Theory, Development, and Strategy in Transmedia Storytelling

Renira Rampazzo Gambarato, Geane Carvalho Alzamora, Lorena Tárcia

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000078527
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Informatique
• Subtopic: Infographie

This book explores transmedia dynamics in various facets of fiction and nonfiction transmedia studies. Moving beyond the presentation/definition of transmediality as a field of study, the authors examine novel advancements in the theory, methodological development, and strategic planning of transmedia storytelling.

Drawing upon a theoretical foundation grounded in Peircean semiotics and reflected in the methodological approaches to fiction and nonfiction transmedia projects, the chapters delve into diverse case studies, such as The Handmaid's Tale and mega sporting events like the Olympics and FIFA World Cup, that illustrate the applications of our own methods and the implications of the logic behind transmedia dynamics. Expanding upon their own scholarship, the authors tackle the relevant topic of transmedia journalism, and present new approaches to transmedia strategic planning around educational initiatives in developing countries.

The book is an important reference for scholars and students of media studies, education, journalism and transmedia, and those interested in comprehending theory, methodological development, and strategic planning of transmediality.

Part I
Theory

1 The semiotics of transmedia storytelling

Peircean communication model

Models articulate organization, prediction, measurement, and heuristic functions (Deutsch, 1952); therefore, models are relevant research instruments capable of illuminating intricate relationships in a given field of knowledge. Severin and Tankard (1979) suggest that the relevance of a model can be gauged by questions such as “How general is the model?” and “How does the model help in discovering new relationships, facts, or methods?” Based on these issues, we aim to characterize the communication model of transmedia dynamics.

According to McQuail and Windahl (1993), a model seeks to show the main elements of any structure and the relationship between these elements. They claim that in the most general terms, communication implies a sender, a channel, a message, a receiver, a relationship between the sender and receiver, an effect, a context in which communication occurs, and a range of elements to which the messages refer.

In social communication, over time different models show terms and relations in various theoretical-methodological aspects. Almost all emphasize aspects described by McQuail and Windahl (1993), including varied semiotic approaches, but “the diversity of the semiotic models of communication is by no means greater than the diversity which prevails in the field of communication theory in general” (Nöth, 2014, p. 115).

Our approach is based on Charles Sanders Peirce’s (1839–1914) semiotic theory. Complex and very abstract, Peirce’s thought, especially his semiosis model, has been recurrently used to understand general aspects of communication because “communication, according to Peirce, is a particular process of semiosis, that is, a sign process” (Nöth, 2014, p. 99). Our discussion focuses on the pragmatic relationship between semiosis and communication to characterize transmedia dynamics as a pragmatic offshoot of semiosis in media (Alzamora & Gambarato, 2014¹). This perspective considers the pragmatic incompleteness of the interpretant.

Peirce is considered the forerunner of pragmatism—a philosophical movement that investigates the relation between thought and action. This movement emerged in the early 1870s, in Cambridge, Massachusetts (the United States), from a small group of scholars of philosophy, among them Peirce and William James. At that time, Peirce coined the pragmatic maxim, according to which the meaning of any concept is the total sum of its conceivable practical consequences. Later in this chapter, we will present how Peirce’s pragmatic model of semiosis influences our transmedia approach. However, to understand how the Peircean semiosis model operates as a communication model of transmedia dynamics, we must explain the Peircean semiosis model.

As stated by Nöth (2014), Peirce’s concept of sign corresponds roughly to that of message in communication theory. “Instead of mediating between an addresser and an addressee the sign mediates between the object, which the sign represents, and the so-called interpretant, the interpretative effect which it creates” (Nöth, 2014, p. 100). The interpretant is the third element of the sign triad: The interpretant is the mediator of the first element (sign or representamen) and the second element (object). Thus, the interpretant may represent the object, which determines the interpretant through mediated action of the sign and becomes itself the determinant of the subsequent triad (Short, 2007).

According to Peirce’s later writings (under the influence of his pragmatism), mediation circumscribes the representation, that is, representation becomes an aspect of mediation. “Representation is now the purpose of the sign” (Nöth, 2011, p. 33). Thus, mediation configures the triadic sign relation and delineates the notions of sign and semiosis in Peirce’s mature works. “In this semiotic model it is the sign relation itself rather than one element taken alone that reveals a triadic, synthetic, and mediational quality” (Parmentier, 1985, p. 38).

Peirce’s conception of semiosis involves abstractness, and it,

is partly purchased by abstracting from the interpreter of signs, whereas what counts as an object of any sign does so only in reference to the purpose of some agent and, thus, in connection with the role of some interpreter.

(Colapietro, 2004, p. 22)

Colapietro (1989) emphasizes that the suffix “-is” in semiosis refers to an action or process. He clarifies that in semiotics there is an essential inheritance between an unqualified or issued process (utterance) and an activity in which the interpretant is captured as such (interpretation). In a similar perspective, Santaella and Nöth (2004) consider that semiosis, or mediation, is a communication model in which signs unfold continuously in the triadic relation established among the sign (the logical place of the message), its object (the logical place of the emission), and its interpretant (the logical place of the interpreter).

In this model, the object determines the sign to produce a real effect, the interpretant. The way that the object reveals itself partially on the sign characterizes the immediate object, as the dynamic object of the external determination to the sign (reality). Bergman (2009, p. 103) states that “a sign may represent its real object falsely by producing an erroneous immediate object.” This is possible because “whenever signs can be used for asserting the truth, they can also be used to deceive. If they assert, they will be used as lies” (Nöth, 1997, p. 143).

