Page 70 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2014

AC/E digital culture ANNUAL REPORT 2014WHAT IS TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING?The term “transmedia storytelling” was coined by the US researcher Henry Jenkins in an article published in 2003. What is a transmedia story? A transmedia story has two main characteristics. Firstly, it is a story that is told through multiple media and platforms. The story begins in a comic, continues in a television cartoon series, it expands into a full‐length feature film and ends (ends?) by incorporating new interactive adventures in videogames. An example of this is Superman, a story that began in a comic, moved onto radio and television in the 1940s, and ended up being shown on the big screen for the first time in the 1970s. But transmedia stories also have another characteristic: some of the receivers do not limit themselves to consuming cultural products, but take up the task of adding to the story with new texts. A brief survey of YouTube or Fanfiction.net will show how there are all kinds of stories about the American superhero that have been created by his fans, from parodies to crossovers with other characters such as Tintin and Sherlock Holmes.If we were to describe transmedia storytelling as a formula, it would be the following one:MI + PUC = TSwhere;MI: Media industryCPU: Participative user culture TS: Transmedia storytellingAn anthropologist of communication inspired by Michel de Certau, might propose another formula based on the opposition between “strategies” and “tactics”:A researcher into storytelling might propose the following alternative, one that arises from the tension that exists between official texts, the so‐ called canon, and those produced by fans (“fandom”):Cn + Fn = TSCn: CanonFn: FandomTS: Transmedia storytellingApart from the possible formulas, which are more or less economic, more or less narrative or more or less anthropological, it is clear that transmedia storytelling is here amongst us. In less than ten years these new ways of telling a story have ceased being the object of academic debate to become central to the cultural industries’ development strategies. At the present time there are hardly any actors in the field of communication that are not thinking about their production in transmedia terms: from fiction to documentary, journalism and advertising to political communication.WHY DOES STORYTELLING BECOME TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING?In the 1980s, with the expansion of cable television and the appearance of the first satellite dishes on roofs and balconies, people started to talk about the fragmentation of TV audiences. Umberto Eco called this increase in the number of TV channels the transition between paleotelevision (with only a handful of channels available) to the channel surfing or “zapping” of neotelevision (which enables TV viewers to choose from dozens of options). More channels, more specific content (news channels, popular music, etc.) and the greater fragmentation of the audience.The arrival of the World Wide Web and the spread of new forms of digital, interactive communication— from videogames to communication through mobileIS + UT = TSwhere;IS: Industry strategyUT: User tacticsTS: Transmedia storytellingWHERE WE ARE HEADING: DIGITAL TRENDS IN THE WORLD OF CULTURETHEME 6: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: NEW WAYS OF COMMUNICATING IN THE DIGITAL AGEAC/E CURRENT PAGE...70