The following are the notes from my presentation as part of a panel on “Communicating in the New Normal” at the College Board 2012 Colloquium held in Newport Beach, CA January 7-9.  I was part of very august company: moderator Phillip Ballinger, Assistant Vice President for Enrollment and Director of Undergraduate Admissions at University of Washington at University of Washington, Marie Groark, Executive Director of the Get Schooled Foundation, and Millree Williams, Executive Director for Public Affairs Strategy at the University of Maryland.

The New Normal: The Changing Communications Landscape

The need to explore new models was the emerging theme of the Colloquium.   I’d like to take us up to 20,000 feet for a minute and talk about the new model of communications and the media landscape that is the new normal.

How many of you use Facebook personally?

Compare this 30% to this number: 96% of your target audience, people aged 18 to 35, is on social networks.  The important thing, however, isn’t whether they are using Facebook or MySpace.  It is that these 96% are actively engaging in the online creation, distribution, and sharing of information and media.

The ability to do these things through technology is an enormous change; the biggest shift since the industrial revolution.  It has significantly changed our every aspect of our daily lives at home, work, school, and play and has subtle but profound psychological implications at all levels of society.

Lectures and Cocktail Parties

Consider the difference between a lecture and a cocktail party.  The old communications model —the mass communication, broadcast model — was like the lecture.

• A lecture is unidirectional and linear.
• Only one person gets to talk at a time
• You are supposed to stay in your chair and be quiet
• The lights are on the stage
• There is one message for everyone
• They aren’t very social, but you might get to meet the guy in the chair next to you
• Someone besides you decides when it’s over
• At the end, you’re supposed to feel grateful and applaud.

Now, we live in a globally networked world.   We are connected many-to-many.  We have left the lecture hall and gone to a cocktail party.

• A cocktail party is full of conversations.
• They are noisy and full of energy.
• Everyone talks at once
• They are dynamic and social.  You move around the room, talk to new people and meet ones you haven’t met before
• The lights shine on everyone equally
• You get to choose when and what to eat or drink and who to talk with
• You can decide when it’s over for you and
• When you leave, the host thanks you for coming.

Most of the people who are thinking about college today have grown up in the cocktail party model.

This doesn’t mean they are foolish and frivolous or drink too much.  It doesn’t mean they have short attention spans or are ‘addicted’ to social media.  It means they have grown up with the assumption of their ability to have 24/7 connectivity and on-demand access to information and people.

Individual Expectations and Beliefs

We all have basic beliefs about how the world works and our place in it that are formed from our day-to-day experiences.   Since the introduction of public access to the Internet in the mid 1990s, technology has significantly changed those day-to-day experiences compared to 15 years ago.   This is the biggest shift since the industrial revolution.  Technology has literally rewired the world and the way we think.

How many of you wondered what would happen when you flip on a light switch?  Are you surprised or do you marvel at the light coming on?  Let’s face it.  You would only be surprised, and possibly frustrated, if the lights didn’t come on.

Young people today take connectivity, interaction, and participation for granted in the same way most people view electricity.  Whether young people actually use the specific tools or not, they have expectations about where information exists.  For example, they expect breaking news to be found on Twitter.  They expect gossipy news and photos to be on Facebook.  They expect instant response to text messages.  They expect to phones to take pictures.

Gone are the days of ‘a single function device.’  All of us, but young people in particular, expect life to be media rich, full of images and sounds, not just text.  This makes sense cognitively because multimedia delivery is the most effective way to share information, increase attention, and retention.

Young people also expect information to flow from one media to another.  The distinction between online and offline is no longer relevant.  They are just different forms of connecting along the continuum of life experience.

Social technologies — and there are many kinds beyond social networks, such as blogs, microblogs, wikis, file sharing like YouTube and Flickstr, tagging, forums — have fundamental characteristics that change people’s expectations about how the world works.   Earlier sessions talked about meeting the expectations of foreign students in terms of academic, social and career support.  But it’s not just foreign students you have to satisfy.  Students everywhere have a whole new set of expectations, thanks to a networked and mobile communications landscape.

Today’s Prospective Student

Think about your prospective student—let’s call her Mary.  It does matter if she’s 18 or 28.  She can access all kinds of information without going to the library or opening a file folder, she can connect to others in her social circle without moving her feet, she can seek out professional colleagues or job opportunities without changing out of flip-flops.  If Mary’s lost, she can figure out where she is, without having to ask for directions.  She can take a break and play games with her brother two time zones away. She can take pictures and videos and share the latest music with friends in any number of ways.  Mary can keep conversations going with Mom and Dad, her best friends, monitor global news, post a blog, comment on a Tweet, check in at a local vendor, pay bills, buy shoes, donate money to the Japan Relief Fund, and set up a date for the weekend.

