Media meshing

Media meshing is the process of using one of the media, such as a blog or a website, to enhance the experience of another medium, such as a newspaper article or a fictional television program.[1] "Meshing" may describe activities and motivations of an information receiver which are completely independent of the intentions of the source of that information. "Meshing" may also be used to describe the activities of an information provider, who may intentionally encourage consumer engagement by using multiple media or channels of information exchange related to a product or organization, as in an integrated advertising campaign. Strictly, in both cases, "media meshing" ultimately describes the behaviour of the person receiving the information.

When the meshing of media sources is encouraged by the source itself, as is often the case with commercial products and special interest promotions, media meshing may be better described as integrated media.[2] This describes the activity desired by commercial entities when they encourage web traffic through non-web media such as billboards or newspaper articles in a comprehensive advertising campaign.[3]

However, from the perspective of the information consumer, Lerma describes that meshing represents a way to experience media which is fundamentally different from the way people interacted with mass media in the past. When the participants themselves choose the channels, pieces, sources, and specific media that they use to enhance or disassemble the first piece of media they encounter, especially when these are perceived to be mostly independent sources, the result is an enriched self-discovery experience with a level of engagement not possible from even the most well designed guided experiences. Meshing goes beyond simply mutually inclusive public relations across media channels, pieces, and product placement. Broadband technology and diversity of online services have increased the accessibility and prevalence of simultaneous media experiences to the point where some would argue there is a new, more demanding and more inquisitive, incarnation of information consumers.[4] The richness of experience in meshing becomes even more evident when information receivers puts their new views and interpretations back into the media by posting or answering questions on a discussion forum or blog, publishing a formal in-depth response, or creating an independent fan site. In cases like these, the persons may be called information prosumers, as they are both consuming information from various sources and producing a web of related information for other "meshers" to consume (or prosumers to mesh).

It is arguable, however, that this is the traditional approach of historians and scientists to information sources, and that what is new is the speed and ease with which cross-referencing and elaboration can be achieved with the media delivery and display technology that is used, and the amount of time invested in multi-source research by the non-specialized population. It is also arguable that multi-form/multi-source information gathering only "seems" new when contrasted to the recent era of single-voice and non-interactive commercial television and radio information broadcasting. It is also important to note that if the sources are not chosen carefully to be as orthogonal as possible, media meshing will result in a false reassurance of the "facts" presented by the single-voice of the original articles, but it would still technically be media meshing (i.e., confirming a CNN television story about an event in London by meshing the CNN.com web-site, BBC radio, and The Guardian newspaper will probably confirm the original facts, but a different set of facts may be forthcoming from an email to a friend who lives there or from reading a blog from a beat-cop in the area.)