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1.2. Research Background and Interest
Stories have been always teaching us lessons about life, culture, relationship and so on. They have also been telling us what the world is and our place in it since the dawn of civilization. Stories affect our emotions, bring excitement and the feeling of connection while also educating us. The stories that affect us the most are the ones that touch our hearts.
If we go back over thousands of years of human being history, the most important stories were retold many times around the campfire hence they belong to the folk. As we moved to the 20th century, those images now belong to major media companies who claim exclusive ownership if it.
That was the dawn of television and radio – a one-way-medium, which doesn’t involve the audience in the conversation. However, as a one-way-medium was not an effective strategy to attract the audience the new strategy ought to appear. Transmedia storytelling is a new form emerged in the response to media convergence (Jenkins, 2006).
From the conceptual perspective, the term transmedia storytelling consists of the combination of the following words: “transmedia” and “storytelling”. Given the linguistic perspective, the term transmedia is composed of two parts: “trans” and “media”. The prefix “trans-” means “beyond”,
“across”, “through”, “changing thoroughly”, “transverse” (Cambridge Dictionaries Online). The word media signifies communication platforms or channels as well as a plural form of “medium”.
Considering its linguistic meaning transmedia indicates the extension through and beyond multiple media platforms, from one communication medium to another (Gürel & Tiğli, 2012).
Storytelling is the other element of the concept of transmedia storytelling. According to the National Storytelling Network storytelling is an ancient art form and a valuable form of human creation. Despite the type of the narrative, there are forms of expression such as “narration”,
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“description”, “explanation” and “discussion” according to the purpose of the narrator (Gürel &
Tiğli, 2012). Storytelling is interactive and implies communication between a storyteller on one side and listeners/ audience on the other side.
There is a seeming semantic chaos surrounding transmedia storytelling for the reason that it also includes several other contagious concepts such as “cross media”, “multimodality”,
“multiplatform” and so on (Scolari, 2009). It is necessary to develop a more consistent theoretical discourse and hence we will discuss this phenomenon further in the research.
In her speech for Geekend workshop in 2011 Meghan Gargan emphasizes that storytelling is timeless. She says it is new for brands because usually they work within a campaign window.
The story becomes indefinite by expanding it. People can enter a story at any point without starting at one place and end at another. It also involves longer period of engagement with fans even after a campaign stops.
Transmedia storytelling is a highly effective method to attract and engage the target audience.
It has been a hot topic for discussion over years in the West. However, storytelling is a new phenomenon for Russia and unknown to most of the audience. Little has been written about this topic by Russian scholars as well as there are only a few transmedia projects in Russia created in the last four years. The explanation for this scenario lies not only in late modernization, which is described by leading Russian sociologists (Dubin, 2011; Gudkov, 2011) as a crucial feature of contemporary Russian culture, but also (and connected to the former) in the low level of civic activity, narrow choices for community actions and passive audience, which still mostly consists of viewers (even if they are Internet users) but not participants.
The author for this thesis comes from Russia and worked for a communication agency in the country. Moreover, the author is interested in marketing, and as it will be said later in this paper,
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transmedia storytelling is a great marketing tool. It is catchy, entertaining and affects people’s emotions and decision making. By using survey as a method of research for this study, we will deeper investigate the level of audience engagement in Russia as well as if they are interested in transmedia storytelling projects. Can a specific trait of the Russian audience such as being passive be altered by implementing transmedia storytelling? This and other questions will be answered in this study later on.
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CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1. The science behind storytelling
2.1.1 What is storytelling
It is vital to realize that people tell stories with nearly every new piece of communication technology we invent – starting from portable video recorders, vinyl records, and motion picture cameras to radio, TV and smartphones.
Bernard (2007) argues that audience engagement is a crucial part of storytelling:
“A story is the narrative, or telling, of an event or series of events, crafted in a way to interest the audiences, whether they are readers, listeners, or viewers.”
“Story exists where high concept and high touch intersect. Story is high concept because it sharpens our understanding of one thing by showing it in the context of something else. . . Story is high touch because stories almost always pack an emotional response.” (Pink, 2005: 103)
Marketing stories paint pictures in customers’ minds that prompt them to pay attention to the message; people also tend to organize information in story format (Padgett and Allen, 1997;
Woodside 2010). Therefore, marketers can use storytelling as a powerful communication tool and convey company information by narrating a story.
Businesses use storytelling in a variety of levels. Marketing sells products by telling persuasive stories about products and the company’s culture and values. Stories (Heaton, 2011) created by brands define “who they are” and “what they stand for”. As a writer and movie director, Paul Auster said (Fog, 2010) that “telling stories is the only way we can create meaning in our lives and make sense of the world. We need them in order to understand ourselves and who we are.”
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Bryan Alexander (2011) points out that mystery is one of the key element of storytelling.
However, it ought to be used carefully for the reason that creators’ main purpose is to share the material but not to conceal it. Concealing the matter, or mystery, let creators attract the audience’s attention and engage it in a story by eliciting its’ curiosity and making it want to experience more of the story.
