Kevin MoloneyBall State University · School of Journalism and Strategic Communicatuion
Kevin Moloney
Doctor of Philosophy
About
11
Publications
3,829
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42
Citations
Introduction
Kevin Moloney is a transmedia storytelling producer and scholar with a PhD in Technology, Media and Society from the University of Colorado's ATLAS Institute, and an MA in Digital Media Studies from the University of Denver. For 20 years he was a contract photojournalist for the New York Times covering the Americas from a base in Denver. For 21 years he taught photojournalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. He teaches transmedia storytelling and design thinking at Ball State University.
Additional affiliations
May 2017 - March 2020
Position
- Professor (Assistant)
Description
- I teach transmedia storytelling, project design and implementation and direct masters theses and creative projects for the Center for Emerging Media Design & Development. CenterForEMDD.com
January 2016 - May 2017
August 1996 - May 2017
Position
- Instructor
Description
- I taught photojournalism at the University of Colorado Boulder for 21 years. My former students are among the world's most influential working photojournalists.
Education
January 2012 - June 2015
September 2009 - August 2011
Publications
Publications (11)
This feature article identifies three types of transmedia storyworlds—native, emergent, and feral—in the daily journalism work of The New York Times Company (NYT). In doing so, this case study of the NYT reevaluates how a transmedia storyworld is conceptualized, clarifies the relationship between storyworld and reference world in documentary storyt...
This article proposes a taxonomy of media designed to clarify the production and critique of complex media publication. I examine the conflation of ideas described by the word media and review prior taxonomic categorizations of this fuzzy concept. Media is broken
into layered categories of content, media form, and media channel based on the semioti...
This chapter explores the design and execution of transmedia journalism projects to inform professional production and academic experimentation. It draws on the author's current project to illustrate real-world production planning. The chapter opens with a discussion of how design thinking and audience targeting apply to this task and contribute to...
By the time the Aurora theater and Arapaho High School shootings struck my city of Denver, I no longer accepted assignments to cover mass murder. A churn in my stomach stopped me from saying yes again.
I covered my first mass shooting as a photojournalist in 1991: Two suburban Florida families were executed on the same night, likely by the same kil...
This chapter examines the narrative affordances of the still photograph and how it can be used with greatest influence by transmedia producers or critiqued insightfully by analysts. Using memorable examples to illustrate, the chapter discusses how engagement with a still photo differs from a moving image, how a still photograph can work on a narrat...
This chapter explores the design and execution of transmedia journalism projects to inform professional production and academic experimentation. It draws on the author's current project to illustrate real-world production planning. The chapter opens with a discussion of how design thinking and audience targeting apply to this task and contribute to...
This dissertation describes the techniques of transmedia storytelling and examines them in the context of journalism. Its principle case study explores the National Geographic Society’s (NGS) Future of Food project as an example of transmedia journalism. Having many proprietary media channels, the NGS is uniquely positioned to produce expansive sto...
Media make good storytellers, and each is unique. Video illustrates a progression of events, text provides rich context, photography captures a moment in time, and games describe systems, to name a few. In what Jenkins (2003) described as transmedia storytelling, multiple media are used simultaneously in an expansive rather than repetitive way to b...
This paper examines the emergent entertainment and advertising technique of transmedia storytelling as a method for journalists to target their work to an increasingly dispersed public across a rapidly expanding environment of both digital and analog media. In doing so, I argue, journalists can better reach a relevant and decisive public with more...
This paper examines the emergent entertainment and advertising technique of transmedia storytelling as a method for journalists to target their work to an increasingly dispersed public across an unlimited array of both digital and analog media. In doing so, I argue, journalists can better reach a relevant and decisive public with more engaging, com...
Each communication medium has individual storytelling strengths. For example, video is particularly good at illustrating a progression of events, text at background and context, and games at describing systems. In what USC’s Professor Henry Jenkins described as transmedia storytelling, multiple media are used simultaneously, in an expansive rather...
Projects
Project (1)
This book examines and illustrates the use of design principles, design thinking, and other empathy research techniques in university and public settings, to plan and ethically target socially-concerned transmedia stories and evaluate their success through user experience testing methods.
All media industries continue to adjust to a dispersed, diverse, and dilettante mediascape where reaching a large global audience may be easy but communicating with a decisive and engaged public is more difficult. This challenge is arguably toughest for communicators who work to engage a public with reality rather than escape. The chapters in this volume outline the pedagogy and practice of design, empathy research methods for story development, transmedia logics for socially-concerned stories, development of community engagement and the embrace of collective narrative, art and science research collaboration, the role of mixed and virtual reality in prosocial communication, ethical audience targeting, and user experience testing for storytelling campaigns. Each broad topic includes case examples and full case studies of each stage in production.
Offering a detailed exploration of a fast-emerging area, this book will be of great relevance to researchers and university teachers of socially-concerned transmedia storytelling in fields such as journalism, documentary filmmaking, education, and activism.
