Culture as education: From transmediality to transdisciplinary pedagogy

For the past three years, the Transmedia Research Group at the Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, has been developing open access online materials for supporting the teaching of humanities-related subjects in Estonian- and Russianlanguage secondary schools. This paper maps the theoretical and conceptual starting points of these materials. The overarching goal of the educational platforms is to support cultural coherence and autocommunication by cultivating literacies necessary for holding meaningful dialogues with cultural heritage. To achieve the goal, the authors have been seeking ways of purposeful harnessing of transmedial, crossmedial and other tools offered by the contemporary digital communication space. We have started with an understanding of culture as education – a model which is grounded in cultural semiotics and highlights the role of cultural experience and cultural self-description in learning literacies. From these premises we proceed to explicating the value of a transdisciplinary pedagogy for methodical translation of the theoretical concepts into practical solutions in teaching and learning culture

Film Websites: a Transmedia Archaeology

Websites have become a familiar feature of contemporary cinema and they contribute to the overall audience experience. Yet as a hybrid of storytelling and marketing, they have often been seen as little more than promotional ephemera, and they have rarely been critically examined. Film websites are fragile, and their presence as artefacts to study is threatened by a range of commercial and cultural factors. Consequently, film websites have not been well preserved, and many disappear before they have been appraised. Through the development of a transmedia archaeological approach, this thesis establishes that film websites are worthy of consideration as a form of entertainment and as cultural artefacts in their own right. This thesis critically evaluates the film website and its cultural conditions from several perspectives. As a form of transmedia - a term, an academic concept and a production practice that has evolved since the early twentieth century and this thesis sets out a way to understand the development of this important concept and draws on recent scholarship in the field to critically evaluate key ideas. Through media archaeology, which is an emergent historiographical perspective. Some media archaeological propositions are developed into practical tools for the analysis of film websites. Whilst those propositions tend to draw on a tradition of materialist and technological viewpoints, in this thesis they are extended to include approaches that examine the audience experience. As film website design has developed, formats have standardised and one convention to emerge is the in-movie story world website. A particular narrative trope (or, in media archaeological terms, topoi) is the ‘evil corporation’, which is common in science-fiction, western, and social commentary films, but takes on specific significance when the film website enables ludic and interactive forms of what has been described as ‘extended cinema’ (Atkinson, 2014a:16). Using ideas gleaned from world-building the ‘evil corporation’ topoi is analysed in some detail. In archival settings where film websites are preserved, partially held, or lost. Through case studies where archival presence yields insight into the development of the film website form. Online awards provide a case in point as they valorise website design, and through their archives of annual winners, can be understood as a ‘shaper’ of practices, defining what film websites are, and may be in the future. Importantly, it is found that archives don’t simply preserve artefacts. Embedded in film website fan bulletin boards are ‘traces’ of audience encounters with promotional campaigns. Qualitative analysis techniques are used to 'scrape' these locations and interpret the 'conversations' in an analytic manner to examine audience experiences of nostalgia for the future

The Dynamic Story Mosaic: Defining Narrative Strategies in Transmedia Environments

Transmedia storytelling became one of the most prevalent buzzwords in the mid- 2000s used to describe a wide array of storytelling forms ranging from entertainment franchises to alternate reality games to any project that told stories across more than one medium. Over time, the term had been diluted so significantly that it has lost most of its meaning, and the opaque discourse has left practitioners, scholars, and audiences alike confused about its true meaning. The Dynamic Story Mosaic: Defining Narrative Strategies in Transmedia Environments charts this development and offers a typology to identify and explain narrative strategies in multi-platform environments. The typology anchors on the two dimensions of narrative deviation and the number of release events over time; these dimensions are constitutive for the production, reception and marketing and branding of transmedia projects, and provide a stable basis for analysis and interpretation. Through a blend of analytic, comparative, and descriptive approaches, paired with a number of case studies, this dissertation is a historical analysis of the emergence of transmedia storytelling and transmedia discourse, and provides a direction in the analysis of transmedia projects by providing a typology that remains stable regardless of the future of storytelling in this area

