Abstract
The increasing diversification of interconnected media platforms, which provide a complex discourse, demands an effective use of the space that is now called “transmedia”. This article provides terms and definitions for transmedia and for the new set of personal skills and abilities required to participate in it: “transliteracy”. It also presents the nemetic system, which facilitates analyzing, tracking and visualizing communication interactions in virtual transmedia environments. Learning to use these new media platforms requires skills beyond the traditional listening and reading, to be able to integrate multiple messages in multiple codes, as an essential skill both for personal and professional communication. This transliteracy is a complex ability of intertextual navigation, the strategy for coding and decoding the multidiscourse in the digital ecosystem.
TopBasic Concepts
In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) is driving interactions between humans and machines, the concept of transmedia has evolved from its origins as an extension of media story telling across platforms into a dynamic ecosystem for organizational transformation.
The term “transmedia” is attributed to Marsha Kinder, who in 1991 used it to refer to an emerging entertainment supersystem, involving intertextuality and multiple sources with different levels of interaction (Kinder, 1991). It applied to tools, processes and concepts, and opened the door to media that had not been invented then, such as wearables, implants, or augmented reality devices.
In 2003 Henry Jenkins described a process of “transmedia storytelling” in which “each medium does what it does best, so that a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics, and its world might be explored and experienced through game play” (Jenkins, 2003). Later, he defined transmedia storytelling as 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” (Jenkins, 2007).
This notion of multiplatform narrative has expanded to encompass every type of human communication, including marketing (Tenderich, 2014), political debates (Costanza-Chock, 2014), or personal learning networks (Richardson & Mancabelli, 2011). Transmedia expands human relationships in virtual spaces, and is starting to enhance communications capabilities through hybrid human-machine interactions.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Wicked Problem: A problem that is difficult or impossible to solve, because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are difficult to define, identify, or recognize. It often involves stakeholders who have radically different worldviews. In addition, complex interdependencies make it so that the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create new problems.
Synchrodipity: The compound interaction of synchronicity and serendipity, to produce a sense of discovery, delight or well-being, and a sense of connectedness between people, ideas and actions, derived from the flow and the interconnectivity of all things.
Intertext: A coherent text that shows a relationship to one or more other texts, where “text” is understood to mean any type of communicative content, typically forming a connected piece of work (includes images, sounds, video, etc.).
NEME: Mnemonic acronym for the fractal learning process of complex creative systems: Notice, Engage, Mull, Exchange.
Transmedia: Complex communication interaction based on multimedia, multimodal, multiplatform, intertextual human communication, in which each medium or platform has a distinct role to play in communicating the complete content. This interaction acquires meaning with each participating element by rebuilding the fragmented discourse.
Transliteracy: The ability to read, write, and interact across a variety of communication tools, media, and platforms, from text, orality, signing or drawing, through handwriting, print, TV, radio and films to electronic networks and social media on digital platforms. It is a necessary complex skill for receiving, interiorizing or producing Transmedia.
Nemetics: A fractal code, evolved into a meta-language to facilitate communication among researchers in different disciplines in order to debate about complexity.
Complex Creative Systems: A subset of complex adaptive systems, which are systems in which a perfect understanding of the individual parts does not automatically convey a perfect understanding of the whole system's behavior. In a complex creative system, such as the rapidly evolving landscape of technological innovation, neither creative nor adoptive paths can be rigorously predicted, due to the high number of interlocked interactions among its components. It results from the non-linear interaction of the creative agent with users (intellect), objects (components), and contextual rules (regulation, social convention, human nature, etc.).