1st Edition
Transmedia Change Pedagogy and Practice for Socially-Concerned Transmedia Stories
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.
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
Biography
Kevin Moloney is Assistant Professor in the Center for Emerging Media Design and Development at Ball State University, USA. He researches transmedia storytelling in journalism, documentary, activism, and other socially-concerned genres. For 20 years, he was a regular contributor to the New York Times covering the Rocky Mountain region of the United States and Latin America. He visually reported more than 960 stories for the Times, 50 of which appeared on page 1. His work has also appeared in news magazines worldwide, including National Geographic, Time, Stern, and Paris Match.
