Health inSite: Breaking the Fifth Wall

A refresher on Alternate Reality Games, Transmedia Storytelling, and Engagement

While I highlighted the opportunities with Alternate Reality Games and Transmedia Storytelling in my last post, I wanted to take a moment to share a recent production that I’ve been looking into that really highlights how this format works: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (LBD) is a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.  The characters in the story have their own online presence within various social media outlets and interact with one another through Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, ThisIsMyJam, Websites, and more (various examples shown).  The characters share their stories with one another through these dynamic media and oftentimes interact with the audience as well.

While this has engaged a pretty significant audience (fandom), what is really incredible is the way in which the audience has begun to participate with one another.  A recent update to the story included new information that Lydia Bennet (Lizzie’s youngest sister in the updated version) has been caught up in a sex tape scandal (remember, this is not meant to be perfectly along the storyline that Jane Austen wrote, but one that resonates with the audience of this retelling).  There was a huge outcry from the audience expressing dismay at this turn of events.  So much so, that that there was discussion the fandom should look for a hacker who would be willing to hack the website on which the video’s seller was collecting interested buyers with a countdown clock.  This created an immediate problem for the producers/writers of the story.  If the site indeed had been taken down, the team would have to develop a way to get around the change in the storyline created by the audience, and at great expense.  In this way, the audience collaborated to solve the problem of the character, rather than maintain their understanding that this was simply part of the story for consumption.

Let’s start with the Fourth Wall

In theater, the Fourth Wall is the theoretical veil between the audience and the stage.  Breaking the Fourth Wall happens when the players on the stage actively communicate directly to the audience.  There are countless examples in which the magic of the story playing on any stage (screen applies here too) is broken in this way, but the practice is increasing with evermore prevalent new media projects.  In my last post, I described Transmedia Storytelling and Alternate Reality Games as a way of telling a story through multiple media streams and its ability to engage an audience in new and immersive ways.  But breaking the Fourth Wall can be used to engage the audience in participating in the story through these methods to expand the value of the experience that the audience has.  For more on the Fourth Wall, check out Wikipedia for a quick overview, or TV Tropes for all kinds of cool information about the idea and the way that the  this device may be used.

Now, to the Fifth Wall

There is another proposed wall which has been less well explored, and often debated as to its name: The Fifth Wall.  The operational definition that I like is the veil that separates members of the audience from one another.  For a long time, the audience has been the passive observer of entertainment with notable exceptions of breaking the Fourth Wall.  But, rarely does a media experience really ask for members of the audience to work with one another.  This concept of the Fifth Wall could have significant implications in the sharing of narrative within an Alternate Reality Game with a true Transmedia Story backbone.  Consider the opportunities of having participants in the audience that can help guide the story cooperatively; sharing goals, pushing one another toward success, battling challenges together.  If your friends’ friends impact your health in positive and negative ways (see previous posts about link influence here), what about engaging a first node relationship more directly to change the perception of the second or third node to ripple back through the network to you.  In this way, the network then begins to course with change and as you make changes that influence others, their responsive changes come back to you.  In this way, helping others get healthier helps you get healthier.

The Walls and their implications within LBD

The surprising situation that happened within the LBD is that while the narrative has been so clearly billed as a story, with many instances of the Fourth Wall being broken (the producers actually have entire blog postings dedicated to talking about the production process as it is occurring), it turns out that the Fifth Wall nearly took down the production.  The audience reverted to a sense of belief as they interacted with one another.  The characters, then, are part of the audience – and the audience part of the characters.  This creates a shared experience where the audience felt that they were responsible for helping solve the problem for the character.

Summary

The investment of the audience in their shared experience (this includes characters, as mentioned above) has huge implications for health programming.  Imagine a story with so much motivation and movement as LBD written to achieve Salutogenesis by creating a shared landscape around health behaviors.  If we know that education, knowledge, and external incentives are not motivations for behavior change, is this the next landscape to try?  We think it is.

To our health,

Ryan Lucas
Marketing

Health inSite: Social Media Access at Work

Let’s take a moment to discuss the great ‘Social Media at Work’ debate.  You’re familiar, I’m sure, with this concept.  It starts with a question like this:

“Why would we allow our employees to spend ‘work time’ doing things other than work?”

or another popular alternative,

“Do we want to allow employees to engage in social networking where they could release PCI (a play on PHI in the health world, Protected Health Information: Private Corporate Information).”

or the myriad other great arguments for canning social media in the workplace.

