2.2 Transmedia World
2.2.8 Second screen usage
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mobile users, novel and comics readers, etc.) use one TV show broadcasted every week on TV or by viewing the previous seasons on the Internet. On a third lever, the transmedia consumers move from one media platform to another. They are not adhere to only one piece of a story but all the narratives in order to explore the whole story world.
2.2.8 Second screen usage
Jenkins (2006) came up with a term called “convergence” which describes the flow of content across different media platforms. He also noticed how media both consumed and produced. With media convergence, the audience is ready to “go anywhere” in order to access the desirable information. In addition, Jenkins mentions so-called Social or Cultural Convergence when consumers perform multiple tasks simultaneously in order to navigate the new information environment. By this, Jenkins argues that with modern technological progress and all the media platforms available for the public, people tend to use more than one screen at the same time. High penetration of mobile phones explains the behavior of using two or more devices at the same time.
According to research from TNS Infratest and Google, 57% percent of Americans use their smartphones to access online content while watching TV. 43% use a computer while watching TV, and 23% use a tablet (Udell, 2015). 73% of people from 18 to 34 years old multitask the most during primetime, versus 66% each for viewers in the 35-to-49 age group and the 50-to-64 age group.
There are several reasons to be involved in second screen usage. Firstly, they are often related to the program on the main screen. Thus, 40 percent of second screen users accessed live information about the program they were currently watching and the same percentage of users joined conversations about the program online. Moreover, live tweeting or live blogging TV events are popular aspects of second screen usage. Social second screen usage during events has become
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a huge marketing opportunity for brands. It was noticed that 40.2 percent of female social media brand followers interacted with brands tweeting while watching cultural events on television.
Quite a few content owners have started developing second screen digital extensions (or apps) in order to empower their shows and to capture their viewers’ attention on the second screen by enhancing their experience and keeping them engaged during the broadcast and far beyond (Joseph, 2015, June 19).
Although multitasking while using a TV set has been common for many years, the digital
‘second screen’ is now a way of life for many consumers. Increased purposeful viewing provides opportunities for tapping into deeper engagement among key audiences and in certain contexts.\
2.4 Modern transmedia environment in Russia 2.4.1 Transmedia studies in Russia
The term “multimedia” is popular and emphasised in Russia where transmedia storytelling is rarely mentioned. Renira Rampazzo Gambarato and Ekaterina Lapina-Kratasiuk (2016) believe that the explanation to it lies in late modernization of Russia as a crucial feature of its modern culture (Dubin, 2011; Gudkov, 2011) as well as a “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.” Multimedia is defined as the combined use of text, audio and visual, but other assumptions about the concept are common, including the one that considers multimedia and multiplatform synonyms. Therefore, it become clear why such term became widespread in Russia. As transmedia storytelling phenomenon is becoming more popular and is being implemented in Russia, scholars and the public are gaining more interest in it.
In 2012, the Russia Forum invited Caitlin Burns, a transmedia producer at Starlight Runner Entertainment, and Lance Weiler, a writer, director and one of the most prominent practitioners
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dedicated to interactive storytelling, we invited to discuss transmedia storytelling as a new language for a new audience.
In 2013, Moscow MIP Academy hosted a panel dedicated to Transmedia Stories and Multiplatform Content Monetization Models. Later that year, the 17th National Ad Festival
“IDEA!” in Novosibirsk provide a master-class on transmedia storytelling delivered by Ekaterina Nazarova, the STS (Russian TV channel) media producer of True Love, a Russian transmedia production. In February 2014, STS Media announced the formation of a Department of Transmedia Projects aiming at enhancing the group’s Internet and digital media presence.
A few Russian scholars has written about transmedia storytelling including (Guseinov, Akhmetova, & Belikov, 2014; Kiriya, Kachkayeva, Naumova, & Rogers, 2012; Koltsova &
Scherbak, 2014; Lapina-Kratasi͡uk, 2012; Zvereva, 2012). Some of transmedia projects such S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Night Watch, True Love have been discussed and analysed. (Dolgopolov, 2012;
Sokolova, 2011).
