News Immersified (Round 3)
Summary
We are looking to build an an open-source, interactive, storytelling app for news and current affairs features where the user experiences journalism via a messaging platform. The app enables journalists to embed content from interviews with a variety sources into a series of messaging exchanges, and it allows the user to choose between a number of seemingly direct conversations with the interviewees. The user’s responses trigger the next messaging exchange and pivotal “decision points” give the user choices on how to progress. The result is a personalised, immersive, in-depth experience of a serious news story.
The solution
Legacy media is grappling with the challenge of attracting younger consumers. By creating an app based on a messenger platform with a range of interactive narrative choices we will use gamification to turn passive consumers into active users to increase engagement and user retention. Interactive storytelling in newsrooms has been held back by the fact that developing, designing and coding a project costs time and money. Our app will be open-source and free for journalists and newsrooms who want to use it to bring their stories this important audience segment.