This book examines and illustrates the use of design principles, design thinking, and other empathy research techniques in university and public settings, to plan and ethically target socially-concerned transmedia stories and evaluate their success through user experience testing methods. All media industries continue to adjust to a dispersed, diverse, and dilettante mediascape where reaching a large global audience may be easy but communicating with a decisive and engaged public is more difficult. This challenge is arguably toughest for communicators who work to engage a public with reality rather than escape. The chapters in this volume outline the pedagogy and practice of design, empathy research methods for story development, transmedia logics for socially-concerned stories, development of community engagement and the embrace of collective narrative, art and science research collaboration, the role of mixed and virtual reality in prosocial communication, ethical audience targeting, and user experience testing for storytelling campaigns. Each broad topic includes case examples and full case studies of each stage in production. Offering a detailed exploration of a fast-emerging area, this book will be of great relevance to researchers and university teachers of socially-concerned transmedia storytelling in fields such as journalism, documentary filmmaking, education, and activism.

Since the advent of digitization, the conceptual confusion surrounding the semantic galaxy that comprises the media and journalism universes has increased. Journalism across several media platforms provides rapidly expanding content and audience engagement that assist in enhancing the journalistic experience. Exploring Transmedia Journalism in the Digital Age provides emerging research on multimedia journalism across various platforms and formats using digital technologies. While highlighting topics, such as immersive journalism, nonfictional narratives, and design practice, this book explores the theoretical and critical approaches to journalism through the lens of various technologies and media platforms. This book is an important resource for scholars, graduate and undergraduate students, and media professionals seeking current research on media expansion and participatory journalism.

How the blurring of media forms—transmedia—became the default for how we experience narratives, and how that cultural transformation has redefined the worlds of education, entertainment, and our increasingly polarized public discourse. Over the past decade, the power of narrative has been unleashed with awesome and terrifying consequences, and it has been consumed in its blurred media forms by millions of people as news, entertainment, and education. Imagining Transmedia, edited by Ed Finn, Bob Beard, Joey Eschrich, and Ruth Wylie, explores the surprising ways that narratives working across media forms became the default grammar for both media consumption and personal expression and how multiplatform storytelling creates new media literacies and modes of civil discourse. Understanding this shift reveals transmedia as an essential building block of media literacy today. Transmedia is how we create, interpret, and participate in our increasingly mediated society. It extends beyond popular culture into professional and public spheres while, at the same time, it fuels the misinformation and polarization that have contributed to America’s fraying civic discourse. Reaching beyond traditional academic analyses, this probing collection of essays and conversations features transmedia practitioners sharing their experiences and inviting readers to imagine the types of multimodal stories and experiences they might create. Prioritizing conversation over a single unified theory, each section of this volume pairs thematically linked essays from international contributors with a dialogue between authors to create an accessible, practical synthesis of ideas.

Around the globe, people now engage with media content across multiple platforms, following stories, characters, worlds, brands and other information across a spectrum of media channels. This transmedia phenomenon has led to the burgeoning of transmedia studies in media, cultural studies and communication departments across the academy. The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies is the definitive volume for scholars and students interested in comprehending all the various aspects of transmediality. This collection, which gathers together original articles by a global roster of contributors from a variety of disciplines, sets out to contextualize, problematize and scrutinize the current status and future directions of transmediality, exploring the industries, arts, practices, cultures, and methodologies of studying convergent media across multiple platforms.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2021, held in Tallinn, Estonia, in December 2021. The 18 full papers and 17 short papers, presented together with 17 posters and demos, were carefully reviewed and selected from 99 submissions. The papers are categorized into the following topical sub-headings: Narrative Systems; Interactive Narrative Theory; Interactive Narrative Impact and Application; and the Interactive Narrative Research Discipline and Contemporary Practice.

With the ubiquitous nature of modern technologies, they have been inevitably integrated into various facets of society. The connectivity presented by digital platforms has transformed such innovations into tools for political and social agendas. Politics, Protest, and Empowerment in Digital Spaces is a comprehensive reference source for emerging scholarly perspectives on the use of new media technology to engage people in socially- and politically-oriented conversations and examines communication trends in these virtual environments. Highlighting relevant coverage across topics such as online free expression, political campaigning, and online blogging, this book is ideally designed for government officials, researchers, academics, graduate students, and practitioners interested in how new media is revolutionizing political and social communications.

Transmedia Marketing: From Film and TV to Games and Digital Media skillfully guides media makers and media marketers through the rapidly changing world of entertainment and media marketing. Its groundbreaking transmedia approach integrates storytelling and marketing content creation across multiple media platforms – harnessing the power of audience to shape and promote your story. Through success stories, full color examples of effective marketing techniques in action, and insight from top entertainment professionals, Transmedia Marketing covers the fundamentals of a sound 21st century marketing and content plan. You’ll master the strategy behind conducting research, identifying target audiences, setting goals, and branding your project. And, you’ll learn first-hand how to execute your plan’s publicity, events, advertising, trailers, digital and interactive content, and social media. Transmedia Marketing enlivens these concepts with: Hundreds of vibrant examples from across media platforms – The Hunger Games, Prometheus, The Dark Knight, Bachelorette, The Lord of the Rings, Despicable Me 2, Food, Inc., Breaking Bad, House of Cards, Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones, Top Chef, Pokémon, BioShock Infinite, Minecraft, Outlast, Titanfall, LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, Halo 4, Lonelygirl15, Annoying Orange Real-world advice from 45 leading industry writers, directors, producers, composers, distributors, marketers, publicists, critics, journalists, attorneys, and executives from markets, festivals, awards, and guilds Powerful in-depth case studies showcasing successful approaches – A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Mad Men, Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, and Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues Extensive Web content at www.transmediamarketing.com featuring a primer on transmedia platforms – film, broadcast, print, games, digital media, and experiential media; expanded case studies; sample marketing plans and materials; and exclusive interviews With Transmedia Marketing, you’ll be fully versed in the art of marketing film, TV, games, and digital media and primed to write and achieve the winning plan for your next media project.