The sign reveals its object to the interpretant in three ways: as an icon (the domain of firstness), an index (the domain of secondness), and a symbol (the domain of thirdness). All of Peirce’s work is built on his three phenomenological categories: firstness (quality, monad, instance of chance), secondness (reaction, dyad, instance of action), and thirdness (mediation, triad, instance of purpose of action). The three categories are dynamic, interdependent, and universal (Santaella, 1992).

In the domain of firstness, the icon is a mere quality of feeling (CP 2.276) that communicates with analogy (CP 2.248). The index places physical contiguity with the dynamic object; that is, the index presents itself as an existential trace of the object (CP 2.299) and acts in semiosis as a replica of symbols, which are general signs. The symbol operates on semiosis by virtue of a law, that is, a convention (CP 2.276). The symbol is a hybrid sign because it encompasses the quality of the icon and the path of the index to produce an association of general ideas. According to Santaella (2003), the referential power of the symbol corresponds to its indexical ingredient, which makes the symbol capable of denoting its object by extension (breadth), while the symbol’s connotation capacity corresponds to its iconic ingredient, which deepens the symbol’s capacity for meaning by analogy (depth).

However, as the object always escapes of the sign representation to some extent, other signs join the sign triad by collateral experience (CP 3.14) to form the interpretant that represents the object in partial and incomplete sign mediation. According to Bergman (2010), the notion of collateral experience, related to previous familiarity with what the signs denote, is predominant in the mature phase of Peircean theory, when the concepts of semiosis and pragmatism are approached. Bergman (2010) considers that when the habits of action improve, the more sophisticated the collateral experience will be and consequently also the more accurate the semiosis.

The action of the interpretant, which involves several triadic subdivisions, is highly relevant in understanding the pragmatic logic of semiosis, which directs the flow of signs toward an ideal of truth (final interpretant) that would represent an ideal of reality (dynamic object), if it were possible to reach such a stage of semiosis. “The interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along” (CP 1.339). Thus, the interpretant will necessarily generate another sign that acts as its interpretant, and so forth, ad infinitum.

Interpretant is a term that Peirce characterized as being the effect and the meaning of the sign, be it current, potential, or future (Bergman, 2003). The diversity of interpretants, which range from mere interpretative capability to an ideal of understanding that relates to the notion of truth, was developed by Peirce in divisions that specify the term in functional and differentiated stages. One of the best-known classifications refers to the immediate interpretant (interpretative potentiality) inscribed in the sign, the dynamic interpretant (the concrete effect), and the final interpretant (the ideal effect), respectively, in the domains of firstness, secondness, and thirdness.

Peirce subdivided interpretants in another trichotomy into (1) emotional— “the first proper significant effect of a sign is a feeling produced by it” (CP 5.475), (2) energetic—“if a sign produces any further proper significant effect, it will do so through the mediation of the emotional interpretant, and such further effect will always involve an effort. I call it the energetic interpretant” (CP 5.475), and (3) logic—“the essential effect upon the interpreter, brought about by the semiosis of the sign” (CP 5.480).

Peirce identified the logical interpretant within the sphere of habits. “Therefore, there remains only habit, as the essence of the logical interpretant” (MS 318), and this, according to Peirce, participates vigorously in communicative processes (Johansen, 1993). According to Santaella (2004), identification of the logical interpretant with habit, in the light of Peircean late pragmatism, no longer makes semiosis an infinite abstract process but places the process in pragmatic connection with human action. For Colapietro (1995), habits play, in communication processes observed through the lens of Peircean theory, a similar role to codes in communication processes reviewed by authors within the Saussurean tradition. According to him, habits regulate conduct, just as codes regulate messages. Thus, the logical interpretant and its related habits lead the way to a dialogical association of ideas, resulting in communication.

Bergman (2009) relates the logical interpretant to habits and the ultimate logical interpretant, the third division of the logical interpretant, with changing habits. He suggests that “it does not seem too farfetched to maintain that he [Peirce] is suggesting that pragmatistic philosophers need to move beyond mere analysis towards a more active engagement in the makeover of habits” (Bergman, 2009, p. 165). This perspective is particularly relevant for understanding how transmedia dynamics can involve creative extensions that even subvert the source narrative. Just as habits are necessary to generate engagement with the narrative universe, changing habits is fundamental to absorb the necessary transformations for the creative expansion of transmedia dynamics.

As Santaella (2004) emphasizes, Peircean scholars differ regarding the location of semiosis regarding the divisions related to emotional (domain of firstness), energetic (domain of secondness), and logical (domain of thirdness) interpretants. We agree with the stream of scholars, among them Santaella (2004), who consider those three interpretants as a division of the dynamic interpretant, that is, as a concrete and particular way of mediating the meanings that emerge from the semiosis process. The incompleteness of semiosis itself, and consequently of interpretants, generated in this open-ended process, may correspond to the richness of the variability of interpretations that a sign-object-interpretant relationship can evoke. The dynamic interpretant is particularly prepared to produce variability of emotions and actions. It is experienced in each act of interpretation.

What then is the value of this variability of interpretation allowed by the dynamic interpretant? First, semiotics refers to signification, representation, reference, and meaning, and Peirce emphasized the importance of interpretation to signification, which differentiates his theo...