Monthly Archives: October 2021

Transmedia Change — a new volume in the Routledge Advances in Transmedia Studies series

Book cover: Transmedia Change

I’m pleased to announce a forthcoming book (March 2022): Transmedia Change: Pedagogy and Practice for Socially-Concerned Transmedia Stories, my edited volume that includes chapters from 12 international authors on the practice, analysis, and teaching of transmedia storytelling for social good. Save 20% with discount code ESA22! The official blurb:

This book examines and illustrates the use of design principles, design thinking, and other empathy research techniques in university and public settings, to plan and ethically target socially-concerned transmedia stories and evaluate their success through user experience testing methods.

All media industries continue to adjust to a dispersed, diverse, and dilettante mediascape where reaching a large global audience may be easy but communicating with a decisive and engaged public is more difficult. This challenge is arguably toughest for communicators who work to engage a public with reality rather than escape. The chapters in this volume outline the pedagogy and practice of design, empathy research methods for story development, transmedia logics for socially-concerned stories, development of community engagement and the embrace of collective narrative, art and science research collaboration, the role of mixed and virtual reality in prosocial communication, ethical audience targeting, and user experience testing for storytelling campaigns. Each broad topic includes case examples and full case studies of each stage in production.

Offering a detailed exploration of a fast-emerging area, this book will be of great relevance to researchers and university teachers of socially-concerned transmedia storytelling in fields such as journalism, documentary filmmaking, education, and activism.

Table of contents:

  1. Introduction
    Kevin Moloney
  2. Native, Emergent, and Feral Transmedia Storyworlds
    Kevin Moloney
  3. Design Thinking and the Storytelling Goal
    Sarah Janssen
  4. Deploying Design Thinking for Story Design: Case Studies
    Sarah Janssen
  5. Contextualizing the American Opioid Crisis: A Case Study in Transmedia Harm Reduction
    Matt Slaby
  6. Storylines and Conceptual Lineage: Tomas van Houtryve and the Contextualization of History
    In Conversation with Matt Slaby
  7. Challenging Hegemonic Narratives: Power of Story-Based Design Strategies in Activating Sustainable Social Change
    Francesca Piredda and Mariana Ciancia
  8. Teaching Transmedia Practice in a Design School: The Plug Social TV Experience
    Mariana Ciancia and Francesca Piredda
  9. Transmedia Action Research: Progressive Pedagogy and Community Engagement
    Leslie L. Dodson
  10. Water from Fog: Transmedia Storytelling and Humanitarian Engineering
    Jamila Bargach and Leslie L. Dodson
  11. Encounters: Art, Science, Clouds and Water
    Ana Rewakowicz
  12. Addressing Social Issues Through Immersive Media
    Kuo-Ting Huang
  13. Immersive Storytelling Case Studies: Eva: A-7063, Lesson Learned from That Dragon Cancer, and Coming Home Virtually
    Kuo-Ting Huang
  14. Design Thinking as a Tool for Ethical Audience Targeting
    Kevin Moloney
  15. The Revolutionist: Eugene V. Debs – A Transmedia Experience for Public Media Audiences
    Kyle Travers
  16. User Experience Design and Testing for Socially-Concerned Storytelling
    Jennifer Palilonis
  17. User Experience Case Study: Professor Garfield’s 21st Century Literacy Project
    Jennifer Palilonis
  18. Conclusion: Defining a Flexible Framework for Analysis or Design of Socially-Concerned Transmedia Stories
    Kevin Moloney