In 2011, MINES had the great honor of presenting at the EAPA International Conference on Wellness Programs where we posited an alternative to traditional wellness programs that relied on the value of social media with employees as a means to increasing adoption, bolstering adherence through social relationships, and positioning health as a social venture where people are spending increasing amounts of their free (and yes, even work) time engaging in health.  The core of most Wellness programs is similar to that of traditional EAP; a sort of ‘we’re there when you need us’ or ‘wait-and-see’ approach.  Wellness programs, however, often incentivize participation through monetary carrots or sticks.  This is a one-to-one approach to health.  Those of you that get to play with relational databases, however, recognize that there are many ways to connect entities (data, people, sites, etc.).

Social Media has the ability to act in a many-to-many way; that is, connecting me to my friend, and my friend’s friend, and all of us to an expert (be it a website, user, resource, or anything else) to engage on a topic.  This is an extremely powerful tool that is starting to be leveraged by a handful of companies – similar to the group therapy model where part of treatment is engaging with other individuals that are currently in treatment, rather than solely with the doc, therapist, CAC, or sponsor.

At the conclusion of our presentation, an attendee posed the following question during the Q and A:

“My company doesn’t allow access to Social Media at work, what recommendation do you have for a company that wants to consider leveraging Social Media but its’ employees don’t have access to it.”

The answer from our CEO went something like

“At MINES, we’ve created a culture wherein every employee is expected to do their best.  I trust that my employees are doing just that and see that they do their best every day and until I see different results, I trust my employees to not abuse the system.”

Let me take a quick moment to highlight this infographic from the University of Melbourne (et. al.) which highlights some of the points on this subject.  Restricting Social Media at Work has many great arguments on its side; potentially lethal viruses, decreased bandwidth (the tech kind, not the personal productivity kind), and even legal concerns regarding PCI.  Productivity is a really common go-to, however, and the others are extremely valid.  Further, I don’t have good arguments against them (besides increasing your company’s bandwidth, installing good anti-virus software, and educating your employees on safe browsing habits), so let’s talk about the increased productivity experienced by those with unfettered access to Social Media.  Could these quotes be right?

“Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the Internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a days’ work, and as a result, increased productivity.”

That’s pretty interesting and kind of common sense when you think about it.  Looking to an interview with the guru of productivity, Tim Ferriss, on LifeHack is the argument that we should…

“Take frequent breaks and strive to constantly eliminate instead of organize.”

So, despite all of the many reasons to not allow employees onto these Social Media sites, here we see the interplay of increasing productivity by taking breaks, and Social Media as an opportunity to boost creativity and rest the mind.  It’s certainly interesting.

Keep in mind; we’re not suggesting that every company, organization, or government entity allow unfettered access to social media sites.  We recognize that many of the groups that we work with each day have significant and valid arguments to be made as to why they do not allow access from a workstation provided by their IT department; but most arguments are worthy of reexamination as new information becomes available and the growing trend in BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) will have significant consequences as well when it comes to the Social Media, or WILB (Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing), debates – a topic we’ll tackle in the next iteration of Health inSite.

To Our Health,

Ryan
Marketing

Health inSite: Community is the Key to Health

Alternate title: Your friend’s friend makes you fat.

When it comes to your health, it’s important to realize that the decisions you make do not exist in a vacuum.  In fact, it may be even more the decision of your peer group than yourself as to what you eat, how you exercise, and what other habits and behaviors you engage in.  Recent studies have shown that your social network (and we’re not talking about facebook here, although that may be one depiction and/or part of your social network) has a greater impact on our overall health and well-being than we knew (or, in some cases, would like to think!).

An excellent, recent article posted by Mark Hyman, MD on the Huffington Post explains: “Much can be done with a little help from your friends.”  Creating a community around health topics, especially related to health behavior changes, can be critical to instituting new or better habits that have an impact on your total well-being.

At MINES, there are a couple of us that get together for lunch every day.  In the course of the meal, we may talk about the Broncos, the latest political debate, technology, and so on.  But one thing that we do every meal is discuss what we are eating.  We come together and discuss new recipes we’ve discovered and why we’ve chosen to eat as we have.  I recently (and at the time of this posting, currently) tried to eat only whole foods for a month.  This meant no salt, no sugar, no cheese, sweetening my coffee with honey, and very little pasta / bread.  It has been difficult to fully 180 turn around on a diet that had previously heavily relied on enriched cereal grains and pre-processed foods.  But, the reason I was able to make the shift, I believe, was that I was positively influenced by this group that was interested in, shared similar views on, and regularly engaged (daily) in the topic.  In behavioral health, we would say this created a support resource for treatment adherence.