Mary can have relevant information from every domain in her life delivered to her on demand instantaneously any time of the day; she can stay connected to the people and things that matter to her, and effectively interact with her world.

In other words: technology gives Mary a Results-Only Living Environment in her backpack.  Every contact, every social connection, every bit of interaction provides reinforcement for her assumptions that when she acts, the world responds.

If you go back to the lecture and the cocktail party analogy, the balance of power is shifting from the sender to the receiver.  There is unprecedented access, choice and reach.  Social technologies fundamentally shift individual beliefs about what a person can or can’t do.  This doesn’t mean that technology has erased all socioeconomic differences or equalized all access, but it has taken the entire data set and moved it to a difference place on the curve of individual agency.  THIS is the new normal.  From Egypt to Occupy Wall Street, people have a new sense of agency and a belief in their right to speak up.  Social technologies are teaching people how to be self-motivated learners, increasing empathy, social capital, and self-efficacy.

You’re Communicators.  So What Are Rules for the New Normal?

The new normal is about network systems.  Networks are about relationships.  Nothing is just one way.  Networks are continually changing, reciprocal environments.  Don’t be fooled by that fact that technology is involved.  It is a vehicle not the goal.

• Relationships are about authenticity and real human contact.  78% of people trust peer recommendations; but only 14% trust advertisements directly from an organization
• In a networked world, access is easy.  It’s hard to hide things.  The new normal is an expectation of honesty and transparency because it’s easy to find out who’s not telling the truth
• You don’t control your message; if you’re lucky you can contribute to it by active participation
• In a world where anyone can talk to anyone, the new normal is much less tolerant of hierarchies that block access and information, or operate based on condescension or exclusion.
• In a world where the cost of publishing your opinion is zero, the new normal is participation.  People expect to be able to have an opinion; they expect to contribute; they expect to be heard; AND they expect acknowledgement.
• In a digital world, the new normal redefines time and space.  Responses need to be immediate, whether it’s email, callbacks, text message or shipping.
• Technology and on-demand capabilities means we pull information to ourselves based on need, we do not wait for it to be given out.  The new normal is an expectation being able to access and interact with our information and the environment.
• It’s not about the tools — it’s about goals.  Media choice is based on the best tool we can get for the job.

Against this broader backdrop, there are some very real differences in access and use.  According to researchers, the digital divide is lessening not because of more broadband access or home computers, but because of increased adoption of mobile technologies.  For example, teens from lower income families are twice as likely to use a cell phone to access the Internet.   The divide will be more about technological literacy than access.

Social technologies have given people unprecedented control over their lives.  We act and, because we are linked in real time, we see the actions others take and we can interact with them.  Individual actions inspire group actions; groups inspire individuals.

The most exciting thing is that we are training new generations to believe they can act; to believe that an individual can make a difference.  It changes everyone’s expectations about their ability— and their responsibility—to contribute.

What Does This Mean For Colleges And Universities?

Colleges and universities have to communicate value in the context of the larger world — one of global competition, rising education costs, and a challenging job market.

How we communicate has changed, both in form and function.  Social technologies have not only created a new host of tools, but a new set of expectations on the part of the potential students.

The biggest challenge is getting over the old model; the image of your organization as the ‘lecturer.’  I’ve got a news for you — you can go on talking in a lecture hall but your market has figured out they don’t have to sit and listen.

• The good news is that social technologies mean you can get a lot of bang for your buck.
• The bad news is that your strategy and goals are more important than ever because

10 Guidelines for the Social Media Environment

1. You have to find out where the students ARE, to be able to reach them
2. Communication has to be fluid and consistent across multiple devices and platforms, from text messaging and YouTube to legacy media and face to face.  Think transmedia
3. You have to plan for collaboration and participation
4. You have to prepare contingency plans for problems
5. Go where the prospective students are and LISTEN FIRST to find out what they think need, not what you think they need
6. Information has to be human, honest, and transparent
7. Interactions and responses must be timely
8. Attention is a scarce resource and information is plentiful.  Deliver value is by synthesizing information and facilitating decisions
9. The process of recruiting and admissions must allow personalization and participation (beyond sending in the application or emailing an admission’s officer questions)
10. Ask your audience for solutions to your problems

Implications for Higher Education

First, as buckets of data will attest, the fundamentals that are drive opportunity, from higher compensation and employment to recognition, are always about who add value to society.  When jobs are scarce, we lose track of the fact that they are scarcer the less skills and education you have.

