Multimedia, Slow Journalism as Process, and The Possibility of Proper Time

Abstract

Digital communication is fast and easy; but as a cultural process communication is difficult, especially when it engages with strangers and strangeness. Roger Silverstone describes the space necessary for respectful communication as a “proper distance” vis-à-vis mediated Others—neither too far away, nor too close to see the Other, and to recognise in her our own inherent Otherness. What Silverstone describes in terms of distance can also be considered in relation to time. This article builds on Silverstone’s ideas to outline a working definition of slow journalism as process, and it is argued that multimedia journalism provides a platform for communication that approximates “proper time”—journalism that is fast enough to engage, surprise and retain our attention, yet slow enough to respect a story’s nuance and complexity. It is argued that the poetics of photography provides a subversive logic of efficiency, capable of both revelation and evocation, and of helping us hear the Other; and that audio can expand our vision beyond the photographic frame, providing us with the necessary context and narrative to properly see. This is a narrative warp and weft. The trajectory of one form crosses and expands the narrative arc of the other, providing colour, depth, and nuance. Multimedia journalism can be quick and profound, fast and slow, short-form and long-form, thus occupying a critical middle ground between the impenetrable overloads and binary simplifications of digital communication, and opening a space and a time for mediated Others.

KEYWORDS:

• documentary photography
• media life
• media morality
• multimedia
• proper distance
• proper time
• slow journalism
• vulnerability

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Notwithstanding the rapid increase in smartphone ownership and subsequent digital connectivity in many parts of the world that have hitherto been on the information-scarcity side of the digital divide, my concern here is for how those of us in media-rich societies live with, and relate to, mediated Others. The first-person plural is not intended to be an exclusive mode of expression, nor is it intended to disregard distinct relationships to media—the opposite is the case—but it does necessarily represent a particular experience of “normal” that is specific to those of us who typically consume the journalism that foreign correspondents produce (for example), rather than those who appear, mediated, within the correspondence.

2. By “multimedia photo essay” I mean a story in which still photographs are combined with audio, and sometimes with video, to produce a linear non-fiction story. Other common names for the form include audio slideshows and digital photo essays.

3. See, for example, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/giant-not-a-bug-splat-art-installation-takes-aim-at-pakistans-predator-drone-operators-9246768.html, and http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/for-shame-the-giant-poster-that-shows-drone-pilots-the-people-theyre-bombing/360257/.

4. The argument for an environmental understanding of “multimedia” lies beyond the scope of this article, but in the context of what Scott Lash (2007) and Mark Deuze (2012) describe, in their different ways, as our new new media ontologies, it is an important idea to consider. For relevant research on transmedia storytelling, good starting places include Jenkins (2010) and Scolari (2009).