BBC Connected Studios

BBC R&D and BBC Connected Studio’s #newsHACK aims to provide journalists and content makers with an opportunity to focus their thinking around storytelling and communication, on new tools, new technology and modular content.

Teams from Swedish Radio, YLE, Wall Street Journal, Bavarian broadcasting/ADR, Canal Extremadura, DXC, University of Cardiff and of course a few teams from across the BBC will be taking part. Each team will begin by facilitating ideas and exploring ways of adapting traditional news formats and will then continue onto a two-day hackathon to build a prototype piece of their own. Finally, these pieces will be judged and a winner awarded by the panel, which includes myself, alongside BBC R&D’s Matt Brooks, journalist Shirish Kulkarni and Emily Withrow from the New York Times.

Modular content is a very different approach to news-making, and could substantially alter how audiences experience news programmes and articles. New tools and technologies such as the BBC Object Based Media allows programme makers to slice up traditional linear broadcasts into separate fragments that can be layered, rearranged, re-modified or re-keyed by adding appropriate metadata to sections of content and using that metadata to assemble unique experiences for different audiences. This leaves a lot of space for journalists to begin experimenting with new ways to tell stories, but also for producers to find new and improved processes in the lead up to publication.

After a year of growing disinformation, confusion and under-represented communities, I will be particularly interested to see work that provides a way to improve on the clarity and relevance of news communication to audiences. I am also always impressed by storytelling that present nuanced, contextualised and collaborative perspectives.

For more information about the Object Based Media tools, click here.