Transmedia

Storytelling
Mindy McAdams, University of Florida

WJEC syndicate title: Teaching Transmedia Storytelling
Author/expert:
Mindy McAdams
Author organization: University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA
Author email:
mmcadams@jou.ufl.edu
Keywords:
transmedia, storytelling, journalism, multimedia, cross-media,
multi-platform, documentary, digital, internet, web, interactive

This paper was prepared by request for the World Journalism Education Congress in Auckland,
New Zealand, July 1416, 2016.

1. Introduction

Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get

dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a
unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it own
unique contribution to the unfolding of the story (Jenkins, 2007).

Jenkins (2006) described how the story told in the Matrix movie trilogy was expanded in comic
books, video games and animated short films. His main point was not simply that the creators
used multiple mediums, but rather that parts of the story completely absent from the films
were told in other media products. Moreover, the films directors deliberately implemented
this strategy to expand the story and its fictional world.

Most of the scholarship around transmedia storytelling so far has concerned entertainment and
fictional storyworlds, including Harry Potter, Star Wars, and complex television series such as
Lost. However, the same criteria by which fictional transmedia projects are assessed can also be
used to assess nonfiction transmedia projects (Kerrigan and Velikovsky, 2016). A few published
studies have focused on transmedia journalism, notably an examination of five interactive
documentaries (Aufderheide, 2015) and a survey of projects that originated in public radio
(Edmond, 2015).

We should remember that transmedia storytelling is not just fiction. Advertising has
been a transmedia experience since the explosion of mass media in the first half of the
twentieth century, and the same can be said about journalism in the second half.
Nonfiction transmedia storytelling is still an unexplored territory waiting for its
explorers (Scolari, 2013, p. 49).

The question: How can we inspire and teach future journalists to effectively experiment with
telling various parts of a story across multiple mediums and different platforms?
Transmedia Storytelling / McAdams

2. What Is Transmedia Storytelling?

As noted in the introduction, the use of multi-platform components is a basic criterion of
transmedia storytelling. A story contained wholly on a website does not meet this criterion,
even though it might include videos, text, and interactive graphics. Thus we can and should
differentiate transmedia from multimedia storytelling (McAdams, 2014).

Three main factors are involved in transmedia journalism: (1) multiple media platforms, (2)
content expansion, and (3) audience engagement (Gambarato & Trcia, 2016, p. 6). Most
authors agree on the importance of both the second and third factors, making it clear that
simply telling the story across platforms is not enough to make it qualify as transmedia.

Expansion: Jenkins urges us to distinguish between adaptation, which reproduces the original
narrative with minimum changes into a new medium and is essentially redundant to the
original work, and extension, which expands our understanding of the original by introducing
new elements into the fiction (Jenkins, 2010, p. 945). This important distinction clarifies how
transmedia storytelling differs from merely repurposing a story from one format or medium so
that it can be distributed in another format.

A good example of expanding a storyworld was described by Scolari (2013) in his study of
transmedia storytelling and the television series Lost. The series producers created new
characters (who never appeared in the TV episodes) to reveal other scenes and information
about the story. One new character wrote a diary (published on the web); another was the
central figure in a video game (Lost: Via Domus). The producers also released a series of 13
short videos specifically produced for mobile phones to fill gaps in the series narrative. The
casual viewer never knew these story extensions existed, but avid fans sought them out.

Engagement: Jenkins has written extensively about the contributions of fans to fictional
storyworlds. By their creative contributions (fan fiction and fan-produced videos) and their
speculation, theories, and questions (mainly in online forums), fans both expand the storyworld
and improve it, often by holding the creators accountable. There can be gamelike elements to
this participation, as when fans compete for status by trying to predict the outcome of an
ongoing plot thread or figure out hidden motivations of the characters.

The benefits of audience engagement are not limited to fictional storyworlds. In her study of
transmedia radio projects, Edmond wrote: Encouraging intense and longer term audience
engagement helps to extend the lifespan, reach and profitability of a single piece of intellectual
property (Edmond, 2015, p. 1577).

Other factors might also figure in transmedia storytelling but are not required. For example,
transmedia projects may incorporate online games and other interactive components.
Transmedia storytelling may include live performances and geolocated games such as
scavenger hunts as well as printed books or pamphlets, online databases, and on-site audio
tours (Aufderheide, 2015, p. 69).

Transmedia Storytelling / McAdams

Kerrigan and Velikovsky (2016) argued that a physical location in the real world can be a
component of a nonfiction transmedia project. Pavlik and Bridges (2013) described applications
of augmented reality (AR) for journalism storytelling. The authors characterized a situated
documentary as a form of immersive storytelling The users experience is somewhat
analogous to a museum audio tour (Pavlik and Bridges, 2013, pp. 2021). In a transmedia
project, interaction with the physical site would tell only part of the story.

Whether all of the components of a transmedia project can stand alone or not varies from
project to project; it also depends upon the component. Some projects may have more
dependent components that fail to make sense unless one has viewed or experienced the
central piece, such as a film or live performance. Jenkins has softened his stance on this since
2003, when he said: Each franchise entry needs to be self-contained enough to enable
autonomous consumption. That is, you dont need to have seen the film to enjoy the game and
vice-versa. Standalone components may expand the reach of a story by creating different
points of entry for different audience segments (Jenkins, 2007).

