The Imagined User: Creating Interactive Narratives in Journalism

Designing for interactivity for audience engagement in journalistic narratives is a new practice that emerged after The New York Times’ success with Snow Fall in 2012. Journalists have begun collaborating with designers in interdisciplinary teams to design these interactive narratives. Few studies describe the new practice that is the result of this collaboration. In this study, we examine the production processes of three journalistic interactive narratives and their design for audience engagement by focusing on the imagined user as part of the production process. Our analysis shows how producers develop the role of users by considering the narrative’s experience and accessibility. Together, these two concepts underpin the practice of designing for audience engagement and subsequent entextualisation. Our findings show that, although producers claim that they approach users differently when designing texts for interactive audience engagement, their concepts of the interactive user are grounded in more traditional notions of authorship and audience in journalistic practices.