More than any time in history, we live in a knowledge society.  Technology is ubiquitous, from simple iPhone apps to complex biomedical and engineering tools.  Success in the 21st century requires a new literacy.   It requires the ability to apply judgment and critical thinking to see what technology allows us to do.   It’s not about finding.  It’s about thinking, synthesizing and innovating and converting that to action.

Colleges and universities aren’t immune to the changing environment outside the Ivy Covered Halls.  Think about the difference between lecture halls and conversations, not just for how you communicate what your institution can offer or what college can offer, but in HOW you educate.

Effective education needs to be follow the same rules:  collaborative, participatory, challenging, responsive, inclusive, respectful, be interesting and have value for the 21st Century.

The education offered must be relevant to the goals of the prospective student.  The ability to control the environment, to participate means that the prospective student isn’t going to take your word for it that what you offer is valuable.  You have to make it valuable and prove it.

The social media environment has the potential to create self-motivated learners in a responsive environment that believe they can change the world.

We need a new name for ‘transmedia storytelling’. It seems like all the excitement about big transmedia storytelling projects has made it the buzz term du jour. But somehow, in all that excitement, the fundamentals have become obscured. It’s important to remember that in ‘transmedia storytelling,’ that ‘transmedia’ is an adjective. ‘Storytelling’ is the noun.

The transmedia part of transmedia storytelling is like building a musical score the way a conductor employs different instruments in an orchestra. Each instrument doesn’t sound the same or play the same notes but if performed well, is beautiful on its own. Together they create a whole new experiential space that transports us by opening the door to our emotions and imagination. Transmedia storytelling, like a symphony, creates a collaborative and immersive story ecosystem that is new, engaging, and exciting. It takes tremendous creativity, talent, and, literally, orchestration, to pull off a transmedia storytelling project. But the created storyworld, for all the technological marvels, trick applications, and clever alternate reality games, is only as effective as the story it is built on.

Storytelling is a basic and powerful form of communicating. Narrative is how humans have always shared information because it includes context and emotion. Stories are cognitively linear so they can describe a path of events with a goal, a conflict, and the promise of resolution. This doesn’t mean that stories can’t be constructed in a nonlinear environment. They can; that’s part of the excitement about using the tools of a transmedia world to assemble the story. But the linear link is what provides coherency so that the parts fit together, whether it’s backstory or clues to unravel mysteries in the main story arc.

Stories are how the brain communicates. Human brains are hardwired to look for patterns and causality. It’s how we discriminate between a tiger and a tree. Once the brain identifies a pattern, such as a ‘tall thing with leaves’ or ‘striped animal with big teeth,’ it has to make a split second judgment as to whether the detected information is something safe or dangerous so we can react. In other words, the brain uses the pattern-finding information to match against existing experiences — the ‘story’ of sensory information that links events and information together — in order to trigger the emotional and behavioral responses that increase our probability of survival.

The more emotion involved in the experience, the more we pay attention and the better we remember it. Emotion, both positive and negative, was a signal of importance to our survival: “the last time I saw a tiger it ate the antelope…therefore, I will run” or “I really love this baby, therefore I will take care of it.”

Controlling our environment was a sure way to survive. This is why humans are curious. In a modern world, curiosity doesn’t always have such a directly apparent relationship with survival. However, it is still true that the more we know, the better we can predict and the more we have certainty, the more cognitively comfortable we are. Mastering challenges, overcoming the unknown, and conquering uncertainty were essential elements of survival on the Savannah. They still feel really good today. The fact that we’re wandering around in cyberspace doesn’t diminish the human drive to find things out and conquer uncertainty, or the primordial (or neural) pleasure in doing so. It’s just what we do.

Stories are games without points or scores. They engage us because they trigger our curiosity, for example, how many bad movies have you watched to see how they end? A good story, however, gives us authentic emotion and a universality that allows us to connect in a multisensory way. A good story transports us into a new experience. A good story creates personal growth.

