Black Panther lessons: Building community through online quizzes
Journalists are storytellers and community builders just as much as they are fact-givers. This is a key lesson we learn as we study the workings of online journalism and interactivity.
The BBC has accomplished these journalistic ambitions in their Black Panther quiz: Which character are you? which was published as the record-breaking Marvel film was released in cinemas in February 2017.
As the BBC describes above its quiz:
The first Marvel superhero film with a predominantly black cast has won rave reviews and is expected to smash box office records. It’s also been hailed as a cultural moment for the representation of black characters in Hollywood.
The quiz format is “now established as one of the most engaging and basic formats” of interactivity, according to Paul Bradshaw’s The Online Journalism Handbook (Chapter 11 Interactivity and Code, 2017).
It’s easy to shrug off a movie character quiz as inconsequential, non-news. But BBC News posted this quiz on its world news page same as any other international story. Why?
As journalist Trevor Gibbons is quoted by Tony Harcup,
“Increasingly the online audience doesn’t just want to be told the story, it wants to be part of the story.” (Harcup 2015)
Black Panther was a “defining moment” for black people. It inspired fashion trends, hashtags, endless thinkpieces. Communities and charities raised money to send black children to watch the film. This was a blockbuster film in which, for once, black people saw themselves. They didn’t see a caricature of black pain or a smear of black violence. The stories of blackness told in Black Panther were stories to be proud of.
That self-pride is why this quiz fits so perfectly into the “continuum of interactivity” surrounding communication and control, where journalists relinquish control in order to foster three-way communication, as described by Paul Bradshaw.
“On the communication side, interactivity means allowing users to communicate with the news organisation, with individual journalists and — crucially — each other.” (Bradshaw 2017)
Black Panther was a film its audience wanted ownership of and participation in. BBC recognised this and sought to capitalise on it. News is multi-purpose, Bradshaw wrote.
“[T]here’s the idea that people read the news for “acquisition of understanding”. I’m not sure how much news consumption is motivated by that, and how much by the need to be able to operate socially (discussing current events) or professionally (reacting to them) or even emotionally (being stimulated by them).” (Bradshaw 2012)
Developing a character quiz met the BBC audience’s need for news in myriad ways:
>The concise introduction to the quiz shares all the primary facts.
>The format pulls the reader into the story, makes them part of it.
>The subjects of the questions show what values are explored in the film.
>The quiz builds anticipation, makes the reader invested in how they relate to the world of Black Panther.
In the end, the reader has become a part of the news. They find out what character they are, and feel an emotional response to that. Pride, excitement, disappointment. Possibly denial, and they return to the beginning of the quiz to redo their answers.
The shareability and high likelihood of emotional response to quizzes are major assets to an online journalist. A reader pleased with their quiz result is likely to share it on social media, and engagement is likely to be high as people react to the results and brag about their own results.
This in turn builds community, a noble result to accompany the click rate and data collection that can bump up a website’s revenue.
Where this quiz fails me, as someone who found it well after its date of publication, is the complete lack of links to related stories. Perhaps when it was originally published, it was laid out next to news stories about the box office numbers and opinion pieces about the film’s message. Perhaps not. A year and a half later, when I stumble upon the quiz, the only way for me to link to BBC’s other Black Panther coverage is to click on the tag at the bottom of the page. The tag takes me to a chronological list of coverage, connected to Black Panther in varying degrees of relevance. I have no clear route to read more about the film or see BBC’s coverage of the mark Black Panther made on the movie industry and black communities.
That is disappointing to me, and feels like a significant missed opportunity. Lighthearted interactive formats like quizzes serve their audience best when they are delivered as springboards that connect the audience to more in-depth coverage of the story.
Bradshaw, P. (2017) ‘Interactivity and code.’ The Online Journalism Handbook. Taylor & Francis. pp. 281–322.
Harcup, T. (2015) Journalism Principles and Practice, 3rd edn. Sage: London.
Bradshaw, P. (2012) ‘Games are just another storytelling device.’ Online Journalism Blog. https://onlinejournalismblog.com/2012/02/09/games-are-just-another-storytelling-device/
Wallace, C. (2018) ‘Why ‘Black Panther’ is a Defining Moment for Black America.’ The New York Times Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/magazine/why-black-panther-is-a-defining-moment-for-black-america.html