3. Significance to Journalism

Many journalism organizations have routinely produced stories for multiple platforms, but
strategies for story expansion and audience engagement have rarely accompanied those
efforts.

With increasing use of 360-degree video and other immersive technologies for storytelling in
journalism (Watson, 2015; Robertson, 2016), the transmedia practices of producing
components that deliberately tell only part of a story, and combining these in a larger,
dispersed network of related components, offer a strategy by which journalism stories might
reach more people and have greater impact.

Transmedia radio projects use expanded storytelling strategies to drive engagement in
an issue, much like transmedia documentaries do, but they also use those same
techniques to drive a number of other forms of audience participation. They solicit
audience contributions to collective and evolving bodies of knowledge, sometimes in
the manner of citizen journalism but more often in the form of self-documentation ...
(Edmond, 2015, p. 1573).

Podcasting (Vogt, 2015) and email newsletters (Fagerlund, 2016) might also fit into a
transmedia journalism strategy. Scolari (2013) contended that alongside expansion,
compression might also serve a purpose in transmedia storytelling. As an example he
described fan-produced short narrated videos that helped sort out the complex storylines of
the TV series Lost. By summarizing a complex story or compressing it into a list of bullet
points, a journalist provides value (for an example, see http://www.theskimm.com/recent).

Transmedia Storytelling / McAdams

People interact with different platforms and devices at various times and in various spaces.
Mode of access then largely becomes a question of what kinds of platforms and what types of
content most conveniently amalgamate with what types of socio-spatial practice (Jansson &
Lindell, 2015, p. 86). Rather than encountering a repeat of the same information every time we
use a different platform, we will find different aspects of the story that suit our information
needs in that time and place.

Edmond (2015) points to the transmedia work of Localore (http://localore.net/) as principally
audience development experiments (p. 1577). These public radio projects combine radio
broadcasts, websites featuring video and graphics, and outreach into specific geographic
communities. Another example is the iPhone app Hackney Hear
(http://www.hackneyhear.com/), which uses GPS location to enable people to listen to the
voices of residents while walking in neighborhoods in Londons east end.

Many digital journalism projects fail to include a significant engagement factor. An exception is
Sandy Storyline (http://www.sandystoryline.com/), a participatory documentary about the
impact of Hurricane Sandy, which included ways for people to attend in-person events and
submit stories by phone as well as online. In contrast, Universe Within
(http://universewithin.nfb.ca/), the final project in the ambitious Highrise experiment at the
National Film Board of Canada, explores the personal stories of dozens of people, but all the
stories are baked into the interactive interface. Interaction with the stories is innovative and
compelling, but the system is closed to participation.

4. The Challenge for Teaching

Transmedia storytelling is not going to make sense for every journalism story. Before future
journalists can effectively experiment with creating components for engagement and expansion
across multiple platforms, they will need to understand the potential benefits. They should not
undertake transmedia production just for the sake of doing it but because the story warrants it.

Probably the best foundation for making these decisions is the study and discussion of existing
transmedia journalism projects. Students can extract Jenkinss (2009a; 2009b) seven principles
of transmedia storytelling (spreadability vs. drillability; continuity vs. multiplicity; immersion vs.
extractability; worldbuilding; seriality; subjectivity; performance) and apply them to in-depth
journalism projects, determining how the projects could be extended and how audience
engagement could be pursued.

Elements from a syllabus for a university class about transmedia storytelling could be adapted
for use in a class about the future of journalism storytelling (Jenkins, 2010). The team project,
which is pitched to a panel of judges from the industry, could be particularly effective in a
journalism class (pp. 946947).

Transmedia Storytelling / McAdams

If we bring transmedia storytelling principles into the journalism classroom, we open the door
to discussions about nontraditional story forms such as virtual reality (Robertson, 2016), news
games (Eveleth, 2016), and comics journalism (Reid, 2015). Drillability (drilling deeper into a
complex story) is already part of investigative journalism projects that publish online databases
for public use (example: https://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/). Social media is widely
used to promote already-published stories, but what about using those platforms more
effectively to invite the public to participate and collaborate? Audience engagement can also
happen at real-world locations, face to face.

Creating opportunities for meaningful engagement might be the greatest challenge in any
transmedia journalism effort. Plenty of news organizations invite people to contribute photos,
videos, or personal accounts, but those contributions are trivial when compared with the
creative efforts we can see in fan communities for commercial fictional storyworlds. Harnessing
that desire to engage deeply with a story could contribute to expanding journalism projects and
spreading them to larger audiences (Jenkins et al., 2013).

It might not be possible for students to produce a fully realized transmedia journalism project
during one semester or term. The time constraints might be too severe, or students might lack
the necessary production skills. Working as a team to create a detailed plan for such a project,
however, could be a viable assignment that would open students eyes to the rich possibilities
of transmedia storytelling.

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