Transmedia storytellers have the full pallet of media at their disposal to construct a story within a rich fabric of experience. The wealth of media technologies allows for the integration of interactive and sharable qualities. The result when done well is a story that moves across media and transcends on and offline space. This is only possible because technology has moved the locus of control to the players. The stories only move across media and across time and space when the audience decides to carry it. Transmedia storytelling creates a collaborative and immersive environment that is new, engaging, and exciting…and participation-dependent. Aspiring transmedia producers need to remember that the created environment, for all the available technological intricacies and opportunities, is only as effective as the story it is built on. At the end of the day, transmedia or monomedia, it the story that counts.

Note: This is why I’m excited about the StoryWorld conference in San Francisco October 31-November 2, 2011. It’s a chance see how professionals from different industries are using the power of story in a transmedia world.

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Cross-posted on PsychologyToday.com Positively Media

The in-flight safety message on a recent Virgin America flight ended with a clever info-cartoon intended to raise awareness of how obnoxious airplane behavior impacts everyone on the flight called “We’re all in this together.”

This is a message in short supply today.  We should take a cue from Virgin America & Method (who co-sponsored the message). Instead of politicians trying to convince voters that the other guy is the problem, or, like after the London riots or the BART cell phone shut down, that access to communications tools is dangerous, we need a new mindset.  It’s time for a Public Service Announcement that focuses on the strengths that come from unity; a nationwide public relations campaign based on the understanding that we are all in this together.

"We're all in this together" from Virgin America & Method info-cartoon

Social media and communications technologies are in everyone’s sights.  Technology does contribute to what David Altheide (2010) calls the ‘politics of fear.’  He talks about it in terms of the ubiquitous expansion of surveillance.  Technology also allows bad news to spread fast.  Bad news produces fear and uncertainty—from local concerns like potential job loss or inadequate retirement funds to global anxiety recalling images of the Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression.  Bad news spreads fast because emotions are contagious whether they are facilitated by social media or pamphlets.  Fear is an emotion, in fact, one of the most powerful emotions we experience.

Speaking to threats, taking away rights and looking for someone to ‘blame’ send and reinforce powerful and dangerous messages of fear.  It will certainly get people’s attention, but if people are afraid and feel powerless, one of three things happens: 1) the act of destruction becomes an act of agency, 2) they give away more rights to feel “safe;” or 3) they seek out a segment of society to blame.

Media is a powerful tool.  Let’s use it to bring people together, not drive them apart.  Let’s remind people that:

• Freedom is precious—it is worth fighting for, not against.  You don’t get more freedom by violating the right so of others, whether you’re a government agency or a rioter.
• We’re all in this together.  This is not a zero-sum game.  If we, as a society, grow and flourish, there is more for us all.

Psychologically as well as biologically, fear serves to warn us of danger.  The human brain is hardwired to pay attention to these warnings to ensure our survival.  Our rapt attention to bad news is the coping mechanism of information gathering—paying attention to news and other media—in order to find some certainty and make some sense out of the whole mess to manage the fear and figure out if there really is any danger. The human brain also seeks order, because order represents predictability.  Predictability increases safety.  Yet, while economic news may have personal consequences, what is going on is somewhere between complex and unintelligible and solutions far beyond the reach of the individual.  We, for better or worse, rely on government and financial structures to manage our fiscal health.  So we are left not only fearful, but helpless.  What is not in our control is, by definition, less predictable.  This escalates the fear because there is little more frightening than when our future well-being is out of our hands, putting us somewhere between Alice’s Looking Glass and Kafka’s Trial.

All of these things are exacerbated with knee-jerk policy decisions and political rhetoric . No matter which side of any argument you’re on, people make investment decisions in EVERYTHING based on predictability — investments of time, emotions, and effort not just money.  Behavioral economists have won Nobel Prizes showing that peoples’ understanding of probability is inaccurate and that they rely on heuristics.  While we could debate whether the definition of optimal risk and reward to an economist is the same as ‘optimal’ to someone balancing a complex interpersonal and socioeconomic environment, that isn’t the point.  People are still trying to make the best judgments they can about what to do — ‘rational’ or not.

Fear hampers our cognitive and moral capacities.  It makes us worry about ‘not enough’ and about ‘losing what’s ours.’  It creates a divisive, us-versus-them environment that influences our behavior — and not for the better.  It also makes us extremely vulnerable to those who offer solutions in the guise of usurping individual freedoms.  Fear creates a narrative that ‘control is necessary to keep us safe.’