2.1.2 Importance of storytelling in eliciting emotion and creating measurable behavioral change
Neuroscientist Paul Zak draws upon the importance of storytelling in eliciting emotion and creating measurable behavioural change. According to his research, storytelling evokes a strong neurological response.
In one of Zak’s experiments (Zac, 2013) the participants watched an emotionally charged short movie about a little boy Ben, who suffers from brain cancer, and his father. Even though Ben suffers from cancer, he stays positive and enjoys his life. However, his father knows Ben is dying and it is difficult for him to play with his son knowing he will be gone soon. The father tries hard to be joyful around Ben. Then, he says that it is an amazing thing how little time one has left. As he says it, he emerges with his son as if the father himself is dying.
After that, Zak has studied that story in the laboratory extensively and there were two primary emotions elicited: distress and empathy. According to the Zac’s study, brain produced two chemicals. The first one is cortisol which focuses our attention on something important and correlated with distress. The results have shown that the more distress people felt after watching the short movie, the more cortisol they released. The second chemical released is called oxytocin which is associated with care, connection and empathy. Zac’s lab pioneered the behavioral study of oxytocin and has proven that when “the brain synthesizes oxytocin, people are more
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trustworthy, generous, charitable, and compassionate. He calls it “moral molecule” while for other people it is more known as the love hormone (Zac, 2013). Therefore, the more oxytocin was released, the more empathic people felt towards Ben and his father. Other neurological research tells us that a happy ending to a story triggers the limbic system, our brain’s reward center, to release dopamine which makes us feel more hopeful and optimistic. Even the simplest narratives can produce the release of neurochemicals like cortisol and oxytocin (Popova, 2012).
After watching that short film, the participants were also asked to share money with a stranger.
The results show that with both oxytocin and cortisol in play, those who had the higher amounts of oxytocin were much more likely to give money to someone they’d never met.
Paul Zak have also discovered that there are two key aspects to an effective story. First, it must capture and hold audience’s attention. Second, an effective story “transports” the audience into the characters’ world.
2.1.3 Facts versus Fiction
Even though stories are an excellent way to spread ideas, to gain understanding, many businesses are not able to tell great stories.
When we listen to or read information there are two main areas that are affected – Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area. Broca’s area (Figure 1) is responsible for producing speech, writing, and also involved in language processing and comprehension. Wernicke’s area is the region of the brain that is responsible for language development and comprehension.
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Figure 1. Brain regions activated when we listen to the facts and stories (Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.)
While facts and figures engage a small area of the brain, stories engage multiple brain regions such as Motor cortex, Auditory cortex, Angular cortex and Primary visual cortex that work together to build colorful, rich three-dimensional images and emotional responses (Figure 1). As we read stories we quickly begin to feel as if what’s happening out there is actually happening in here. Each sensory image, sound, texture, color, sensation and emotion provides a hook for our brain as the story draws us in and maintains our attention effortlessly. Stories that are personal and emotionally compelling engage more of the brain, and thus are better remembered, than simply stating a set of facts (Zac, 2013).
Stories use sensory-specific words which are easier for the brain to imagine and then process.
Each person has their own personal experience based on this associations.
Characters in the story are also take a crucial part in storytelling for the reasons that they help us “generate emotional associations” and identification with the character.
2.1.4. Decision making and storytelling
Transmedia storytelling can affect cognitive, affective, physiological, belief, attitudinal, and behavioral systems in one of the following ways:
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Acquiring: influences a person to obtain something that is not present prior to exposure to the message;
Triggering: influences a person by activating something that already exists within that individual;
Altering: influences a person to change something that already exists with them;
Reinforcing: influences a person to make it more difficult to change something that already exists within them;
These four media influences are applicable to the cognitive, affective, physiological, belief, attitudinal, and behavioral systems (von Stackelberg & Jones, 2014).
Stories bridge the gap between the intellect and the emotions, providing a much quicker transfer of meaning than the intellect alone.
2.2. Transmedia World
2.2.1 Convergence: how media is consumed today
By convergence, Jenkins (2006) means the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want.
Convergence culture is a world where every story, sounds, brand, image place itself out across maximum number of media channels.
Media convergence is an ongoing process, occurring at various intersections of media technologies, industries, content and audiences: it’s not an end state. Jenkins (2001) argues that old media will never die. CDs, MP3 files are delivery technologies which come and go, but media persist as layers within an ever more complicated information and entertainment system. There are no dead media, there are dead delivery technologies, dead businesses and practices.
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Convergence is therefore not just referred to as a technological, but also a cultural phenomenon, shifting from a traditional mass communication paradigm to a convergent social media paradigm defined by “the flow of content across multiple media platforms” (Jenkins, 2006). There is a certain empowerment of the audience as users through interactivity, revealing a more participatory culture where the term convergence also fits, as “both a top-down process directed by media corporations and a bottom-up process generated by media consumers and participants in media culture” (Flew, 2014).
Jenkins (2001) also argues that convergence is a process that changes how media is both consumed and produced. He points out that there are at least five processes of convergence which provoke some confusions about media convergence.