Healthy behavior is not dependent on what payment models, medical technology, or other innovations come about in the healthcare debate.  We know that your friend’s friend has a great impact on what you do – and vice versa.

Today, you could:

• Discover new friends
• Decide to impact your friends
• Ask for support from your friends
• Be influenced by your friends

Today, make a decision about one habit that you want to change and find someone who wants to make that change with you (or even better, a group of people) and you’ll find yourself much more likely to achieve it.  If you’re not sure how to decide what changes to make or need some ideas on creating your own wellness plan, one of our Affiliates, Cecelia Keelin, recently hosted a ChooseWell webinar for MINES that might help.

To our health,

Ryan
Marketing

Childhood Immunizations: Get the Facts

Visit our Website Past Newsletters Childhood Immunizations: Get the Facts August 8, 2011   Social media has an increasing presence in our lives. I remember thinking, “this Twitter rage will never stick.” But now it’s everywhere. Still, I have yet to succumb to the madness, but then again I said that about a few of the social networking sites. I learn of many things that you would consider breaking news through social networking sites. I will admit that I had strong opinions about people displaying their lives over the internet but now I also see some of the benefits. Reading people’s arguments has raised a new level of tolerance and understanding within me, for opinions I may not have previously agreed with. One of those controversial topics is whether or not we should get our children immunized. It may be a controversial topic, but as Dr. Holiday says, it’s important to make an informed decision. Consider the sources that you read from and try to gather as much information as you can from as many credible sources as you can. Read more on this topic here… Britney Kirsch Account Manager

Social Media Policies – What Employers Can and Cannot Do

As social media continues to evolve, employers’ rules governing its use in and out of the workplace by employees must continually adapt, not only to keep up with the technology itself, but to ensure those rules are in compliance with the law. The challenge for employers is that the law is ever evolving to keep up with the ever changing technology. Compliance with the law can therefore be a moving target for employers, requiring a great deal of due diligence and good legal counsel.

One of the more recent hot topics has involved whether employers can regulate what their employees say on Facebook. Specifically, the question has been addressed as to whether employees can be prevented from saying derogatory things about their employers on social media like Facebook. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has stated that employers have a right to conduct “concerted activity” with fellow employers. Translated into laymen’s terms, this simply means that employees have the right to discuss their working conditions and compensation with one another and that employers are not allowed to stop it without violating federal law which could lead to stiff penalties.

The big dilemma for employers is defining what constitutes “concerted activity” because it has not been clearly defined by the NLRB. Does this mean employees have the right under federal law to say disparaging things about their employers online? At this point, the answer is unclear. What is clear is that employers cannot make blanket rules prohibiting employees from discussing their work conditions, compensation, or the like on social media like Facebook. Doing so may very well put a company at risk of law suits and harsh federal penalties.

If you’re an employer, you would be well advised to check your official company policies to make sure they don’t contain overreaching social media policies. If you find that they do, it’s in your best interest to make immediate adjustments to ensure you’re in compliance with federal labor law. If you have questions, consult your attorney. An ounce of prevention goes a long way with this issue.

Wade Hardie, JD, MBA
MINES Corporate Counsel

Use Your Facebook Profile to Assess Your Life

Here’s an interesting concept that I want to challenge all of the readers of this blog with trying.  I found this idea in the book Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business by Erik Qualman.  In the 3rd Chapter, “Social Media = Braggadocian Behavior,” Qualman quotes a gentleman of 83:

I actually made a habit of physically printing out my social media updates from the previous month and going through them one-by-one and highlighting updates that weren’t necessarily contributing to a full life.  Over time, I reduced the amount of waste and actually became so cognizant of it during the actual act of updating my status that I’d recognize in that specific moment in time what I would deem an unfruitful activity and cease engaging in it immediately.  My life is much more fulfilling because of this!

What an interesting comment.  Last year I found an application available through Facebook (My Year in Status) that would actually grab all of my status updates over the last year and compile them into an image.  Similar applications will allow you to see what words you publish most often in your status updates (Status Cloud), or see the entire history of your status updates since joining Facebook (Status Archive).  I encourage you to try using one of these applications and see what you are sharing with the world.

Are you happy?

Are you healthy?

Are you boasting, or brooding?

How do your status updates make you feel about yourself?

How do you think they affect those who view them?

And if you don’t use Facebook or any other social media tool, consider the other ways that we tell our stories, from the water cooler to the dinner table.  You have the opportunity, capacity, and power to write your own book.  What do you want the plot to be?  If the people in your lives are co-authors, and therefore you in theirs, what role do you want to play?

Ryan Lucas
Supervisor of Marketing