ABSTRACT
What is transmedia? A common consensus is that transmedia is an adjective, and not a noun. As such, transmedia can be viewed as a process of modification, and ultimately change. As the term has evolved over the last two decades from its pre–social media origins to encompass a variety of contexts, technologies, economies, uses, and expectations, the media texts, platforms, and products involved in this process of modification have become transitory. This chapter suggests that there is a consistency to transmedia, however, which is that instead of media texts, the something being ‘modified’ by transmedia is, in fact, ourselves.
In this chapter, I bring together three heuristics; transmedia, self, and time, and initially illustrate that because of transmedia’s reliance upon self and memory over time, we ourselves become transmedia experiences for others: transmedia selves. Building on this idea, the chapter also explores the suggestion that as we form memories from virtual and transmedia contexts – as we see our transmedia selves and encounter other transmedia selves too – these memories are in a sense ‘out of time’. As we increasingly become transmedia selves, as we modify ourselves as a result, the development of our selves from such timeless virtual memories may have potential consequences for us.