By technological convergence he means “the digitalization of all media content” where words, images and sounds are turned into digital data. Nowadays consumers are able to watch TV shows on the Internet and play video games on mobile phones. In addition, Jenkins notes that the more different kinds of media are transformed into digital content, the more “we extend the possible relations between them and allow them to travel across platforms”.
Economic convergence or “the horizontal integration of the entertainment industry” occurs
when media and entertainment companies such as Sony or Time Warner Inc. shows interests and start to control film industry, television, games, books, music, the Web and so on. Therefore, this leads to the interaction between different sectors and the emergence of “the transmedia exploitation of branded properties” such as Harry Potter, Star Wars, The Matrix, etc.
Social or Organic Convergence happens when consumers perform multiple tasks simultaneously in order to navigate the new information environment. For example, a person is
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watching TV, chatting to their friends, and also listening to the music in the background at the same time.
Cultural convergence happens when the audience become the user meaning that media
technology gives the audience the tools to develop the content across multiple channels. Moreover, some companies “tap this culture” to encourage consumers loyalty and generate low-cost content.
Global convergence is the process where one culture influence another despite the distance,
where the content circulate from one to another culture. For instance, well-known Asian actors such as Jackie Chan or Chow Yun-Fat often appears in Hollywood movies and vise versa.
The advantage of global convergence is access to a wealth of cultural influence. On the other side, it is the threat of cultural imperialism, defined by Herbert Schiller (1976) as the way developing countries are “attracted, pressured, forced, and sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating center of the system”.
Jenkins argues that convergence symbolizes a cultural transformation where consumers are encouraged to discover new information and make connections among widely distributed media content. Distribution of media content relies drastically on consumer’s active participation.
Therefore, Jenkins points out that convergence shouldn’t be understood mainly as “a technological process bringing together multiple media functions within the same devices”.
2.2.2 Defining Transmedia storytelling
Transmedia storytelling is not a new phenomenon. Marshall Kinder first coined the term transmedia in the 80s and 90s. She used the term to diagnose a shift in media marketing. But with the rise of the Internet and media convergence, Henry Jenkins and others have remixed the term and embraced it as the future for all forms of media.
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Jenkins first introduce the concept on transmedia storytelling in Technology Review column in 2003. In 2007, Jenkins updated his definition:
“Transmedia storytelling represents 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.”
There is no universally accepted definition of storytelling as well as some scholars are not agreed on same terms. Such concepts as “cross media” (Bechmann Petersen, 2006); “multiple platforms” (Jeffery-Poulter, 2003); “hybrid media” (Boumans, 2004); “intertextual commodity”
(Marshall, 2004); “transmedial worlds” (Klastrup & Tosca, 2004); “transmedial interactions”
(Bardzell, Wu, Bardzell & Quagliara, 2007); “multimodality” (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001), or
“intermedia” Higgin, (1966) try to define same experience – “sense production and interpretation practice based on narratives expressed through a coordinated combination of languages and media or “platforms” (Bechmann Petersen, 2006: 95).
According to the Producers Guild of America (PGA) there three criteria characterizing a transmedia property: the number of narrative storylines, the kinds of platforms involved in the project and the requirement for narrative novelty:
“A Transmedia Narrative project or franchise must consist of three (or more) narrative storylines existing within the same fictional universe on any of the following platforms: Film, Television, Short Film, Broadband, Publishing, Comics, Animation, Mobile, Special Venues, DVD/Blu-ray/CD-ROM, Narrative Commercial and Marketing rollouts, and other technologies that may or may not currently exist. These narrative extensions are NOT the same as repurposing
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material from one platform to be cut or repurposed to different platforms.” (PGA 2010)
Transmedia storytelling, as a form of narrative and a marketing technique, “was actualized in terms of practice; then, found its place within the literature through scientific studies and formation of conceptual structure” (Gürel & Tiğli, 2012).
As Gürel and Tiğli put, there are more than one narrative in the transmedia world. Each of those narratives serves as a piece of the big picture, as a separate story adding to the whole. With the narratives transmitted through different channels, it helps both establish the story world and reach various audience. Transmedia storytelling makes the audience exist within the story and become its consumer, narrator and producer.
Noman (2010) talks about three components of the new transmedia: development, co-creation and co-ownership. He says that in the new media world we are all produce, share and enjoy – everyone can participate and be involved in this process:
“Simple text messages or short videos qualify as production, regardless of their value. This new movement is about participating and creating, invoking the creative spirit—this is what the transmedia experience should be about. All of these experiences allow people to feel more like producers and creators than passive consumers or spectators…”
Early examples of transmedia projects, for example, would present a character’s story as a series of tweets, a number of still images posted to Flickr, written “diary” entries on a blog, video clips posted to YouTube, and texts sent via mobile phone.
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Previously brands used to retell the same story across different media. In the present times transmedia storytelling offers more engaging and immersive message delivery. Transmedia brings new experience with every new media.
Transmedia storytelling is not a one format, but it comes in many types. There are three the focus will be put on in the study.
Franchise transmedia is when a story is created mainly in one format (most commonly cinema
Franchise transmedia is when a story is created mainly in one format (most commonly cinema