ABSTRACT
Transmedia storytelling is the most well-known component of transmediality and has gained significant academic currency during the opening years of the twenty-first century. Most explicitly theorised by Henry Jenkins (2003, 2006), transmedia storytelling expands on the contemporary traditions of television narrative described by Jeffrey Sconce as the ‘crafting and maintaining [of] ever more complex narrative universes’ (2004: 95) to place those narrative universes on more than one media platform. As a concept, it has become central to the understanding of how emerging new media technologies are leading to the creation of new forms of narrative content and audience engagement. However, despite the usefulness and pervasiveness of the term, there remains scope for further refinement. To a certain extent the phrase ‘transmedia storytelling’ is a misnomer. All of the practices that could be considered ‘transmedia’ involve the telling of stories over multiple platforms. As Jonathan Gray argues, calling on the work of Gerard Genette (1997), narrative is shaped and constructed as much through the texts that appear around a film, television or book as through those core texts themselves. For Grey, such paratexts ‘create texts, they manage them, and they fill them with many of the meanings that we associate with them’ (2010: 6). Marketing material, sequels, merchandising and branding can all help shape the viewer's experience of a single ‘text’. Defining what specifically constitutes moments of transmedia storytelling, and their relationship to other theoretical or industrial processes, is vital.
