Abstract
The emergence of digital modes of content creation and distribution, combined with the domestication of Internet technology and digital consumption devices, has led to the digital integration of the production and circulation of narrative content across media. An accompanying industrial shift towards conglomeration has led to horizontally integrated media corporations disseminating narrative content globally across myriad media platforms. These technological/industrial conditions have provided new means for content producers and distributors to construct and circulate screen narratives. These conditions have also given audiences greater control over the framing of screen narratives and enabled them to more easily generate and disseminate their own screen narrative content. Media studies commonly refers to these conditions as the era of media convergence.1 This book investigates the relationship between screen narratives and varied contexts of production, circulation and reception within the media convergence era, charting the ramifications for storytelling across a range of different media and national and institutional sites. It considers the manner in which contemporary media conditions:
-
shape the events, characters and settings of screen narrative story-worlds;
-
inform screen narrative modes of storyworld presentation (such as particular visual styles and plot structures); and
-
influence — via processes of paratextual framing — the potential interpretations of screen narratives.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006);
Graham Meikle and Sherman Young, Media Convergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012);
Michael Latzer, ‘Media Convergence’, in Handbook on the Digital Creative Economy, eds. Ruth Towse and Christian Handke (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2013), 123–133.
Ruth Page and Bronwen Thomas, ‘Introduction’, in New Narratives: Stories and Storytelling in the Digital Age, eds. Ruth Page and Bronwen Thomas (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2011), 7.
On the topic of remediation, see Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999).
Friedrich Kittler, ‘Gramophone, Film, Typewriter’, in Literature, Media, Information Systems, ed. John Johnson (Amsterdam: G + B Arts International, 1997), 31.
Tanner Mirrlees, Global Entertainment Media: Between Cultural Imperialism and Cultural Globalization (London: Routledge, 2013), 8.
Marie-Laure Ryan, ‘Introduction’, in Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling, ed. Marie-Laure Ryan (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 1–40;
Marie-Laure Ryan, Avatars of Story (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 3–30.
Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, ‘How the Model Neglects the Medium: Linguistics, Language, and the Crisis for Narratology’, The Journal of Narrative Technique 19, no. 1 (1989), 157–166.
David Herman, ‘Towards a Transmedial Narratology’, in Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling, ed. Marie-Laure Ryan (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 47–75.
Ryan, Avatars of Story, 18–23. For more on semiotic affordances in relation to narrative, see Jason Mittell, ‘Film and Television Narrative’, in The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, ed. David Herman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 156–162.
Noël Carroll, ‘The Specificity of Media in the Arts’ [originally published, 1986], in Film and Theory: An Anthology, eds. Toby Miller and Robert Stam (Malden: Blackwell, 2000), 44.
On varying economic structures between media, see Helen Fulton, ‘Introduction’, in Narrative and Media, by Helen Fulton, with Rosemary Huisman, Julian Murphet and Anne Dunn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 3–4.
Dana Polan, ‘Film Theory Reassessed’, Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 2 (1988), 15.
Steven Maras and David Sutton, ‘Medium Specificity: Re-Visited’, Convergence 6 (2000), 103, 109.
Doris Baltruschat, Global Media Ecologies: Networked Production in Film and Television Kindle edition (London: Routledge, 2010).
Jonathan Gray, Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers and Other Media Paratexts (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 2.
Janet McCabe, ‘Creating “Quality” Audiences for ER on Channel 4’, in The Contemporary Television Series, eds. Michael Hammond and Lucy Mazdon (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 207–223;
Paul Grainge, ‘Lost Logos: Channel 4 and the Branding of American Event Television’, in Reading Lost: Perspectives on a Hit Television Show, ed. Roberta Pearson (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 95–118.
Mark C. Rogers, Michael Epstein and Jimmie L. Reeves, ‘The Sopranos as HBO Brand Equity: The Art of Commerce in the Age of Digital Reproduction’, in This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos, ed. David Lavery (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 42–57;
Amanda D. Lotz, ‘If It’s Not TV, What Is It?: The Case of U.S. Subscription Television’, in Cable Visions: Television Beyond Broadcasting, eds. Sarah Banet-Weiser, Cynthia Chris and Anthony Freitas (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 85–102;
Michael Z. Newman, ‘From Beats to Arcs: Toward a Poetics of Television Narrative’, The Velvet Light Trap 58 (Fall 2006), 16–28; Anthony N. Smith, ‘TV or Not TV? The Sopranos and Contemporary Episode Architecture in US Network and Premium Cable Drama’, Critical Studies in Television 6, no. 1 (Spring 2011);
Anthony N. Smith, ‘Putting the Premium into Basic: Slow-Burn Narrative and the Loss-Leader Function of AMC’s Original Drama Series’, Television and New Media 14, no. 2 (March 2013), 150–166.
Raymond Williams, Television, Technology and Cultural Form (London: Fontana, 1974), 14, 124, 130.
Max Dawson, ‘Little Players, Big Shows: Format, Narration, and Style on Television’s New Smaller Screens’, Convergence 13 (August 2007), 236.
Elizabeth Evans, Transmedia Television: Audiences, New Media and Daily Life (New York: Routledge, 2011), 124–130.
David Bordwell, ‘Historical Poetics of Cinema’, in The Cinematic Text: Methods and Approaches, ed. R. Barton Palmer (New York: AMS Press, 1989), 369–398.
Jason Mittell, Complex Television: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (New York: New York University Press, forthcoming); Evans, Transmedia Television; M.J. Clarke, Transmedia Television: New Trends in Network Serial Production (London: Bloomsbury, 2012);
Glen Creeber, Small Screen Aesthetics: From Television to the Internet (London: BFI, 2013);
Idrek Ibrus and Carlos A. Scolari, eds., Crossmedia Innovations: Texts, Markets, Institutions (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012).
Tejaswini Ganti, Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema (London: Routledge, 2004).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Roberta Pearson and Anthony N. Smith
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Smith, A.N., Pearson, R. (2015). Introduction: The Contexts of Contemporary Screen Narratives: Medium, National, Institutional and Technological Specificities. In: Pearson, R., Smith, A.N. (eds) Storytelling in the Media Convergence Age. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137388155_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137388155_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-48192-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-38815-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)