2.4.2 Contemporary dichotomized Russian media model
In the beginning of the 2000s, Russian economy was rising which in turns helped the so-called development of media marketization. Russian media market was attractive to both domestic and foreign investors who were principally interested in local print media with politically safe content that was less likely to lead to confrontations with the authorities. The financial crisis started in 2008 shaped the future direction of media and news consumption in Russia, leading to the decrease of advertising and circulations of the print media on one hand, and increase of online communication on the other hand (Pankin et al., 2011, p. 6).
Today, the Russian media system is a mixture of different media models, existing simultaneously and sometimes intertwining. The main dichotomy is between more tightly
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controlled media loyal to the authorities and freer media outlets and online communication platforms (e.g. Dunn, 2014; Toepfl, 2014). The Russian media model has been described also, for example, as semi-authoritarian or authoritarian (e.g. Toepfl, 2014, p. 69) and neo-Soviet (Oates, 2007). In addition to media that fall within the state or local government’s sphere of control, part of the media behaves according to commercial models, selling products directly to consumers and serving as the contact between consumers and advertisers. Typical formats following commercial media models include glossy magazines, business newspapers and commercial radio stations.
In addition, part of the media business is owned by so-called oligarchs or business tycoons, who may have other business and political interests besides the media.
The main TV channels are state-controlled directly or through companies closely connected to the state. These channels include, for example, Pervyi Kanal (First Channel), Rossiia 1 (Russia 1), NTV and TNT (Vartanova, 2015, p. 139). They still get the majority of their funding from advertising and sponsorship.
In terms of the media business’s political environment and state intervention levels, Russia has been categorised as a relatively closed regime that, nonetheless, pursues an open Internet policy (e.g. Oates, 2007; Toepfl, 2014). However, researcher Sarah Oates states that the Russian government still is capable of applying its power through online resources just as it does through print and TV media (Oates, 2013, p. 8). Recent developments give the impression that Russia’s media policy is mostly based on state-driven logic: the state is still, in practice, the only actor to formulate media policy in Russia.
Foreign ownership has now been restricted after a long period of relatively free investment policy. Russia had, in the 1990s onwards, a more liberal media legislation as compared to Eastern
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and Central European countries (Stetka, 2012, p. 436). However, from 2016 onwards, the foreign ownership share of media companies were limited to no more than 20% of total shares.
TV remains the central media platform in Russia, and the newspaper market, which, in recent decades, has become more diverse, is under pressure in part due to technological developments.
The rise of digital media so far represents a mixed picture, in part because of political pressures and because the Internet provides a challenging environment for news production for traditional media companies.
2.4.3 Transmedia projects in Russia
This section provides the overview of several implemented transmedia productions: True Love, S.T.A.L.K.E.R and Red Quest. These cases were chosen in order to show the variety of ways transmedia was represented in. These examples shows us that even though transmedia was just recently integrated in Russian media practices, it gained necessary interest and what is more important – engaged the audience.
2.4.3.1 Entertainment initiatives
True Love is a TV and Web series created by STS Media, the largest television broadcaster in Russia, and was shown on the STS Channel in November- December 2012 (Khrennikov, 2014).
The viewers of the show were given the opportunity to share their own love stories on Russian social media networks such as VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, as well as on the STS Media online video platform videomore.ru, which follows the Hulu4 model (service offering ad-supported on-demand streaming video). The Internet users could upload texts, pictures or videos of their love stories. In addition, they could also commented on and rated other participants’ stories. Within a few months, 2000 stories had been gathered online, and then 50 were incorporated into the project and shot as one-minute videos broadcasted daily on the STS Channel. The crucial features of this
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transmedia project were expansion of the content in different media platforms and audience participation. True Love was planned to deliberately take advantage of the “four screen” concept (TV, PC, tablet, mobile phone), and in this sense, it succeeded. Moreover, STS created a partnership with PepsiCo which resulted in an advertising campaign for a popular juice brand Lyubimyi (beloved, favorite).
