How do documentaries affect society

So, they may be only invested for a short period of time, whereas we may stay on longer. The first thing is strategy. These are for filmmakers who are close to finishing their film and they have a film in post-production and they need to do some fundraising or funders have already put money in and are asking that question what is the impact, what are you going to do with it? Or they need to go out and get money and they need to present a plan or write a grant.

Then, we break the rest down into partnership development which is figuring out who is the right audience, who is the immediate audience and how do we reach them? What are different organizations, leaders, sometimes celebrities, sometimes brands—it just depends on the film—that we can partner with? Then, screening tours. Then, online engagement, which can range from managing your social media profiles and doing some of the graphic design to overseeing the developing of the website.

How do you isolate where to target your films? But once we hit that stage, there were a couple of funders who wanted to get the film to support increasing minimum wage. So there were a couple of different opportunities constructed.

One, there was a screening in almost every state capital in the U. We held an IFA College Night in which campuses and organizations participated by having on-campus screenings. They they tuned into a live conversation with Robert Reich.

We also partnered with Democracy for American to do nationwide house parties. There were house parties total. We hosted a conference call with Robert Reich and Elizabeth Warren that night, and there were 7, conference call participants.

What do you think about film resonates as the medium for these issues? Information collected can be used to identify entry points for conversation, post-screening analysis, and ongoing audience engagement through mobile communication. And we can easily track and sort the engagement data based on demographic and survey information.

Media Cloud is designed for and by academic researchers to analyze news streams from online sources. Researchers can run searches and conduct analysis by specifying media sources, date ranges and key words. The two papers show the key uses of the system — it allows you to map and understand patterns of influence as represented in hyperlinks between stories, and allows you to explore how a story is presented and framed at different points in its lifespan by understanding the language used to represent stories.

OVEE is a platform used to facilitate a social video-watching and evaluation experience. Users can host a virtual film or video simulcast that incorporates audience interaction. Screenings can be limited to private invitation-only audiences or remain open to the public. Virtual audiences can interact during the screening through live chats, polls, emoticators, and social media as designed by the screening host.

OVEE also offers space on the screening platform for branding and calls to action. Screenings can accommodate up to 1, participants and hosts have access to a metrics report at the end of the screening experience. According to the organization, OVEE is not a research framework, but rather a tool that can be used to conduct impact evaluation.

Through OVEE, a screening moderator can gather data about the composition and level of engagement of the audience, how the audience responds to a story emotionally, how the audience shares information and takes action. The goals of the screening were to increase awareness of the issue and disseminate successful organizing strategies through information sharing, create behavior change through individual action, and connect viewers to the Sierra Club.

Using the metrics report and the chat transcript, Sierra Club was able to evaluate the emotional response of the audience to the film, examine the organizing strategies shared, and to track how many people clicked through to the Sierra Club website. The Participant Index TPI is a media-impact research system from Participant Media that examines the social impact of entertainment on its audience.

During the inaugural run of TPI, which was completed in June , the team examined 36 individual entertainment titles across documentary film, narrative film, TV and online videos. The system gathers data about up to 35 entertainment titles twice a year. According to TPI results, the audience found the film to be highly emotionally engaging and impactful, and they indicated a high degree of social action.

Specifically, nearly nine in 10 viewers come away from the film understanding more about the attached social issues than they did before watching, three in four viewers experienced a high level of emotional engagement, and nearly half of those who watched said they engaged in some kind of community-oriented activity as a direct result of the viewing.

Sparkwise is a cloud-based platform for aggregating and showcasing data and information collected through existing sources.

Widgets enable users to pull in numbers from Google Analytics, Facebook, Twitter and other web-based sources. Users can also input qualitative information including anecdotes and videos for a rich media experience. Data visualization can be customized for each source through graphs, charts, maps or direct numbers, and overall presentation is manipulated in a user-friendly drag-and-drop module format individual boxes in various sizes in a similar style to Pinterest.

Aggregated modules come together on a single Web page for a presentation-friendly story of impact that allows for visual comparison of numbers. This is an important distinction between Sparkwise and other tools. Sparkwise is designed as a practical data and storytelling platform to enable a wide range of users to collect, track and share data and rich media in context, and provide tools to action that data for even deeper impact.

It is about strategic storytelling, insight, impact and action. Sparkwise is a project of Tomorrow Partners, a strategic design firm based in Berkeley, California. The John D. Sparkwise is now in a Beta phase. Sparkwise presentation is visual. Numbers are emphasized with minimal text to explain their context, such as the number of Facebook fans. A dollar amount for SNAP payments shows up in pink.

All content provides links for deeper exploration. StoryPilot is a project of the Harmony Institute, a non-profit research center dedicated to understanding the impact of entertainment. StoryPilot formerly known as ImpactSpace uses a solar-system-inspired model for visualizing the metrics on the social impact of documentary film.

