IMAGE: CNS photo/Paul Jeffrey
By Tom Tracy
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (CNS) -- Low-cost
video messaging carried across increasingly video-friendly social media
platforms will define this year's World Youth Day experience, said several
organizational leaders finalizing their media strategies.
Due to the prevalence of
smartphones and tablets, and their improved video-capture and
mobile-application media-sharing capabilities, World Youth Day is likely to be
documented in a way that no other such event has been to date, said Pallottine Father
Frank Donio, director of Catholic Apostolate Center in Washington.
He said that in the 2013 World
Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, "the digital pieces were there, and we saw
the strength of the opportunities for people who couldn't be there to follow
along and share in the experience."
"Now that same technology
has grown even more, and many more people now have a mobile device to follow along,"
he told Catholic News Service.
World Youth Day will take place
in and around Krakow July 26-31, with Pope Francis leading events July 27-31,
including a closing overnight vigil and Mass that is expected to draw as many
as 2 million attendees from around the world.
The Catholic Apostolate Center
is one of a handful of partner agencies that have been helping the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops develop and disseminate World Youth Day
preparatory materials, e-book study guides and online blogs and digital media
content, including videos on YouTube and elsewhere.
"World Youth Day is just
one aspect of how this understanding of social engagement can be applied in
real time," he said, adding that there will be a lot of cross-sharing of original
World Youth Day content, produced with both high- and low-technology and shared
across such platforms as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. The content will be
collected at www.wyd2016.us.
"Video is really where
things are at: not long, drawn out videos but something powerful and impactful
in a few moments, something real," the priest said, adding that he
suggests adding captions to the videos wherever possible because many mobile
phone users digest video content with the audio turned down for various
reasons.
"Studies indicate that
World Youth Day has been shown to be a very formative event: Vocations have
come out of it and people have deepened their faith as a result of that
experience," Father Donio added. "We want them to continue to the
next point: How do you more to a more deeply committed apostle?"
Sarah Yaklic, director of
digital media for the Archdiocese of Washington, said her team was applying
many of the social media lessons gleaned during Pope Francis' U.S. visit to
help connect World Youth Day pilgrims in Poland and the U.S.
"We saw the unique
evangelism opportunities and personal conversion stories, so we worked hard in
helping people not use social media in isolation, but praying for and helping
brothers in need, for example, through our Walk With Francis pledge campaign,"
Yaklic told CNS.
The Archdiocese of Washington
will compile original social media content from World Youth Day across an array
of social media platforms, available to anyone with basic access to the
internet at the soon to be launched website wyddc.org/live.
However, Yaklic said, the real
aim for church is achieved when people actually put their mobile devices away
and engage with real life.
"Our real goals are not
high numbers, but when individuals see something and are moved or inspired to
act to prayer, outreach -- then we have done the best job we can as digital
evangelizers," she said.
The Arizona-based Life Teen
International, which for the first time in many years has organized its own
World Youth Day pilgrimage trip for nearly 300 young adults, is sending a
social media specialist to document the experience mostly through the
mobile-phone application Snapchat.
Stephen Lenahan, Life Teen's
director of events, said his agency determined Snapchat's new advances in video
handling and its own easy editing application make it a great choice for
sharing the World Youth Day experience in a continuous and seamless
presentation rather than packaged in a series of content segments.
"It will be accomplished
through one cellphone outfitted with special lenses; we are bringing our own
WiFi hot spots so we can post content as we go and not wait until we get back
to the hotel room," Lenahan said. "When you post videos on Facebook
or Instagram, typically it's a short clip or a longer clip with editing. But
Snapchat automatically ties the video together, and the storytelling can be
done quicker."
Life Teen also plans to use
Facebook's live streaming feature, he noted.
Paul Jarzembowski, World Youth
Day USA coordinator for the USCCB, said for many, social media is one answer to
the high cost of international travel associated with events like World Youth
Day. It will unite pilgrims and family members at both stateside events and in
Poland, he said.
"Both will have had an encounter
with Christ in some way -- and it would be a joy for each one to learn from the
other and to support each other in their ongoing journey of faith. That's what
today's technology can do for this experience -- it can enhance it in ways more
exciting than we ever thought possible."
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