Trend: Telling News Stories through Animation

Technological developments over time have changed the way news is produced and delivered. The role of computer has been central in the evolution of news production. Use of animated videos to deliver news content has been one such development in news media. Leading media organizations have been using news animation to produce short animated news videos for a while now.

For instance, BBC has produced animated footage to report how Tsunami Occurred. Reuters announced its partnership in news delivery through animation with Next Media Animation in 2012. The Next Media Animation is a subsidiary of Hong-Kong based next media. One of its sensational animated short videos displaying Tiger Woods (Golf player) extramarital affairs has been hugely popular on the internet.

The Next Video Animation studio chooses to make animated videos for which the original video footage is not available. Animated video creation involves creating animated characters, a re-enactment of scenes, voice-over and music. The sequences created in animated videos are imaginary and are not based on real footage.  

Sensational and melodramatic content is created with the combined use of these tools, which tends to blur the line between infotainment and news. There is also a concern about the animated news video for not adhering to journalistic principles of objectivity, fairness, public accountability and impartiality. There is also a question mark if – animation facilitates the news storytelling at all?

Animation in India.

The domain of animation is slowly catching up in India too. The Indian animation market is growing. The Indian animation industry grew at a CAGR of 12.3%  and was projected to see a growth of 8.5% during 2016-2020 according to KPMG in India analysis. 

In the union budget for 2022-23, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharman had proposed to set up an AVGC(Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics) promotion task force to look at ways to build domestic capacity and also to serve the goal demand in animation, visual effect gaming and comic sector. It remains to be seen how much-animated content trickles down to news in India. 

In India, Bisbo registered as GoBisbo Broadcasting Network Pvt. Ltd started in 2018 is India’s only YouTube Channel creating news videos. The channel has currently over 1.5 million subscribers. “Mainstream news journalism has still not recognized how animation may enhance their industry. Take TV footage, whatever has been managed to capture on camera is repeated ad-infinitum in the same loop over and over again, making it irritating to watch. Animation allows recreation, and re-imagination and will certainly have larger space in serious news journalism in the coming future", Bimbo founder talking to animation express had said.