great discussion thread & thanks Brooke for initiating it. I had a longer reply but will cut to the chase as I think my thoughts expand on points Monique and Scott are making though perhaps from a different perspective. (Hey Monique! Morning Scott!)

Small point: terminology also seems to be geo-located. Cross media seems to be the term most at use in Australia, transmedia is now the canonical term in North America, whereas a UK chum assures me transmedia went out of fashion a number of years ago and convergent media is the prevalent term. – terms! terms!

What matters to me is function & design so here’s a slightly different thought to throw in the mix.

As ‘transmedia’ projects seem to span a continuum from marketing extensions to narrative extensions (a useful distinction Scott for me!), the question of audience involvement (degree/impact) is really important.

Scott’s suggestion to consider the audience/user pov might restructure Brooke’s model for The Dark Knight as a transmedia project as that experience did not begin with the audience experience of the film but arguably with the fan interest in Batman as a storyworld established in the prior films. The preceding film created the environment for seeding various transmedia teasers that functioned as calls to action for fan participation and community expansion

To me these distinctions are important because of design questions: that we/creators understand the different kinds of strategizing involved in developing content that is interdependent vs. independent and the different kind of content that is best suited for the affordances of each platform and narrative strategy.

Perhaps even more importantly to me is that an audience-aware approach re. the continuum of passive consumption to active participation and further to co-creation (see Purefold’s now collapsed model) is also valuable given that designing either mode of transmedia project raises the’problem’ of how to motivate the audience to shift from one medium or platform to another? And as different platforms will not necessarily attract the same audience (a tv audience might not play a console or web game), how will this impact design? This is an expansion of what Scott & Monique both raise in the question of audience involvement.

Again, great discussion! thanks all!

When pressed, I tend to default to the definition provided by Dr. Henry Jenkins (as initially presented in ‘Convergence Culture,’ and then as expanded on in his blog, http://henryjenkins.org). I do so primarily because these sources were my first introduction to the concept commonly referred to as cross/transmedia. If the example falls within his definition, then I tend to classify it accordingly.

For me, the first important point is whether the content is a narrative extension or a marketing extension. Taking my cues from Dr. Jenkins, I view narrative extensions as content to the property that is meaningfully additive (i.e., it contributes meaningfully to the audience’s understanding of the property). Conversely, marketing extensions simply repurpose content without adding meaning to the property. A lot of merchandise tends to fall in this category, though that’s not always the case.

I doubt you’d find many objectors to this stance.

After that, though, just about any direction you take to further delineate, demarcate, or define properties will meet with resistance from some quarter.

The absolute ironic thing about this whole debate is the fact that the *act* of trans/crossmedia creation is decades, centuries, or millenia old (depending on who you ask). The act of *labeling* the act of creation is what has sprung up in the past few years and is the source of all the current consternation.

I daily grow more disinclined to engage in these kinds of debates (there are others out there far more capable than I to address those questions) and focus more on getting back to the simple act of telling stories and communicating in ways that are fun. To be more precise, I spend my time exploring how to craft narrative frameworks and licensing structures to support collaborative commercial entertainment (i.e., where fans can participate canonically and monetarily in the creation of the property).

In that sense, I view myself as a bit of a crazed radical operating well not just traditional entertainment but also cross/transmedia.

So, maybe I’ve answered your question by not answering your question. Is that the same thing as defining what transmedia is not? ; )

P.S. The Producers Guild of America recently created a new title: Transmedia Producer. If you Google that, you’ll find both the PGA’s definition of transmedia, as well as many responses from the academic, artistic, and advertising communities. That new credit is a huge stake in the ground that will tether most transmedia conversations (at least those here in the States).

In cross and trans projects, many are so broad maybe it is more to define projects based on what elements they have and if they extend or repurpose (is that the right word) the story? Which goes into another way I see people trying to define the difference, based on the type of story delivered…

perhaps this is more what @monique de haas is approaching with the what not idea – I teach science and try to help students understand that using a missing, IS NOT method for answering some questions can be a good way to approach a question. So….

Would you say a direct sequel in the same medium is neither?

Would you say a comic book adaptation of a movie using the same sequence/set of events is not trans but is cross?

Would you say having an official Facebook page sponsered by the creator for fans to discuss the core content (movie, book, webseries, etc) is not trans but is cross or is that neither and just a plain social media extension (dare I even ask how social media fits in this…. as a type of delivery… yet social media is also interaction and so on)?

Would you say a trading card game (or even board game) of a movie (Say Lord of the Rings) that has additional characters never seen in the movie is transmedia and crossmedia?

Here is my wikipedia submission for that:
Crossmedia communication is communication in which the storyline will invite the receiver to cross-over from one medium to the next. Making it possible to transform from one-dimensional communication (sender -> receiver(s)) to multi-dimensional communication (sender(s) receiver(s)). Good crossmedia communication will enhance the value of communication: The level and depth of (message) involvement will be more personal and therefore more relevant and powerful. Advantages can be: 1. Financial profits can be gained through equal or decreasing costs for the same or better communication effects with single medium communication. It is possible to shift costs for communicating from the sender to the receiver if the story is attractive enough for the receiver to want to interact with it. 2. Deepening relations between story (teller) and “receivers” on several levels of communication.