When authority figures play on that fear by warning of worse calamities, taking away rights, or responding to a protest with cadres of riot gear, they are adding to the problem no the solution.  They are diverting the attention of the public away from the real issues.  In the case of the BART station protests, the over- and possibly unconstitutional – reaction by BART of shutting down cell service not only obscures the purpose of the original protest—the circumstances surrounding the shooting of Oscar Grant by Bay Area Rapid Transit police—but turns all of BART into bad guys instead of isolating and addressing a problem incident.  It also distracts us from the blatant disregard of people for their fellow citizens in the looting, arson, or other costly damage of protests that escalate to social disruption and violence rather than engender dialogue.   In a society where social media can bring people together quickly, it can also let people know when what they are doing has crossed the line.  (See “Twitter Users Blast the London Rioters.”)

It’s time to let the politicians, the government, and the media, know that using fear and blame to get people’s attention and votes is not okay.  It may succeed in getting people elected or products sold, but it undermines our social cohesion turns us into a nation of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ instead of ‘we’.

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Altheide, D. (2010). Risk Communication and the Discourse of Fear. [Article]. Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies, 2(2), 145-158. doi: 10.1386/cjcs.2.2.145_1

The talented California based animation studio Three Legged Legs created the commercial for Method & Virgin America

I am always looking for ways to get people to think about the psychology behind media, mediated communication, and technology. SxSW (South By Southwest or ‘South By’ if you’re on a first name basis) is a music, film, and interactive media conferences held annually in Austin, Texas and it is a perfect place to do that.  I like to think of myself as an ambassador for media psychology because at SxSW Interactive, I get to talk and hang out with the people I don’t normally see, who are doing a lot of the inventing, communicating, and producing.  Aside from getting some psychology into the greater global consciousness and I always learn a humbling amount about technology and emerging media development and use. 

SxSW would be more accurately called a celebration than a conference.  It has grown exponentially because it brings together a fascinatingly diverse group in all senses of the word–artists, thinkers, and doers from across industries around the globe. The energy from that diversity of talent, backgrounds, and worldviews is tremendous.  And as if that wasn’t enough to make it fun, there is also an avalanche of exciting digital gear between the tech-intense audience and the displays at the Sponsor booths as well as awesome BBQ and margaritas and very cool graphics on the t-shirts.

In 2012, SxSW runs from Friday, March 9 through Sunday, March 18; nine-days that encompass three events (or one really large one, depending upon your interests)  SXSW Interactive Festival, SXSW Film Conference and Festival and SXSW Music and Media Conference.  It dates back to 1987 with a focus was on showcasing new music and films, but the explosion of social media, mobile devices, and gaming has caused the Interactive section to grow at warp speed.  In 2011, there were an estimated 20,000 attendees in Interactive alone.  The sessions run during the day and then the parties take over.  It is, on average, a rather young crowd as you might imagine.  Last year, I participated on a panel called “Can the Internet Make You Happy?” thanks to Anastasia Goodstein.   It was a lot of fun.

True to the social media environment, SxSW use crowd-sourcing and social media to solicit and select their panels.  Thirty percent of the decision of who gets to speak is made by the public through a voting mechanism called the ‘panel picker.’

This gets me to my point.  My submission in the panel picker for the Interactive Festival is called “Brains, Games & the Consequences of Design.” And, in a shameless plug, I need votes.

I plan to discuss the “how” of  good user experience from a psychological point of view.  This includes stuff like how design translates into what users actually experience and how people can make sure that what they design is what the audience really wants.  My goal is to take the audience on a journey, breaking down the psychology of user experience. We will follow information as it goes in through the senses, fires up the neurons in the brain, gets converted from electrical sparks to meaning, and is translated into emotion, experience and behavior. The science of neurocognition and positive psychology unlock the mysteries of attention, engagement, image, story, flow, meaning and pleasure. We will break this down further into the primary drivers of effective, more successful, and more rewarding and pleasurable interactive media on any device. The takeaway is an increased understanding of how to improve the effectiveness of your interface, apps, games, marketing and advocacy campaigns, educational initiatives, or entertainment projects.  Not to mention, the ability to transform lives and society through interactive media.

Here are the driving questions:

• What turns interactive media into an engaging or ‘flow’ experience?
• How does cognitive processing influence design and messages?
• Why are brains social?
• Why are stories and images powerful information delivery systems?
• How does technology create intrinsic motivation?

So, help me further the field awareness of the field of psychology and cast a vote (a thumbs up, really) for my presentation!

To vote, go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ and register (it’s free and a voting control mechanism.)  Then go to “Brains, Games & the Consequences of Design” at http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/12672 and remember, it’s a thumbs up!