duration: 2019-present | scale: small project (<50k) | financing: Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie & ‘werkplaats beurs’ by Fontys Hogeschool Journalistiek
What if we understood history not as a linear story, but as one of versions, loops and correlations? 4-D News consists of two interactive news formats that put recent media spectacles in a broader context. Navigating the timeline with a physical arrow reveals how quickly the style of reporting and the definitions of main keywords have changed in only a few years.
An “Updating Article” is dynamically evolving as visitors are pulling up and down a physical scroll bar, browsing the story along a timeline: Bits and pieces of over 20 original articles by Süddeutsche Zeitung appear, disappear and replace each other, thus revealing meta-narrations of the coverage.
The article revolves around Angela Merkel’s famous phrase “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do this”, 2015), which became a touchstone for migration politics in German media. Interacting with the article shows how over the course of the last four years, the meaning of this sentence has shifted fundamentally from “Can the EU accommodate more Syrian refugees?” to “Can Germany integrate Syrian refugees into their labour market?”
“Geo-News” displays our changing perception of the city of Aleppo over the course of the conflict. With a physical time-slider, one can navigate through video-material of (Dutch) media coverage on Aleppo from 1990 up to 2019. Comparing point of views of different times, users can debunk inconsistent and lopsided coverage and start to question media framing(s). How come that recent reports on demolition, war, and distress in Aleppo easily buried memories of an overall peaceful and culturally vibrant Aleppo of 2008?
Keywords:
contextualisation
design
journalism
technological empowerment tools