Later I tried to clarify this some more:

Some context to the “crossmedia field” The shifting balance in the powers between sender – medium – receiver, makes for communication to start crossing over from: – Only senders (Formerly Known As MassMedia) sending out communication to ‘receivers’ (Formerly Known As Audience) reacting to, interacting with, participating in and co-creating with the information (story) presented to receivers. Receivers become senders, senders become receivers.

I tend to see crossmedia as more of an overall-approach to generate a movement on three different levels:
1. You can extend touchpoints for your storyworld (= you can have mulitple media set-up to gather interest for your storyworld)
2. Your goal may be to lengthen the duration of the users in your storyworld
3. Your goal may be to deepen the experience/information/co-creation submitted in your storyworld

Or you may want to do both, equally accessible for users, but not entered by all. Depending on the relation to the story at hand, some people are willing to invest more time in frequent contact with entrypoints to the storyworld or invest time to deepen their experiences with the storyworld. (‘all are equal but not the same’ is my rule to explain the design approach for this)

I do agree with @scott this be a voluntary/optional choice for the user. You either invest less time and might not experience the whole depth of the storyworld at hand or you will invest time and you might have a more deepend experience.

To me much of the intent of the “transies” is to move towards a similar kind of approach. And so, that is why some of the “crossies” tend to react somewhat “cross” if there early attempts at defining this field are shallowed down by too narrow descriptions. ;-)

The thing is, and I can understand this, there needs to be some kind of border to what isn’t crossmedia and transmedia? Maybe it helps to think about it this way. What is NOT crossmedia or transmedia?

I’ve been circling the idea of how to grapple with a transmedial framework when you begin, by definition, losing control over how the audience enters the world (with each new narrative extension, a new entry point is created, thereby adding yet more possible sequences for how the audience experiences the individual world pieces).

My comments were attempting to address how content creators can begin to capture the different ways an audience could encounter, experience, and consume the various narrative pieces in a transmedial world. It’s essentially an issue of loss of creative control over consumption sequencing by the audience – and I’m poking at how that affects the creative process upstream.

By couching the cross/transmedia conversation from the audience viewpoint, I’m simply suggesting that we might find some new (helpful?) ways to discuss these concepts.

@DocWho2100 – I personally do not believe audience participation is a requirement of transmedia. More interaction does tend to lead to a stronger engagement and deepened experience, but these opportunities should be layered into the world experience and be optional. The audience has to have the agency to determine how far into the rabbit hole they want to go. Stratification of the content experience gives audience members choices about how involved they want to be with the world.

And I believe that beyond mere interaction, canonical participation by the audience is the next step. There are creative models that allow for creation of canon content by the audience without disrupting continuity or coherence, and these models offer a value that Hollywood isn’t even considering.

But to repeat, interactivity and canonical participation are optional, and, as such, I consider them a superset of mono/cross/transmedia.

Instead, I think that audience interaction or participation is one of the ways people will a way to more narrowly define transmedia experiences. Is it present? Is it required? Is it a solo experience? Is it a group experience? etc etc.

@Scott – I feel like I’m missing something that you’re saying but I’m not sure what. I’m not suggesting that the difference between cross-media and transmedia is tech or media related. I’m suggesting that it has to do with the relationships between media platforms. So, in that sense it is platform neutral… well aside from the requirement that there be more than one platform.

The simple version:

You are developing a story-based property for Platform X (say it’s a movie), concurrently, you decide that a separate, yet related, story-thread or character-story element is going to be delivered on Platform Y (say it’s through interactive chat on Facebook on a character page).

That’s Transmedia. You planned your story to unfold in multiple locations; where if a User consumes the story at all the various locations, they derive a complete experience. They don’t have to do this, but, they get some added value to their effort.

Am I missing something?

I’d like to posit another way of considering how to approach the cross- v trans-media question. Right now, we’re struggling to apply current mediums and technologies to a “new” approach to content creation/distribution/consumption.

Instead of focusing on the specifics that are used (technologies, mediums, formats), what if we used tech/medium-agnostic terms like “narrative extension,” “marketing extension,” “referential,” “independent,” etc.?

In other words, describe the differences between mono/cross/transmedia from the standpoint of world narrative and how the various content pieces are experienced by the audience (as opposed to the standpoint of production processes or from the viewpoint of the content creators).

We have no idea what the future holds for us from a technological standpoint, much less how it will affect our storytelling practices. Any discussion today will have a longer shelf-life if it isn’t tied to technologies or practices that can be become obsolete in a few years or is not sufficiently flexible to incorporate future technologies or practices.

To the degree that we can keep the discussion platform neutral, we might be able to have a different, complementary conversation to the current one that keeps getting bogged down in technical terms (“is an ARG a transmedia experience?” “How many angels can fit…er, how many platforms are required for an experience to be transmedia?”).

Humbly submitted,

Scott