Introduction : the contexts of contemporary screen narratives : medium, national, institutional and technological specificities

Smith, AN; Pearson, R

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.

Citation

Smith, A., & Pearson, R. (2014). Introduction : the contexts of contemporary screen narratives : medium, national, institutional and technological specificities. In Storytelling in the Media Convergence Age: Exploring Screen Narratives (1-17). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137388155_1

• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2014
• Deposit Date: Feb 16, 2015
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Pages: 1-17
• Book Title: Storytelling in the Media Convergence Age: Exploring Screen Narratives
• ISBN: 9781137388148
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137388155_1
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137388155_1
• Related Public URLs: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137388155; http://www.palgrave.com/gb/