Users can zoom in to see the system of strategies and metrics for individuals and films including data about the films production and numbers related to impact. Further zoom provides audience analysis, identifying where there is conversation about the film and related action and impact. Datasets come from publicly available sources including but not limited to IMDB, film websites and social media. Filmmakers can access data and filter through customizable graphs and presentation formats for sharing, and they can also access an evaluation toolkit that draws on social science theories of impact evaluation to understand individual film success.

Ideally, effective impact assessment requires the storytelling team to begin well before production with a deep understanding of the social issues it plans to tackle, by examining existing media framing, public opinion, and the landscape of influencers NGOs, government agencies, others before understanding a an opportunity for change or action. Setting objectives for the project ideally includes counsel on the eventual research question and research method that will be used to assess social impact.

Similarly, the path to effective impact is paved by identifying the kind of change the story hopes to encourage, from individual change knowledge, attitudes, behaviors to public interest change legislation, policy to institutional change corporate, systems. The attractive pull of big data — big numbers, big analytics — can lead to a conversation about documentary impact in which quantitative data and digital metrics are a near-exclusive focus.

While quantitative methods are crucial and invaluable when used appropriately — e. Qualitative data in the form of legislative victories, individual lives influenced in profound or minor ways, nuanced opinions about social issues, and community impact provide sophisticated and valued impact tracking metrics alongside quantitative research methods.

But, to be useful, qualitative data need to be collected and analyzed methodically and strategically based on the objectives of the project, just as quantitative data are, with a strategy to capture the stories and to specify which stories and qualitative data to capture, and how to analyze them methodically to surface insights.

Deciding upon a research method depends on understanding the basics of different approaches — quantitative and qualitative — and matching the appropriate method to the core research question.

The most valuable media impact framework is likely one that clearly maps several appropriate research methods and tools to specific projects, based on whether individual behavior change, public interest change or institutional change is the goal. An ecosystem of media impact strategists, creators, funders and others has evolved over decades of work, with perhaps a heightened level of awareness over the past decade alongside the explosion of the social media and digital era.

The number of papers, tools, case studies, websites and resources is reaching a dazzling volume. And yet, this very specific conversation may not yet be taking place in universities with film production programs in a more formal, curriculum-based way that crosses disciplines for example, research methods in social science are certainly taught in classic scholarly disciplines within communication studies, sociology, political science, psychology.

Is it that time? If not as a formal curriculum, then perhaps simply as an informal series of conversations and workshops about the language and resources available for those who want to work in this niche area — and how to find individuals and groups with the skills to perform the evaluation work. If so, a certain amount of time and thought should be devoted to understanding and developing ways to train and cultivate the future impact producers — college students in the disciplines of film, communication, marketing and others.

We create cultural moments, or we tie storytelling to such moments, to open opportunities for people to make new connections. And that collective energy opens the space for change to happen - a snowball effect for more stories to be told and heard, and for people who have the will to seize the moment.

US-based organisation The Culture Group's Making Waves report is a powerful argument for cultural change, drawing evidence from such social issues as marriage equality, civil rights, and the DREAMer movement to show how cultural moments — from the first black player in US major league baseball to Ellen DeGeneres coming out on live television — anticipated and created the opportunity for many of the political and legal changes that later followed.

Check out the Culture Group's tour of culture's leading role on social change issues from civil rights to marriage equality. Expand your horizons with these scenarios for the future of social impact in the arts via Cultural Data Project. Because filmmakers see the story within an issue in a new way, we can provide much needed focal points to help others see it, too.

That doesn't give us the right to bulldoze. The communities we work with, especially if they are not our own, will still have to do the hard work themselves. Reflections on the Catalytic Role of an Outsider. Get the development movement perspective on the right role for outsiders with Terry Bergdall's paper reflecting on Asset Based Community Development — an approach to development that focuses on the strengths and capacities of local communities. While you're at it, why not brush up on radical media theory, which emphasizes egalitarianism, inclusivity, action, and social movement amplification?

Using Story to Change Systems. From Stamford Social Innovation Review on the need to develop new processes of collective storytelling across sectors to navigate turbulent times and foster systems change. Storytelling has intrinsic properties - but what you do with that story is everything. These are all words used today to describe the plans a film team puts in place to ensure that their film spurs change on an issue - where they are deliberate about who needs to see a film, what audiences need to do, and what partnerships, tools and resources are needed to reach the desired goals of the campaign.

This covers a wide range of activities, from getting your film in front of politicians who are helping to influence policy, to developing plans with NGO partners so they can use it to mobilise supporters and reach new communities, or developing a curriculum guide to help educators use it in the classroom.

This work can be short term — just a few months — or turn into a year-long or multi-year long campaign. It can be run by the filmmaker, or by other expert individuals or organisations. In many parts of the world, this was the only way to get your films to audiences.