Transmedia Practices Research Articles

Human and Business Success Factors for Transmedia Design Collaborations

Transmedia projects require organizations of different media design and production techniques and cultures to collaborate intensively with the goal to tell stories across different media, while creating a coherent user experiences across all media and in each individual component. Transmedia as a practice is a young field and no standards or widely adopted methods have yet evolved to create the connecting and overarching elements of such experiences. Predictability of cost and return on investment projections has not been achieved in most projects and the question remains, how self-sustaining in the long run Transmedia projects are (Franklin, 2012; Ibrus & Scolari, 2014). While there are questions around the profitability of Transmedia projects, at the same time there is a view that the potential is great to delight audiences with a single core narrative while having the opportunity to expand this across media into a multi-million Euro franchise (Ibrus & Scolari, 2014). While it is easy to add a companion website or a social media channel to a TV show, crafting an experience that fully enhances the story and that audiences will adopt is challenging and a field still in continuous development (Bernardo, 2014; Long, 2007). The goal of this research is to investigate how producers in Europe of different media backgrounds and from media organizations of different sizes collaborated during the Transmedia design process with the purpose of identifying which factors the producers see as critical for a successful Transmedia design. From the accounts the author deducts what the most needed elements for the further development of a Transmedia practice are to increase predictability and the intercompositional and integrative quality of the resulting experiences. The research is grounded in an analysis of current Transmedia definitions, the particularities of Transmedia design and an overview of types of organizations engaging in Transmedia collaborations. While scholarly literature provides a common viewpoint on what Transmedia experiences are and what kind of decisions need to be taken in the design for such experiences, the adoption of these practices and recommendations among the very different types of players in the field remains a question. With a constant change in audience behaviors and new technological options, the ‘how’ people collaborate and co-create becomes a more sustainable element to describe than individual concrete procedures. The research is a cross sectional qualitative research, combining an in depth literature review with semi-structured interviews with Transmedia producers from different types of media organizations (Bryman, 2012). The exploratory and descriptive purpose is to identify common patterns or themes in how Transmedia producers describe their personal experiences in Transmedia design through short narratives (Marshall & Rossmann, 2010). The sample was selected through the methods of purposeful selection and convenience based selection (Bryman, 2012). The Criteria for selection of the research participants was their experience as producers on complex European Transmedia initiatives, that tell stories across at least three media and that were the result of intensive interorganizational collaboration. Participants come form a variety of media backgrounds, i.e. TV, Film, Online / Digital, Game, Events, Print, Technology to capture the accounts of collaborations from different perspectives. After nine interviews the new interviews did not generate new codes and theoretical saturation was achieved. The accounts of success factors for Transmedia projects in the interviews focus on understanding the business value and on promoting a Transmedia culture and personal interactions on such projects. Four key themes emerged from the analysis of the transcripts: approaches for funding and project initiation, modes of decision-making, the importance of a Transmedia mindset and flexibility and continuous adaptation, and approaches and preferences for choosing methods. Practitioners recommend the practice focuses on the creation of business models and methods for co-creation rather than on standards and procedures for the design process. This assessment of the needs of the practice corresponds to the findings in the literature but goes further in the description of the criticality for co-location and co-creation across organizations. Business and partnership models between stakeholders in Transmedia design projects and the creation of measurement models stand the best chance to be widely adopted by the practice. Media managers deal with increasing production complexity resulting from the continued convergence of the media, technology and telecommunications industries. Understanding key success factors through direct insights and learning from practitioners of complex media co-creations from very different organizations provides ideas and inspiration around how to provide an environment that allows stories to come to life across media while at the same time focusing on business model design and strengthening the creative ecosystem.

Media and Communication in the Chinese Diaspora: Rethinking Transnationalism, edited by Wanning Sun and John Sinclair. London: Routledge, 2016. xvi + 229 pp. £95.00 (cloth); also available as an eBook.

<i>Media and Communication in the Chinese Diaspora: Rethinking Transnationalism</i>, edited by Wanning Sun and John Sinclair. London: Routledge, 2016. xvi + 229 pp. £95.00 (cloth); also available as an eBook.

Strategic impact documentary: Contexts of production and social intervention

The past decade has seen the emergence of a new kind of documentary making that marries documentary storytelling and the principles of strategic communication. Strategic impact documentary is a transmedia practice that aims to achieve specific social change by aligning documentary production with online and offline communications practices. The contemporary media environment is one in which a wide range of organizations work to achieve their political and social goals through the media. This article highlights key characteristics of an emerging form of professional documentary production, drawing attention to formal development and changing contexts of production and the implications of this for our understanding of the link between documentary and social change.

Historical science fiction: from television memory to transmedia memory in El Ministerio del Tiempo

ABSTRACTThis article examines the first season of the Spanish television series El Ministerio del Tiempo (The Ministry of Time), broadcast by the public network Televisión Española in the first trimester of 2015. First we consider a number of interpretive problems arising from the representation of history on television. Then, through a qualitative analysis of the series’ content, we review its main narrative features and explore its combination of historical reenactment, science fiction and memory discourse. We end by analyzing the representations of history generated by interpretive or creative communities of followers of the program through linked transmedia practices. We will argue that El Ministerio del Tiempo is a hybrid product that, while novel, also evidences the persistence of certain traditional representational modes. Its innovative and appealing focus is based on genre hybridization and strategies for representing the past that are potentially open to the introduction of uchronias. It has additionally been able to mobilize a significant, active and creative fan community. The series has offered the contemporary Spanish television drama scene a model for renewal; however, its plotlines suggest a simplified, conservative vision of the past, as well as a banal, essentialist view of the nation. The article holds that the transmedia practices generated around El Ministerio del Tiempo have also been influenced by this nationalist framework, and that responses from the fan community have not disputed the hegemonic meanings proposed by the original story.

