2015 | 22 | Themenheft

Browsing 2015 | 22 | Themenheft by Subject "ddc:791"

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  • Article
    Blurring the Line Between Fiction and Reality. Functional Transmedia Storytelling in the German TV Series ABOUT:KATE
    Zimmermann, Amelie (2015) , S. 22-35
    New technological innovations offer a range of possibilities not only to tell a story via a single medium, but also to expand the diegetic world of the story via diverse devices. This leads to an expanded story universe (i.e., hyperdiegesis), not only confronting the recipients when they use the story’s core medium but also accompanying them in their daily life when using social networks or reading newspapers. This article takes into account the existing definitions of transmedia phenomena and their structures in order to suggest a theoretical approach that uses semiotic and structuralist models applicable not only to individual texts but also to their interdependent constructions. These models are then applied to the ARTE production About:Kate (2013). Here, the transmedial way of telling the story (›discours‹) is functional for the content of the series (›histoire‹) and the communication of its overall semantic meaning.
  • Journal Issue
  • Article
    Introduction
    Thon, Jan-Noël (2015) , S. 3-3
  • Article
    Transmedial World-Building in Fictional Narratives
    Maj, Krzysztof M. (2015) , S. 83-96
    There is no denying that transmedia storytelling has been gaining increasing attention in recent media, literature, and game studies. Introduced in Henry Jenkins’ famous (though not aspiring to be groundbreaking) book Convergence Culture (cf. JENKINS 2006), the term has already appeared—to recall the most notable contributions—in media (cf. DENA 2009; SCOLARI 2009), game (cf. KLASTRUP/TOSCA 2004; THON 2009), literature (cf. WOLF 2012), television (cf. EVANS 2011) and, last but not least, narrative studies (cf. RYAN 2001; 2004; 2006; 2014), becoming, therefore, a hallmark of contemporary participatory culture. This instinctive association of transmedia studies with everything labeled ›new media storytelling‹ may be, however, one of the term’s few disadvantages. After all, what was the third edition of Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), if not transmedial? Indeed, the work entails a fantastic story (the imaginary voyage of Hythloday), fictional world-building (the foundation of the island of Utopia), concept art (the woodcuts by Ambrosius Holbein), metafictional augmentations (fictive poems, dialogues, and letters), and even a facsimile of the imaginary alphabet.1 This is possibly why more universally attributed transmedia studies could follow the path marked by Richard Saint- Gelais’ concept of transfictionality (cf. SAINT-GELAIS 2007; 2011), Marie-Laure Ryan’s distinctions between transmediality and transfictionality (cf. RYAN 2013), or even David Herman’s notion of the whole transmedial narratology (cf. HERMAN 2004).
  • Article
    Under the Macroscope. Convergence in the US Television Market Between 2000 and 2014
    Steiner, Tobias (2015) , S. 4-21
    The paradigms of media change and convergence in relation to the so-called ›new media‹ have kept scholars occupied for more than two decades. In the US and the UK, the switch from analogue to digital television comprises just the most recent step of technological developments offering an unprecedented variety of ways in which national, transnational, and global audiences are able to access television content. This article’s aim is to offer a macroscopic review of these changing ways within the US television market during the past decade. This will be done with a distinct focus on statistical data in order to diachronically substantiate the often-attributed active role that consumers played in the larger transformations that are nowadays subsumed under the term ›convergence‹. Subsequently, the article will provide a short case study of the US premiumcable network HBO in order to exemplify the mechanisms at work within this larger convergence landscape that does not stop at the borders of the United States, but transcends nationalities to form a truly global media setting.