[ecrea] Transmedia Use(r)s – Symposium and Summer School in Cultural Studies (University of Jyväskylä, Finland 13-15 June 2016)

Transmedia Use(r)s
20th International Summer School in Cultural Studies

Time: 13–15 June 2016
Place: University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Organizers: Society for Cultural Studies in Finland, Centre for 
Contemporary Culture Studies at the University of Jyväskylä

Transmedia storytelling refers to the increasingly popular way of 
delivering media content over a combination of media platforms. Cinema, 
games, tv series, novels, webisodes, podcasts, comics, fan fiction and 
many other media forms all come together in creating a rich, fictional 
storyworld. There is much to do to gain a better understanding of 
transmedia audiences on the basic level of reception. How do people make 
sense of the transmedia stories, what are their strategies in covering 
the multi-platform distribution, and how does the media interweave with 
everyday practices?

The Summer School addresses transmedia users and uses through lectures 
and seminar presentations, based on the latest research. The Symposium 
held on Monday, 13 June 2016 is open to the public. Those interested in 
seminar sessions on Tuesday 14 and Wednesday 15 June are asked to 
contact the secretary of the Society for Cultural Studies at 
(minna.m.nerg /at/ jyu.fi).

The event takes place in English.



Symposium: Transmedia Use(r)s

Time: Monday 13 June, 14.00–17.30
Place: University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Ruusupuisto, lecture hall RUU D104



PROGRAMME

14.00–15.00 Lecture

Raine Koskimaa: Games and Playing in Transmedia Storytelling

15.00–16.00 Lecture

Elizabeth Evans: Negotiating ‘Engagement’ within Transmedia Culture

16.00–16.30 Coffee Break

16.30–17.30 Lecture

Lisbeth Klastrup: Transmedial worlds, social media and networked reception



For more information, contact:

Minna Nerg, secretary
Society for Cultural Studies in Finland
(minna.m.nerg /at/ jyu.fi)
+358 50 599 8842

http://kultut.fi/



Elizabeth Evans: Negotiating ‘Engagement’ within Transmedia Culture

The blurring of television’s technological and formal boundaries through 
transmedia storytelling and distribution has provided media producers in 
the UK with new ways of negotiating their audience’s relationship with 
content, bringing together multiple modes of ‘engagement’ with the same 
core screen content. Audiences may watch content, but may also write, 
read, edit, share, talk, interact and play, with ‘engagement’ occurring 
across and between individual media and involving multiple behaviours. 
Simultaneously, claiming to offer ‘better’ or ‘deeper’ viewer 
‘engagement’ has become a marker of quality for UK broadcasters. 
Industry bloggers have explored the nature of ‘engaged’ vs ‘non-engaged’ 
viewers, heralding the former as the truly valuable members of the 
television audience. Within academia, a similar emphasis is occurring, 
with ‘engagement’ being examined in terms of how the media industry 
measure and rationalise their audiences.

What ‘engagement’ actually means in terms of audiences experience 
remains elusive. This paper will use industry practitioner interviews 
and audience focus groups to explore how the tensions and alignments in 
how ‘engagement’ with transmedia content is articulated and understood 
by those who create and those who experience such content. For many 
industry practitioners, being ‘engaged’ with content has become shaped 
by medium specificity and primarily linked with non-viewing behaviours 
including social media discussions, creating and sharing content, 
seeking out further information etc. For audiences, however, it remains 
rooted in the text, emerging from well-crafted narratives and 
characters, that construct an emotional connection, regardless of the 
medium the story is told in. This paper will map and explore the nuanced 
differences in how ‘engagement’ is defined in order to offer a framework 
for examining how the experience of screen content shifts or remains!
   consistent as it moves between and across the different media 
platforms of transmedia texts.

Elizabeth Evans is an Assistant Professor in Film and Television Studies 
at the University of Nottingham,UK.


Lisbeth Klastrup: Transmedial worlds, social media and networked reception

In this talk, I will discuss Susana Tosca’s and my recent work on 
transmedial worlds and transmedial storytelling.  I will present 
examples of how users engage with transmedial worlds and their own forms 
of transmedial storytelling through social media,  and how we can 
approach and understand what they do as “networked reception”. Finally, 
I will present an experience-centric analytical model which can help 
frame current studies of transmedial world engagement.

Lisbeth Klastrup is an Associate Professor at the IT University of 
Copenhagen, Denmark.


Raine Koskimaa: Games and Playing in Transmedia Storytelling

In transmedia storytelling, a story is delivered over a variety of 
media, so that each media makes its own, distinct contribution. There 
are also non-narrative elements involved in much of transmedia 
productions, and when all narrative and non-narrative parts are taken 
into account, we can talk about transmedia universes, where the 
narratives are set in. Often there are games, both digital and 
non-digital, included in the transmedia universes, and in this talk I 
will look at how games contribute to the transmedia storytelling, and 
how playing is a specific form of engagement with media contents. I will 
concentrate on two examples. First, the Battlestar Galactica console 
game and the Battlestar Galactica Board Game are parts of the BSG 
transmedia universe and the former of these plays an intermediary role 
in bridging the gap between the original and reimagined BSG television 
series, and the second one makes the player feel the paranoia of not 
knowing who of their community ar!
  e Cylons, so central to the reimagined series, and it also both 
echoes the episodes in the series and serves as an alternative episode 
generator. The simulation game Spore is used as an example of how a game 
may be expanded to a transmedia universe. I will concentrate on what 
kind of implications the transmedial expansion bears on the temporal 
scale of the game and playing. Altogether, I argue that playing is an 
integral part of transmedia user practices.

Raine Koskimaa works as a Professor of Contemporary Culture Studies at 
the University of Jyväskylä Department of Art and Culture Studies.


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