During the second season which was aired at the end of 2013, STS collaborated with PepsiCo.
The main idea of the season was aimed at finding the formula of true love. This time, 45 stories told by the audience were chosen for the project. The main media platforms involved were the STS Channel, videomore.ru, domashniy.ru, ctc.ru, Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki. STS Media “is transforming itself into a content provider as users switch to watching series online via smartphones, tablets and smart TVs” (Khrennikov, 2014).
2.4.3.2 Gaming experience
The introduction to the TS notion as a scholarly phenomenon in the Russian academic sphere began with an analysis of two game-based projects: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Night Watch. (Dolgopolov, 2012; Sokolova, 2011). In this section, we cover only the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game for the reason that Night Watch failed as a transmedia project. The reason to its failure was that by that time,
participatory culture in Russia was not quite developed at the grassroots level and was systematically limited by the government.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is both an on and off-line game related to the novel written by Arkadiy and Boris Strugatskiy called Roadside Picnic (Piknik na obochine). The main character of the book makes a living by illegally entering the so-called Zone, a place that was visited by extraterrestrials and is full of unknown substances and anomalies. The game inherits from the book descriptions of anomalies and artifacts as well as the very idea of the Zone. Therefore, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is not
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just an adaptation of the book but a proper transmedia extension (Gambarato & Lapina-Kratasiuk, 2016).
This transmedia production was popular in 2007-2010 and included three games (the first game, a prequel and a sequel) and a series of books based on the world of the game, among the main extensions. However, the TV show S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was cancelled in 2012 before its premier.
A noticeable extension of this game universe was the performance of S.T.A.L.K. E.R. (directed by Igor Grigorev), organized as a lounge quest, which opened in October 2014 at the Gogol-Center Theatre, in Moscow.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. productions can be called transmedial since it has incorporated different narrative lines and structures as well as spread across different media platforms and extensions.
Moreover, the activities of communities and UGC played a crucial role in this project.
2.4.3.3 Transmedia branding
Due to the popularity of mobile application in Russia and low interest in traditional forms of advertising, transmedia branding while still being a new phenomenon, gained a lot of attention from the public. Red Quest was the first of its kind. This was a promotional activity of МТS’ new tariff Red Energy introduced in 2011. It was designed as transmedia storytelling combining the merits of international branding projects, such as Intel & Toshiba The Power Inside and traditions of Russian transmedia games such as DozoR (Gambarato & Lapina-Kratasiuk, 2016). The main idea within Red Quest was to save the planet. Participants searched for the source of unlimited energy. The first part of the game consisted an online quiz. The second part was an offline city quest the users could take part in by using their smartphones.
The company’s goal was “to increase the level of the target audience’s involvement and strengthen their communication with the brand by transmitting МТS Red Energy tariff values –
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freedom of expression, activeness, energy, and unlimited possibilities of communication” (V MTS rasskazali o keyse Red Quest, 2011).
Participants shared their videos and photos in the city quest as well as their stories on blogs, websites and social networks. Mobile phones were crucial for those who participated in the quest, since all assignments and codes were sent via SMS and Red Quest mobile application. The company MTS claimed to be very satisfied with the commercial results of the project since sales increased by 20% and more than 800,000 people installed the mobile application Red Quest through the social network VKontakte (V MTS rasskazali o keyse Red Quest, 2011).
2.4. Dominance of Russia’s Facebook: VKontakte (VK)
VKontakte (VK) is the largest European online social media platform (Figure 3). It has over 50.2 million monthly active users including 77% mobile users of this networking service. As of May 2017, according to Alexa Internet ranking, VK is the most visited web-site in Russia, second most visited in Belarus, third in Kazakhstan, forth in Estonia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Ukraine, fifth most visited in Latvia. However, due to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, the Ukrainian government banned the use of VK in Ukraine in May 2017 (BBC News, May 2017).
Figure 3. VK profile
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VK was founded 3 years later than Facebook, in January 2007 by Pavel Duov. In February 2017, the website reached 100.000 users, then 1 million by July 2007, and 10 million accounts by April 2008 (Synowitz, April 2014).
