Transmedia Storytelling and Its Discourses

The term transmedia storytelling has gone viral in media studies. But to what extent does it label a truly new phenomenon, different from the older concepts of adaptation and transfictionality? What does it really mean to tell a story through different media, and under what conditions is it desirable? This chapter examines several types of projects that could be considered "transmedia storytelling," and it contrast three types of discourses associated with the phenomenon: the discourse of the industry, the discourse of the fans, and scholarly discourse, in the hope of distinguishing scholarly discourse from the other two and of defining some of its goals.