An author for a volume I have been recently editing asked us to agree on a definition of transmedia used by the author of another chapter. I can understand the concern, it is used in a variety of ways that may differ across fields.

But when you compare definitions across the two or so decades gaps and disjunctures appear. Consider this example:

Transmedia is commonly defined as a narrative or project that combines multiple media forms. A transmedia project may combine many different types of prints or prose text, graphics and animation, or work across multiple platforms, such as different types of social media platforms, interactive websites or advertising outlets.

What Does Transmedia Mean?

Then I went back to this 2007 post defining transmedia by Henry Jenkins, thinking, oh, this is more elastic, powerful, but also amorphous, than recent definitions. Henry Jenkins, in a 2007 post recounted how he described it in class notes, gives ten criteria, but are these ten all necessary and sufficient?(https://techopedia.com/definition/30425/transmedia…)..

Did Jenkins deliberately conflate authorial intention and success in creating transmedia with how effectively and creatively it is/was taken up by an engaged, contributing audience?

Take (the American tv series) LOST (his example). My understanding is the script changed and the series extended because they did not fully plan for its success or continuation (at least as a tv series). Be that as it may…

1. Did LOST really, creatively, deliberately leverage a message or narrative across media or did audience extend it of their own accord? In other words, does transmedia allow for both an auteur-centric definition (it is directed by an individual or singular team) or must transmedia be extended by an audience (more than normal media)?
2. Must the reception of transmedia be all carefully planned and the narrative orchestrated across various media, with content for each media form specifically designed to leverage its strengths?
3. If a franchise is developed for one medium then new media are deployed, must there be a pre-mediated plan?
4. Must the narrative require the audience to experience each of the separate media forms?
5. Given transmedia franchises can be shared between companies, individuals, and even between and over generations of writers, artists, and designers, does transmedia have to have a central home or most authentic/authoritative origin?

I like these notes on transmedia, I just think they could be strengthened and separated, or the term should be broken up in relation to whether it is open and interactive, premeditated and authorial, or multiversal (designed to have overlapping but not always harmonious multiverse narrative “worlds”).