Exploring audience involvement with an interactive narrative: implications for incorporating transmedia storytelling into entertainment-education campaigns

Abstract

The present article contributes to the growing corpus of scholarship that seeks to shed light on how the entertainment-education (EE) strategy can be implemented and evaluated across diverse media platforms. Because a transmedia approach to storytelling is a natural, albeit an understudied extension of the EE strategy, the researchers investigate how involvement with one interactive storytelling format, flash games, influences audience involvement and message outcomes. The researchers’ evaluation of audience involvement with an interactive narrative in a flash game, designed as one element of a national transmedia campaign to increase milk consumption, demonstrated that narrative understanding was related to participants’ (N=157) experiences of feeling involved with the game (i.e., transportation), although significant changes in message-related beliefs, attitudes and behavioural intentions were not related to transportation. Transportation was positively related to enjoyment of the game, but frustration with gaming challenges negatively influenced transportation and enjoyment. This study illustrates the need for further investigation of involvement with stories in interactive media platforms, and, most importantly, the continued exploration of the strengths and limitations associated with incorporating transmedia storytelling elements into EE campaigns.