Bridge Complexity as a Factor in Audience Interaction in Transmedia Storytelling

Abstract

To date, the scholarship on transmedia storytelling has focused on analyzing existing properties or on establishing holistic approaches to the craft itself. Missing from the scholarship are deep considerations of the individual mechanics at work during the telling of a story across multiple media platforms. We examine state-of-the-art transmedia properties to identify how audience motivations are engineered to ensure that the audience transitions from one media platform to another. Complicated story transitions, or “bridges,” are an effect of the increased complexity of transmedia franchises, challenging the traditional monocentric “tentpole approach” with a broader polycentric approach. With a polycentric model, the complexity is managed not through tie-ins to one tentpole but as a mix of what are labeled here as storylines, storyworlds, and character bridges with varying levels of complexities in their relation to the traditional tentpole medium.

Transmedia Narratives and Social Networks: Peaky Blinders' Television Fiction

“…It describes everyday actions of the digital society. These audiences are the ones that are attracted by the creation of contents which encourage them to participate through different media (Selvadurai, 2021). This curiosity encourages them to consume transmedia narratives where they find the space to interact with the content, whilst enjoying the opportunity to be able to create and contribute to the expansion of the universe (Ryan, 2013).…”