Transmedial Worlds in Everyday Life : Networked Reception, Social Media, and Fictional Worlds

In this pioneering new book, authors Klastrup and Tosca explore the many ways that transmedial worlds are present in people’s everyday life, proposing a new theory of (trans)media use for the digital age.

People are not only reading, watching and playing in fictional worlds like never before, but also using them to reflect about their lives through Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other channels, commenting on their marriages or their life at the office, analyzing current news, or reminiscing on the role these worlds played in their childhood. The book’s unique methodological approach combines an aesthetic and literary perspective that looks closely at the different fictional universes, with an empirical user perspective that builds upon 15 years of sustained work on transmediality. The result is a theory that covers both the personal, experiential dimension of fictional worlds and the social dimension of sharing with each other.

A fascinating and contemporary examination of media worlds and their communities, this book offers students and scholars of fandom, media, cultural and reception studies a new theoretical and methodological framework, through which to understand the phenomenon of transmedial worlds, and people's engagement with them.

Susana Tosca is an Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Humanities at Roskilde University, Denmark. Over the last 20 years, her research has combined aesthetic and media studies approaches to investigating the reception of digital media. She has published widely on the areas of hypertext, digital literature, computer games and transmediality. She is also the author of the books Understanding Videogames and Literatura Digital.

Lisbeth Klastrup is an Associate Professor at the Digital Design Department at the IT University at Copenhagen, Denmark. For 20 years, she has researched the interplay between aesthetics, media formats and social interaction. She has published widely within the areas of virtual worlds, transmedial worlds, social media and digital culture. She is the author of the book Sociale Netværksmedier, and co-editor of the International Handbook of Internet Research (1st and 2nd edition).