Last year, when I was first asked to present Hyperaudio at the MediaParty in Buenos Aires, August seemed a very long time away. Yet here we are - I'm Argentina-bound and leaving on a jetplane tomorrow.

MediaParty Buenos Aires 2014

I'm excited to be talking about Hyperaudio in a journalistic context and running workshops with the technology we've been working on over the summer. It's set to be a lot of fun.

In preparation I wrote some notes on why Hyperaudio is good for journalism.

Hyperaudio is Good for Journalism (notes)

Hyperaudio seeks to redefine the relationship between the spoken word, its written form and the media in which it occurs.

Every word of a given piece of audiovisual media is transcribed and time-mapped.

Hyperaudio is good for Journalism for a number of reasons:

1. Media is fully searchable and more easily navigated

  • Journalists often acquire a la lot of material.
  • Scrubbing through media to locate specific content can be time-consuming.
  • Need an easy way to search through that content.

2. It becomes easy to edit media

  • Once transcribed media can be edited using basic word processing techniques, drag, drop, copy, paste and delete.
  • Scrubbing through media to locate specific content can be time-consuming.
  • You can edit media on many devices - you don’t even need to hear the audio to start editing.

3. Remixes and iterations feel natural

  • Editing becomes so easy that remixes become as natural as editing text.
  • Scrubbing through media to locate specific content can be time-consuming.
  • Nothing is thrown away so we can do additive as well as subtractive remixing.

4. People can share media in a more granular way

  • Highlight a the text of a piece of media and share that text as long as exact start and stop points of that media.
  • Embed remixes in blogs. Allow people to easily remix and blog their perspectives.
  • Comment with media.

Who can Benefit?

1. Large news organisations seeking to expose their media content

  • You should transcribe all your media content to make it accessible and searchable.
  • Time-code your content and you’re ready for Hyperaudio.
  • Hyperaudio.js is MIT licensed and allows you to bring development in-house.

2. Citizen journalists seeking a bottom up approach

  • Journalism can come from below.
  • Hyperaudio allows you to work together.
  • Hyperaudio helps Hyperlocal.

3. A new generation seeking media literacy skills

  • Everything is a remix - remix the remix.
  • Hyperaudio encourages remixes with ‘view source’.
  • Learn from example, teach from example.
  • Hyperaudio is fun!

Addendum - Measurement

When you have word-level timing of content, you can see the content people have clicked upon and/or shared, gaining a better idea of engagement.

Mark Boas