Image after the Internet: Transmedia and Participatory Artistic Practices

Image after the Internet: Transmedia and Participatory Artistic Practices

Introduction: Transmedia Practices: A Television Branding Revolution

The television world is changing, having been impacted by mutations of three different natures: technological, narrative and participatory. Productions now use technology to enhance their content as television series and movie franchises are, increasingly, basing their narratives on principles of narrative complexity since active audiences do not only consume, but also engage with the said texts. These efforts made by the industry to target involved audiences demonstrate how transmedia practices have impacted not only on storytelling processes, but the text – and brand – itself, the latter no longer being a mere programme with a limited duration, but a whole, composed of numerous elements spread across media. The goal of the different players involved is, nevertheless, quite different. While fans’ activities represent a way to empower themselves and engage with this universe, the teams behind institutional transmedia strategies seek to secure more (faithful) customers and, incidentally, a higher financial return.Rather than reducing transmedia storytelling to the augmenting effect it had on the concept of narrative resulting from its ability to create an immersive environment, this issue seeks to discuss the wide range of economic perspectives available to film and television brands due to this very immersive environment. The transmedia phenomenon has, so far, mostly been approached from an either textual or participatory standpoint, but rarely so from a multidisciplinary perspective encompassing the marketing aspect. Providing insight on this topic – so far not discussed in Networking Knowledge – through contributions from researchers in media, communications, cultural studies and marketing, the issue seeks to enrich our collective understanding of transmedia practices, in the hope of offering a more holistic approach. In doing so, the various pieces presented in this edition clearly demonstrate that transmedia practices have revolutionised television branding.. and that it’s just getting started.

Expanding Learning Opportunities with Transmedia Practices: Inanimate Alice as an Exemplar

The proliferation of digital and networking technologies enables us to rethink, restructure, and redefine teaching and learning. Transmedia storytelling takes advantage of the rapid convergence of media and allows teachers and learners to participate in rich virtual (and physical) environments that have been shown to foster students’ real emotional engagement with the process of learning. Transmedia learning applies storytelling techniques across multiple platforms to create immersive educational experiences that enable manifold entry and exit points for learning and teaching. By utilizing constructivist and connectivist precepts in the application of these techniques, we can create pedagogies that are transformative on many levels. Encapsulating these notions in the concept of the Transmedia LearningWorld (TLW) allows educators to combine the exciting affordances of the digital technologies with real-life experiences and truly learner-focused pedagogies to produce profoundly productive and powerful learning experiences. In the US, the advent of Common Core State Standards is pushing schools and districts across the country to consider carefully the requirements for digital learning, including aspects of personalization, interoperability, taking our understanding of eLearning beyond a narrow focus on digital content, and encouraging significant shifts in pedagogical thinking and practice. The application of transmedia techniques and, in particular, the recognition of the power of the TLW give teachers tools that allow them to reach every child, including otherwise “reluctant” learners, and indeed that allow children themselves to drive their own learning. The digital novel Inanimate Alice is a proven example of a transmedia resource that can immerse students in an intense and motivating learning experience over time. Transmedia techniques leverage the power of collective intelligence in learners, and they enable educators to weave the narrative of curricula through media in a seamless and wholly interactive and participative fashion.

Algunas consideraciones sobre las prácticas de comunicación, consumo y producción cultural en los nuevos medios en jóvenes rosarinos

This paper is a preview of a research where we aim to describe young people practices of cultural consumption and production in social media. We have chosen this universe because we believe that nowadays trans-media practices of young people are located more on social and entertainment activities than it happens with other ages. In this article we explain a set of concepts that will allow us to focus the problem in order to develop the field research. The concept of practice allows us to treat other closely related concepts. The social use of technology, i.e., the invention of new practices to develop different tasks is closely related to consumption, understood as the set of social processes of symbolic and material products appropriation. In this way, different habitus (Bourdieu, 1988) are developed that promote preferences, operational patterns, ways of doing and thinking. Shirky (2008) focuses on the transition from a one-to-many communication model (typical of broadcasting) to the many-to-many type, that occurs in new media and the kind of contents they distribute. Shirky believes that the production of new types of contents by young people is possible due to a process of massive amateurization. They no longer need to be professional editors so as to be able to publish online. Now a set of expressive skills moves from a group of professionals to the whole society in a ubiquitous way. These skills are available to multiple audiences/users who propose and explore new ways of communicating and coordinating, without having to ask permission before doing it.

Alternate Reality Games as Platforms for Practicing 21st-Century Literacies

Alternate reality games (ARGs) are a new genre of transmedia practice in which players collaboratively hunt for clues, make sense of disparate information, and solve puzzles to advance an ever-changing narrative that is woven into the fabric of the real world. This paper highlights the potential for ARGs to promote 21st-century literacy skills. We propose a meta-level framework for 21st-century literacies composed of seven core literacies: gather, make sense, manage, solve, create, respect, collaborate. We then describe how the unique properties of ARGs can be used to teach these core literacies, drawing upon expert interviews and examples from numerous ARGs. Finally, we outline the major challenges and opportunities for using ARGs in the service of education, focusing on reuse, budgetary issues, scale, and improvisation. We end with an outline of key research questions that need to be addressed to merge ARGs and education.