Digital Identities powered by Google News Lab: A roundup of the Q&A sessions with previous participants and speakers at the upcoming global seminar series!
Presenting a digest of the Q&A sessions with previous participants and speakers at our upcoming workshops in the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and India. If you’ve registered for the workshop and opted to receive this digest, an email was sent out this morning. For more information, click here.
“I want to bridge the gap between what my colleagues want to achieve online and what’s possible with the tools that are available to us.”
Hanna Österberg, Editor of Social Media at the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet explains how they’re collaborating internally to become a digital-first news organisation.
“It’s far too simplistic to say that people don’t want to pay for journalism. They are going to other places online to access news and information about aspects that relate to their day-to-day lives.”
Peter From Jacobsen, Project Director at the Danish School of Journalism explains why a media organisation has to be part of a social media ecosystem in order to survive.
From an organisational to an individual perspective:
“My digital identity is very close to who I am offline, but it is not a literal representation. I believe this approach will give me longevity and a sense of control.”
Pioneering Indian YouTuber and stand-up comedian Sumukhi Suresh shares her approach to building a personal digital identity to shatter stereotypes and discover new audiences.
“We’re increasingly looking at web-only formats as part of our offering, which is hard, because it’s tempting to make classic television formats.”
Bella Boender, editor-in-chief of VPRO’s website and Youtube channels, explains how the Dutch broadcaster is conducting bold experiments online to talk about politics, sexuality and engage with experts.
“We wanted to focus on people and not on statistics. We hoped this would provide more entry points for nuanced conversations and enable our readers to question assumptions.”
We conclude with David Landes, Head of Commercial Content at The Local, a network of news websites across Europe that together attract close to 6 million visitors a month from around the world. David explains how they used a game-based narrative to co-produce the following story on refugees with their online audience: How I fled ISIS and celebrated Christmas with a Swedish circus.
Would you like to conduct an experiment after the workshop?
David Landes and Hanna Österberg participated in the European pilot of the Digitial Identities programme powered by Google News Lab. They received additional, free support to design an experiment. The same offer is available to participants in the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway. My colleague Kathryn Geels will explain how this works when we meet later this month.
What next?
Confirmed participants will receive a pre-workshop questionnaire next week. The sessions in Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Delhi are now fully booked. If you are on the waiting list, I will get in touch on April 18 if a seat becomes available. If you have a confirmed place and are no longer able to attend, please drop me a line so we can offer your place to someone else. We still have a few places left in Oslo — if your colleagues would like to attend, there’s still time to register.
