1	Multi-threaded Interactive Storytelling Kim Pearson Ursula Wolz Program in Interactive Multimedia, The College of New Jersey
2	The Question: How to support a journalist in thinking differently about multiple story lines Why? A web site is problematic for story line The Nancybelle project has multiple angles A web site loses the sense of a narrative arc The Emergent Behavior of the pathways can thwart story impact
3	Who Are We? Kim: A journalist concerned with finding new ways to engage audience with rich, complex non-fiction narratives. Ursula: A computer scientist (former computational linguist) interested in deep structures of multimedia information dissemination.
4	What Are We Trying To Do? Long term: Kim: (the journalist): Design a writing system for creating news stories for database driven, object-oriented narratives. Ursula (the comp scientist): understand deep structure of multiple story lines Short term: Kim: Abstract the process for doing literary journalism Ursula: how can we go beyond the relational database to support this
5	Collaboration with CS Computing is not merely in service of journalism Nor is computing driving journalism It must be a partnership An example from The College of New Jersey content management for an online news magazine http://www.tcnj.edu/~unbound (in collaboration with Monisha Pulimood, CS)
6	Problem in Journalism: Via emerging media, how can we engage audiences that have turned away from news Trying to embrace and understand online & interactive media Emphasis on: social media, citizen journalism making news content accessible on multiple platforms genre - presentation tools, content management systems, games
7	Emerging Critique from CS Technology should allow users to extract news that matters to them. Push vs. pull systems Delivery versus choice When does the story get in the way When does the story get lost because of the complexity of the information (data)
8	Examples of Critique Holovaty: Creates relational databases for news and information: http://ChicagoCrime.org Post Remix: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postremix/ Holovaty sacrifices story – but arguably, losing story loses the essence of journalism Thomson Financial -- robots write basic earnings stories (knowledge-based agents)
9	Magazine Writer Perspective How to employ this technology in literary journalism What might be gained or lost in the process Chose prototype story of Nancybelle Valentine A rich collection of images Preserve a narrative arc in telling her story Can technology capture the multiple stories?
10	The Initial Vision of a Web
11	Emergent Behavior From the author, not even to the user yet How to organize the links How to define the size of a chunk How to choose paths A Relational Database of Course But how to view it As a chart (a table with links)
12	The Granularity Problem How big is a “chunk” of information and what does it looks like? A text snippet A photo (or worse a montage) A video clip An audio clip A set of “links”
13	The Perspective Problem Implied narrative captured in the pathways through the piece Is the “scene” the right level of granularity? How do you re-use these “scenes” Who controls the story: The writer (the computer supports the organization) The computer (acting as editor, imposing structure on the writer) The user ??? introducing severe emergent behavior
14	The Abstraction Paradox Allows you to construct a larger whole Allows information to be accessed and presented from a variety of perspectives Reduces human labor (simplifies coding) Introduces structure where it may be unwanted Absolutely must get the interface right --- prototype!
15	Unbound as an Example Original site was hard-wired Maintained via extensive human labor Current site is easy to update Getting there required extensive conversations about the editorial process so that the process could be abstracted
16	Nancybelle Takes the complexity to a new level Technique comes from New Journalism: Narrative arc Emphasis on character development Scene-by-scene construction Extensive dialogue Experiment with point-of-view Symbolic detail
17	The Hero Narrative
18	Representation of Symbolic Detail
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20	The Emerging Database
21	More than Relational Relational DB only defines the relation between scenes
22	More than Relational Relational DB only defines the relation between scenes Narrative Arc imposes an overarching structure
23	More than Relational Relational DB only defines the relation between scenes Narrative Arc imposes an overarching structure To identify that structure we need to experiment with real stories such as Nancybelle
24	Turning the Tables Is there a place for multi-threaded narrative? Do users need story narrative arc structure? Data mining, data synthesis, where’s the story?