Digital media and storytelling in higher education

Anita Lanszki's book is about storytelling in the digital media environment. The enterprise is both classical in that it explores the nature of storytelling, which is found in all historical periods and human communities, and modern in that it undertakes a broad overview of contemporary digital culture from the perspective of storytelling. The book is also a methodological guide, illustrated with numerous examples, which has emerged organically from the author's many years of teaching experience. Although the title reflects a focus on the use of digital storytelling in various fields of higher education and research, this excellent work can also be used by professionals working in other spheres of education. Whatever our views on the digital space and age may be, we can probably all agree that we are witnessing a democratization of storytelling in our time. The insights in this book are therefore extremely useful for anyone who is interested in how the timeless practice of storytelling is adapting to the new media environment

Adaptation in the Age of Media Convergence

This collection considers new phenomena emerging in a convergence environment from the perspective of adaptation studies. The contributions take the most prominent methods within the field to offer reconsiderations of theoretical concepts and practices in participatory culture, transmedia franchises, and new media adaptations. The authors discuss phenomena ranging from mash-ups of novels and YouTube cover songs to negotiations of authorial control and interpretative authority between media producers and fan communities to perspectives on the fictional and legal framework of brands and franchises. In this fashion, the collection expands the horizons of both adaptation and transmedia studies and provides reassessments of frequently discussed (BBC’s Sherlock or the LEGO franchise) and previously largely ignored phenomena (self-censorship in transnational franchises, mash-up novels, or YouTube cover videos)

Podcasting as an Intimate Medium

This book delves into the notion of intimacy as a defining feature of podcasting, examining the concept of intimacy itself and how the public sphere explores the relationships created and maintained through podcasts. The book situates textual analysis of specific American podcasts within podcast criticism, monetization, and production advice. Through analysis of these sources' self-descriptions, the text builds a podcasting-specific framework for intimacy and uses that framework to interpret how podcasting imagines the connections it forms within communities. Instead of intimacy being inherent, the book argues that podcasting constructs intimacy and uses it to define the quality of its own mediation. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of New and Digital Media, Media Studies, Communication Studies, Journalism, Literature, Cultural Studies, and American Studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a CreativeCommons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

Edutainment and ICTs: towards a Fourth Generation of educational entertainment interventions

Since the 1970s, Entertainment Education (hereafter EE) works in the production of contents to enhance audience’s behaviour change. A balance between been educative and entertaining was needed to have people’s attention and interest, to promote social change. Thomas Tufte (2005) identified three generations of EE interventions which evolved from the concept of 'lack of information' promoted by Shannon and Weaver linear communication theory, to the 'community involvement in participatory interventions', and the 'empowerment process' led by Paulo Freire's liberalising thinking, accepting that people are not a passive receiver, but an actor who can identify the structural inequalities. Nevertheless, none of these generations takes into account the opportunities that new technologies and digital media provide expanding audience’s experience. This dissertation analyse the influence of the new technologies and transmedia strategies as a seed of a Fourth Generation of EE interventions based on Thomas Tufte's generations of EE Interventions. The methodology include literature review about edutainment and transmedia theories, complemented by data analysis regarding access and use of the new technologies. The Conceptual Framework combine the analysis of transmedia storytelling, and new technologies with the new agenda of development settled by the Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2015). The expected outcome of this framework is the characterisation of the Fourth Generation of EE interventions, according to Tufte’s previous generations.Agencia Nacional de Investigación e InnovaciónChevening Programm

Edutainment and ICTs: towards a Fourth Generation of educational entertainment interventions

Since the 1970s, Entertainment Education (hereafter EE) works in the production of contents to enhance audience’s behaviour change. A balance between been educative and entertaining was needed to have people’s attention and interest, to promote social change. Thomas Tufte (2005) identified three generations of EE interventions which evolved from the concept of 'lack of information' promoted by Shannon and Weaver linear communication theory, to the 'community involvement in participatory interventions', and the 'empowerment process' led by Paulo Freire's liberalising thinking, accepting that people are not a passive receiver, but an actor who can identify the structural inequalities. Nevertheless, none of these generations takes into account the opportunities that new technologies and digital media provide expanding audience’s experience. This dissertation analyse the influence of the new technologies and transmedia strategies as a seed of a Fourth Generation of EE interventions based on Thomas Tufte's generations of EE Interventions. The methodology include literature review about edutainment and transmedia theories, complemented by data analysis regarding access and use of the new technologies. The Conceptual Framework combine the analysis of transmedia storytelling, and new technologies with the new agenda of development settled by the Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2015). The expected outcome of this framework is the characterisation of the Fourth Generation of EE interventions, according to Tufte’s previous generations.Agencia Nacional de Investigación e InnovaciónChevening Programm