Transmedia storytelling in the sustainable environment field

Sustainable environment issues are increasing every year, as well as the communication around it and the use of transmedia storytelling is a tremendous means to develop the awareness around those issues. What is transmedia storytelling and how it will apply on sustainable development?

For most communicators, this concept refers more on branding, and fiction stories than on factual stories. The word ‘Storytelling’ itself in the communication area refers to stories that a brand creates in order to build an emotional relationship with a potential customer. A patent example is the well-known Nespresso’s advertisement campaign (have a look below for the three episodes of the story).

More precisely, ‘transmedia’, refers to the different medium used to broadcast an entertaining story in a coherent and complementary way (Jenkins, 2007). It must be coherent in order to have a logical story and not only short stories spreading in an uncoordinated manner. It also needs to be complementary to contribute in an interesting way to the whole story. As a result the story as a whole is more than the sum of its parts, and each entry is unique with a finite role in it. Another side of the concept is that the audience may appropriate some aspects of the story to apply them in their every day life, and immerse themselves in the world of the fictional story. Henry Jenkins explain it in saying that ‘a transmedia text does not simply disperse information: it provides a set of roles and goals which readers can assume as they enact aspects of the story through their everyday life’ (Jenkins, 2007). The problem noticeable here is that the explanation is applicable on a fiction world. So, how could it apply to a true-based story as the sustainable development field?

A start of an answer could be that transmedia storytelling is grounded on collective intelligence through the idea of ‘transmedia activism’ (Srivastava, 2009). The first term collective intelligence has been firstly used by Pierre Levy and refers “to new social structures that enable the production and circulation of knowledge within a networked society”(Jenkins, 2007). In the case of sustainability, people from the same interest are gathered to pool information and create a community about sustainable action making. Furthermore, transmedia storytelling provides piece of information about what can be known about real facts. It also encourages talks in the way that it is impossible to have a complete knowledge about the sustainable field and thus the audience tries to find out more using each type of media. For instance, the website www.climatecrisis.net is based on the movie “An inconvenient truth” proposes piece of information, tips, news and a more developed community with the linked committed website www.takepart.com. The latter increase the value of the climate crisis website by making the Internet user involved with the creation of content. From a story told in a movie, people become actors by creating contents in new participatory media.

The last proposition introduces the idea of transmedia activism in the extent it enhances the participative role of the audience in the storytelling content. With the use of multiple media, storytellers as NGO or green companies, develop transmedia storytelling to make their statement more “fashionable” and thus influence action and increase awareness. It is a prerequisite need because ‘any individual institution engaging an audience … is required to convey clearly and artfully what it does, how its does it, where its work is most effective and necessary, and why they should support efforts to continue or grow the institution’s work’ (Srivastava, 2009). It means that the story told refers to what is done and how to achieve a particular goal, through the use of multiple channels in order to create a community that collaborate and interact. Exposing the audience of such storytellers to particular media is the best means to connect people to a cause. The last example of www.takepart.com also proposes to contribute to the network and to make people involved. It is possible by proposing them the creation of content (video, music, article) and the creation of action (to create a petition, propose an event and link to other donation website).

Applying transmedia storytelling to sustainable development differs from the fictional application because it provides tools to people to develop collective intelligence around the same issue in order to make them acting.

References

Flew, T. (2007). New Media: An Introduction. South Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press.

Jenkins, H. (2007, March 22). Transmedia Storytelling 101. Retrieved from Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins: http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html

Srivastava, L. (2009, January 20). Transmedia Activism: Telling Your Story Across Media Platforms to Create Effective Social Change. Retrieved from MediaRights: http://www.mediarights.org/news/Transmedia_Activism_Telling_Your_Story_Across_Media_Platforms_to_Create_Eff/

TakePart. (2008). Climate Crisis. Retrieved from Climate Crisis: http://www.climatecrisis.net/

TakePart. (2008). TakePart Social Action Networ: Important Issues, Activism, Environmental, Human Rights, Politica News. Retrieved from TakePart: http://www.takepart.com/