Page 74 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2014

AC/E digital culture ANNUAL REPORT 2014adapt to the new media ecosystem if they want to survive. In this context, the transmedia landscape is a fundamental component of this adaptive process. While this article might be focussed on the situation in Spain, we might ask ourselves, given the porous nature of the audiovisual markets, what is happening in Latin America? What is the reaction to transmedia production in the field of fiction? In some countries transmedia production practice is being consolidated through soap operas, Latin American production companies’ audiovisual product par excellence. For example, for several years the Brazilian conglomerate Globo has had an internal unit devoted to the transmedia articulation and expansion of its soap operas, above all in the social media, and in this way an eminently TV product has been brought into line with consumers’ new dynamics and the media ecosystem. However, it should be pointed out that this kind of initiative is still an incipient one in the context of Latin America.the field are also a sign of frenetic activity in this context. In May 2012 the Transmedia Living Lab was held in Madrid, with Henry Jenkins attending. For the last week of October 2014 the group Storycode Barcelona has proposed to hold a Transmedia Week, an open platform focussing, during the course of the week, on events related to transmedia storytelling being organised all around the world.BEYOND FICTIONAs we have noted, transmedia storytelling goes beyond fiction. It could be said that journalism has always had a transmedia character, even before the emergence of the World Wide Web: even then the news expanded from radio to television and from there to newspapers and periodicals. Users, despite the lack of social networks could provide their contributions by calling the radio stations and writing letters to the editors of newspapers. This process obviously entered a new dimension with the proliferation of new media and 2.0 communication platforms. At the present time there are no informative media, be they written of audiovisual, that do not invite their receivers to send information, photographs, videos or text that enables the telling of news to be expanded.In Spain, the news media have been progressively accepting the logic of transmedia storytelling, the hotbed of many debates and critical situations which are far from over. For example, debates about so‐called “citizen journalism” or “journalism 3.0”, or the creation of content by users, can be considered to result from the tensions generated by the transmediatisation of news discourse. Other phenomena that cut across contemporary journalistic debates—from the fusion of digital and traditional composition or editing to the growing use of infographics—can also be considered to be linked to the management and development of transmedia journalism.With regard to interactive documentaries, amongst the most recent works we find Las voces de la memoria, (The voices of memory) a production byIt is not just in the field of fiction, the news media also invite their audience to send contributions to expand the information they provideIn conclusion tothis section weshould mentionresearch beingcarried out intotransmediastorytelling inthe field offiction. As in other places, this subject became the object of attention for Spanish researchers during the mid‐2000s. The translation of Henry Jenkins’ book Convergence Culture into Spanish, published in 2006, accelerated the concept of transmedia narrative or transmedia storytelling and led to the first investigative works (Guarinos, 2007; Grandio, 2009; Scolari, 2008, 2009). Not surprisingly, the study of transmedia storytelling brought together researchers from various disciplines and fields of research, from experts in the new media to scholars of television, from sociologists to anthropologists interested in the behaviour of communities of fans.Spanish research also has a presence on the international stage either through scientific publications or through conferences and round table discussions. Activities focussed on professionals inAC/E WHERE WE ARE HEADING: DIGITAL TRENDS IN THE WORLD OF CULTURETHEME 6: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: NEW WAYS OF COMMUNICATING IN THE DIGITAL AGECURRENT PAGE...74