Lost in a Transmedia Storytelling Franchise: Rethinking Transmedia Engagement

Abstract

In the age of media convergence, transmedia storytelling - the distribution of story elements across multiple media platforms in the service of crafting an overarching narrative - is increasingly prevalent. This dissertation examines transmedia engagement through a focus on Lost's transmedia storytelling franchise and a confluence of technological, industrial, and cultural shifts, including the advent of podcast technologies, the rise of alternate reality game storytelling, and increasing producer-audience communication. Taken together, these transformations create new terrain on which normative understandings of producer-text-audience relationships are continually challenged, reconfigured, and even reinforced. This dissertation views these relationships through the concept of "viewsing" (Harries, 2002) - a hybrid form of engagement encouraged by transmedia storytelling franchises in which the qualities of "viewing" and "computer use" merge. Although viewsing provides an important conceptual framework, previous scholarship stops short of applying to concept to the producer-audience and audience-audience relationships. Using a thematic analysis methodology, this study examines the fan cultures surrounding two podcasts dedicated to Lost - The Official Lost Podcast and The Transmission - and expands the concept of viewsing to include text-audience interactivity, producer-audience participatory storytelling, and audience-audience collaboration and antagonism. It concludes that transmedia storytelling franchises encourage viewsing - interactive, participatory, and communicative multi-platform engagement.