthetic - that make people more likely to choose to spread the content, and the importance of the structure of the network into which the content is introduced.
Spreadable media is the new paradigm for what we do. If you are in the business of helping content producers, institutions, individuals, or brands to spread their message, then spreadable media is your new framework for doing what you do.
I know that all you MIT folks have plenty to say on this subject. Please feel free to add your thoughts, clarifications, additions, etc. in the comments.
I'm going to share a few of the things that stuck with me, in an effort to help me wrap my head around such a comprehensive and insightful new paradigm for how content and messages are spread on the web.
Part 1: Media Viruses and Memes
Viral is dead. It has been deservedly murdered because it proliferates a few important fallacies about how ideas spread on the internet.
- It implies that people have no control over what spreads or why it spreads. It just infects us, and we are unable to not pass it on.
- It allows content creators and brands to think that there is some kind of magic content, that if stumbled upon, will just suddenly run wild across the culture.
Part 2: Sticky and Spreadable - Two Paradigms
Stepping in to replace this washed up frame Jenkins gives us Spreadable Media.
Spreadability as a concept describes how the properties of the media environment, texts, audiences, and business models work together to enable easy and widespread circulation of mutually meaningful content within a networked culture.
Spreadable Media embraces the role that people play in creating value for pieces of content, the role that people play in passing along content in order to affect their relationships and membership in communities, the qualities - both technical and aesthetic - that make people more likely to choose to spread the content, and the importance of the structure of the network into which the content is introduced.
Spreadable media is the new paradigm for what we do. If you are in the business of helping content producers, institutions, individuals, or brands to spread their message, then spreadable media is your new framework for doing what you do.
I know that all you MIT folks have plenty to say on this subject. Please feel free to add your thoughts, clarifications, additions, etc. in the comments.
2 Comments:
Trouble is, "Spreadable Media" isn't anywhere near as sticky a term as "Viral Media"...so, semantics aside, I think "Viral Media" will live to see another day, or two.
I think the term Viral is apt since a virus has the ability to mutate. I think this is still relevant since I only found this article as the result of a retweet - how viral is that? (http://twitter.com/visualrhetor/status/1343383233)
Post a Comment
<< Home