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Keywords
Corporate Synergy; Transmedia Storytelling; Participatory Culture; New Media; Reality Television; Media Studies
Abstract
This article argues that transmedia storytelling evidences competing trends, exemplifying corporate synergy on the one hand while allowing for audience-generated participatory culture on the other. The essay examines these competing dynamics as well as new developments in transmedia storytelling across multiple media platforms. It assesses how well recent media theory has accounted for these transmedia storytelling trends. It also analyzes key examples, which include online interactive reality television and crowdsourced music videos.
Introduction
In assessing the current state of media conglomeration and corporate synergy, one key case study is the rise of multi-platform storytelling because it is a media trend that exemplifies corporate synergy. It is also important to examine the continuing development of related media practices such as crowdsourcing, mass customization, and user-generated content. All of these practices involve media production models that profit media conglomerates by coordinating among their different divisions, and they also entail monetizing how consumers try to interact with the media, turning fan behaviors into corporate profit, or seizing the democratic promise of new media for corporate gain. This analysis will address competing trends in multi-platform storytelling, from corporate branding to more audience-centered, creative uses of the media technology that allows for greater user access and agency. As I will demonstrate, while corporate branding dominates, and many transmedia texts reflect this dynamic, alternative practices are nevertheless present and proffer other potential uses of transmedia storytelling.
Multi-platform storytelling refers specifically to texts where content appears in a coordinated way across many different media formats (such as television, film, webisodes, mobile phone applications and mobisodes, games, books, graphic novels, and music albums) (Jenkins, 2006). For some popular Web content, audiences increasingly expect to see it directly linked to a broader array of media texts. These media formats have evolved in ways that speak to the cultural power of the Internet and to changing expectations of the entertainment content audiences seek there. The entertainment industry has new organizations and production models targeting this market. The Producer's Guild of American now recognizes transmedia producer as a category. A growing number of transmedia companies are appearing, often comprised of production units trying to generate transmedia content across film, games,...