The site is available in 83 languages, while advertisements are only shown in the Russian and Ukrainian versions. Russian-speaking users can choose between the standard Russian version and two extras: a Soviet version and a Pre-Revolutionary version.
Generally VK users are under the age of thirty (Fateev, September 2015). This is an interesting demographic shift, given that Facebook’s users are mostly ages 35 and up (Jetscram, October 2014), and the platform is losing younger users to social media apps such as Instagram and Snapchat (Smith, March 2016). Some potential explanations for this difference are such as VK’s focus on sharing audio and video files between friends, its decreased focus on adding only people you know, the popularity of the social media site Odnoklassniki with older Russian adults (Smith, July 2016).
As the leading social network in the country, VK has beaten Russia’s biggest TV channel in the battle for viewers’ attention. In 2015, their weekly audiences were roughly equal, with VK leading by about 10,000 weekly users according to TNS Russia. However, the comparison between television channels and social networks is approximate, as statistics for the two platforms cannot be calculated in the same way. The daily audience of social networks was estimated according to the number of people who viewed any part of the website at least once a day. The daily reach of television channels, on the other hand, is the number of people who watched at least 1 minute of a channel’s broadcasts daily (D’Amora, May 2015).
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CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH DESIGN
This chapter with outline the research questions and problems, and the method used to gather the data in order to achieve our goals.
3.1 Expectations
The author of this research has high expectations for the development of transmedia storytelling in Russia. Section 2.4.3 presented us with some successful transmedia projects have already been implemented in Russia. Those transmedia stories were of different type, such as a game, a TV show, a transmedia branding. From the technological point, Russia is very well suited for the possible spread of transmedia storytelling influence. The penetration of mobile phones, laptops, and Internet saturation is high, especially in big cities. There are some barriers standing on the way of transmedia projects in Russia and can undermine their development. As it was mentioned before, the media content in the country is filtered and controlled. It is decided beforehand what messages the audience receives as over 80% of Russian channels are in the hands of private companies, some are state-owned, and the others have combined ownership. Another reasons is that even though the Russian constitution provides for freedom of speech and press, government application of law, bureaucratic regulation, and politically motivated criminal investigations have forced the press to exercise self-censorship constraining its coverage of certain controversial issues, resulting in infringements of these rights.
74% of Russians over 18 years old watch TV nearly every day. Therefore, television is the main source of information and entertainment. On one hand, the technology in Russia is blooming.
Mobile telephones and other gadgets have become widespread and have challenged the popularity of laptops as tools for connecting to the Internet. The general media and technological environment is favorable for the development of transmedia storytelling. On the other hand, as section 2.4.2.
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refers, the transmedia is only emerging in Russia as well as social and cultural spheres have not been adapted yet to this changes. In addition, there were some endeavours to control Russian Internet through several laws. Taking into consideration the aforementioned reasons, the author of this study expects transmedia storytelling to have a potential growth in Russia due to significant Internet penetration and available technological resources. However, transmedia storytelling projects should have particular features to attract passive Russian audience such as to be interactive but not demanding participation. The authors believes that despite low level of audience participation, the younger audience is interested to be engaged with transmedia storytelling.
3.2 Research Problems
Since there is not much use of transmedia storytelling currently in Russia, the primary goal is to gain an idea if there is a demand for transmedia extensions among Russian users. Are the audiences interested in engaging with transmedia experience? If so, what particular ways they would like to engage with? Which platforms they prefer to engage on? This section will discuss the logic behind the research.
3.3. Research Questions
Research questions are formulated in order to further clarify the purposes of this study. These questions are to discover the level of engagement of the Russian audience, if there are favored platforms to engage with transmedia projects on. Research questions are listed as following:
3.3.1 Question 1: How strong is Interactivity, Impact, Immersion and Integration of the Russian audience with a transmedia narrative?
This research question aims at gathering data about interactivity, impact, immersion and integration of the Russian audience. As it has been widely discussed in the literature review part of the study, audience plays an active role, participates, contributes and plays the role of creators