Working in a digital department at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation
Year: Since 2015
Work-work: Telling stories about people
My role: Visual language, photographer, VJ, learning
Personally, the projects and experiences in DR are many: Cross media coverage of shows from X Factor to the Crown Prince Couple's Awards; telling peoples stories through the universe of TVÆRS; covering summer festivals; brainstorming and developing new formats; data driven insights to rationalize arguments. And more. A lot of my work here has been telling stories with photography, video and graphics starting as intern and then employed – making content worth sharing.
Statistics! In 2015 4694 pictures went through my Lightroom Library.In 2016 it was 50223. And now in October 2017 it is already 69132 and still counting.
Times are changing and story telling is cross media: fluidly moving the people between digital platforms and channels. Furthermore, great technology is present and accessible but most be utilized with care. Because what seems like audio-visual high production value for DR, may not reflect an external reality. This is in terms of co-creation, user-engagements, and cross promoting. What do people want to engage in? This demands a qualitative understanding of the national media culture in terms of what the users really wants to be part of, like, if they are asked to co-create. There are barriers.
oining a rather small digital editorial covering events, shows, and awards during my internship on my bachelor’s programme in Fall 2015, I have seen this department rapidly growing. Both growing in terms of good hands available, economy available, and organisational changes. It is a growth reflecting this national media culture, where social media and digital platforms becomes an integrated part of the whole media experience: exclusive value-added content by following platforms across each other has become vital.
This also brings in another important challenge in terms of a shifting production and organisational structure in terms of what the central platform is. Actually, I wrote my bachelor thesis around this topic. Wow.
At DR the bottom line is not about “dollars” due to its public service domain. Broadly speaking. It’s about reaching people with stories and content that are worth sharing – also stories and content that surprises, challenges, and unifies – though, still without throwing money out the window. The approach reminds me of a somehow common design approach: Human centered-thinking in a reality where a media ecology constantly makes people and users move in the landscape. Here, platformes should be combined and seen as supplements to each other. Synergy.
Another learning is the focus on the use of technology in shifting production conditions. Because, if we focus solely on the technology, we are going to loose relevance. The problem is not technology, but about the social, cultural, and political protocols that surrounds the technology and a part of explaining why the technology is used – or not. I find this across design disciplines whether we are creating digital stories worth sharing og digital products worth using.
