City Branding

Old media new media

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They are associated to outbound marketing: it defines more traditional forms of communication. One way because there is no way to know what the customers think.

They are associated to inbound marketing: business methodology that attracts the attention of new customers via content creation. Is about forming connections, answering questions and solving problems.

Cold calling → when someone calls you to offer/sell something.

Pay-per-click adv → an internet advertising model in which an advertiser pays a publisher when the ad is clicked.

Content marketing → a marketing strategy used to attract and retain an audience by creating video, podcast.

Post-truth

Post-truth describes a situation in which the importance of facts is supplanted by appeals to emotion and personal prejudices in influencing public opinion.

Communication

Communication → a two-way process of reaching mutual understanding. 7 C’s of communication: correct, complete, concrete, concise, consideration, courteous and clear.

There are different kinds of communication:

• Intrapersonal → talking to myself;
• Interpersonal → between two people;
• Group → team, family, people you are familiar with;
• Public → speaking to an audience;
• Mass → social media and internet.

Communication process

Sender → encoding (choosing the words, images) → message → channel (the medium with which we convey the message) → receiver → decoding (understand what the sender wants to say).

Verbal communication → tone, clarity, volume, speed, body language and quality; non-verbal communication → facial expression, hand, movements, body language, gestures.

Cause of miscommunication

• Misaligned vocabularies (it depends of whom we are talking);
• Messy thinking;
• Faulty definitions (buy-bye; discreet-discrete);
• False civility;
• Sloppy language habits (avoid words that others may not know).

Connection vs exchange → with the connection you start something, express your ideas, start a relationship with somebody. The exchange is something reciprocal, you give and receive.

Media messages

• Source → the creator can be an individual writer blogger or photographer. In the case of ads, the ‘’creator’’ is the client.
• Audience → most of the media messages are designed to reach specific groups of people, called the ‘’target audience’’.
• Text → what you see/hear. It can include written or spoken words, pictures, sounds. It is also called the ‘’story’’ or ‘’manifest’’.
• Subtext → an individual interpretation of a media message. It is also called ‘’latent text’’. It is the meaning we create from the text in our own minds.
• Persuasion techniques → media messages use these techniques to try to persuade us to believe or do something.
• Point of view → to create it we consider the author’s message.

The new media literacies

New media literacies are a set of skills that everybody needs to deal with our culture today, to function in the media with the internet, with cell phones…

Negotiation = knowing how to enter into different spaces and knowing how to understand what the different norms are. (conoscere come entrare in diversi gruppi e come comprendere le diverse norme).

Multimodal types of texts are types of text where different semiotic resources, or modes, are combined and integrated.

Transmedia Navigation is the ability to go after a flow of media and information across multiple platforms". Storytellers develop transmedia storytelling by branding the same story on multiple touch points and networks. As viewers we come across the same information, same stories and the same characters but the portrayal is in different modes. Transmedia is a way to understand the complex relationships between media audiences, and content. It refers to a set of narrative and non-narrative media elements that are spread systematically across multiple platforms.

Transmedia storytelling

Transmedia storytelling → When elements of a story develop across multiple media platforms to constitute a larger story world.

Transmedia play

Transmedia play → Is a transmedia logic, it involves experimentation with and participation in a transmedia experience, but also applies to media that has no storyline. Is also a way of thinking about children's experimentation with, expression through, and participation in media.

Modes and media

Modes → Language, still and moving image, colour, sound are means of representing knowledge.

Media → old (print media, such as magazines, newspapers, and broadcast media, such as radio, television and film) and new (the Internet, digital television, video on demand) are means of disseminating knowledge.

Digital media

Digital media give us the opportunity to describe the world and communicate with our surroundings in ways that have not previously existed. The conditions for the creation of meaning have been transformed. What takes place in digital media is the convergence of:

• Semiotic systems;
• Reading conventions;
• And rhetorical patterns.

This phenomenon leads to the emergence of new text genres and new forms of literacy. Digital literacy → the ability to use digital technology communication tools or networks to locate, evaluate, use and create information.

Seven elements key in building a digital story

• Point of view → perspective that is given and it may increase empathy.
• Dramatic questions → the crucial point of a story because the plot revolves around it.
• Emotional content → effect which is the result of an approach to emotional materials.
• The gift of your voice → talk loudly, find the right style and tone.
• The power of the soundtrack → improves the style and the meaning of the story’s text.
• Economy.
• Pacing → you should not go too fast just because the story is long.

Multimodality

Multimodality is a meaning-making process which is enhanced by web communication. Working with multimodal texts implies the understanding of the interaction of different modalities and their grammars in the creation of meaning.

Multimodal Text → it can be print, physical or digital. It combines two or more semiotic systems:

• Linguistic → vocabulary, structure, grammar of oral/written language;
• Visual → colour, viewpoint in still and moving images;
• Audio → volume, pitch and rhythm of music and sound effects;
• Gestural → movement, facial expressions and body language;
• Spatial → proximity, direction, position of layout, organization of objects.

Multimodal Analysis (MA) → the critical methodology that investigates the phenomena of intersemiosis, i.e., the synergy between different sign systems. It is a hybrid and holistic approach that considers words, pictures and narrative strategies. MA takes into consideration the “multiplicative combinations of the presentational, orientational, and organizational mode’’:

• Presentational meaning introduces the content of text.
• Orientational meaning indicates what is happening in the communicative relationships and describes participants’ stance to each other and to the presentational content.
• Organizational meaning tells which other signs go together into larger units by means of structural elements, cohesive features, colour scheme etc.

Multimodal Literacy → refers to meaning-making that occurs through the reading, viewing, understanding, responding to and interacting with multimedia and digital text. It may include oral and gestural modes of talking, listening as well as writing and producing such text.

Modularity vs linearity

Modularity inverts the social and power relations of maker and reader. It makes no such assumptions and demands.

Linearity insists that the ordering of the author must be observed.

Cohesion vs coherence

Cohesion → names the devices and their use employed to produce a text. In the written textual elements, the devices are linguistic and textual.

Coherence → names the effect gained from engaging with a semiotic entity, where the reader assesses that ‘everything that is here belongs and belongs together’. In a verbal text coherence is produced by ordering and sequencing. In a multimodal text other semiotic devices are deployed, for example colour palette, display, ordering…

Understanding the kinds of coherence provided by a text, knowing its principles of composition can provide insight into the kind of community which produced it. Conversely, knowing the community of readers for a text will provide an indication of the forms of coherence that are likely to be present. The principles of coherence and the cohesive devices available or used reflect social notions of coherence.

In open digital environments multiple users bring different cultural-semiotic resources to the process of reading. ‘Traditional’ written texts display a linear ordering: in their sequence of elements, arranged as lines; they are strongly sequential in larger textual elements, such as paragraphs and chapters for instance. ‘Newer’ forms of composition provide visitors with navigational resources to choose their own reading path. Modularity rather than linearity of writing provides visitors, both young and old, options for navigating the site as suited to their reading preferences.

What is a blog?

Originally created from the words ‘web’ and ‘log’, a blog is the logging of one’s thoughts, ideas, experiences and more, all in one place on the web. Weblogs are easy to use, and with a few clicks you can share thoughts, opinions, news, anything! You can choose a theme and personalize it with your own colours and your background images.

Most blog themes are made up of four main sections:

• The header → is comprised of your blog’s title or logo.
• The sidebar → includes widgets and things you want to highlight.
• The footer → used to display contents that don’t change.
• The body → the main content area.

Brand

Brand a name, symbol, term, design that identifies one seller’s good or