Transliteracy Research Group

Message in a bottle: a short analysis of transmedia storytelling in Brazil

by guest author Marcelo Andrade

I work as a scriptwriter in Brazil. This year I started a business of transmedia storytelling. The goal of this post is to briefly present the scene of transmedia storytelling in my country. It is a simple article which aims at introducing readers to the situation of our content market, examining Brazilian people’s ability to absorb, in the most active manner, crossmedia content.

For one to grasp how transmedia storytelling is developing in Brazil, firstly it is required to understand how our content market works. For 50 years, TV has been the media with the largest audience – what happens to be no different from anywhere else in the world. Nonetheless, a survey undertaken in 2009 has revealed that the Brazilian people spend more time on the Internet than any other do, with an average of 69 hours a month, including apps. Such statistics (the link has some limited thought about my country and some old numbers about Brazilian internet state, but worth a reading) should make any content company look into the web more carefully.

A few prophetic voices have emerged announcing the end of the hegemony of TV; therefore of linear self-contained stories. Our TV channels thought of themselves as the sole effective link between advertisers and consumers. As a result, there was no need of reconsidering their storytelling formulas. In fact, until recently they were right. However, additional data has made this apparently unshakable certainty crumble. And I am not speaking of the lack of efficiency of traditional advertising. Brazilians are not only those who spend more hours on the Internet, but also they have been spending more time on the Web than they do watching TV.

OED Goes Digital

Interesting development:

Oxford University Press Chooses PubFactory to Develop Oxford English Dictionary

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - August 4, 2010) -  iFactory, an award-winning web design and development firm, today announced that Oxford University Press (OUP) has chosen iFactory's online publishing platform, PubFactory, to develop the relaunched version of the online Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

The Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books. The new version of the OED will include the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary and new functionality such as the ability to search and browse the OED by a wide variety of criteria including subject, region, usage, or language of origin; see detailed information about the major sources of the OED; view search results as a timeline; and personalize the resource by saving searches and entries to a personal profile.

"The OED has been a pioneering digital project," said Robert Faber, Editorial Director, Scholarly and General Reference at OUP. "Building a new version is a great opportunity to present the information locked in the OED database in what we believe is a much more accessible, dynamic, and productive way, while maintaining its reliability and scholarly authority. iFactory has been great to work with on such a core project -- they bring real creativity in design, understanding of user behaviour, and engineering savvy, but also understand the importance and value of the OED to its many readers, and to OUP."

Read the entire article here.

Vacancy: Impact Research Fellow, De Montfort University

Impact Research Fellow, De Montfort University
Part time 0.5 FTE, Fixed term for 6 months

This post is a unique opportunity to analyse the impact of a group of key social media projects in relation to business innovation and the growing field of transliteracy research. It is ideally suited to a scholar wishing to examine the importance of impact in relation to a substantial example of social media practice. The material to be researched includes archives of the NLab business and social network, including CreativeCoffee Club, and of Amplified Leicester, a city-wide experiment in social media. The Transliteracy Research Group originated in the Institute of Creative Technologies at DMU and is led by Professor Sue Thomas and Kate Pullinger. The post is managed by Professor Thomas and situated within the Faculty of Humanities. You will also work closely with the Institute of Creative Technologies.

You should already hold a PhD in a related topic and have previous experience of working on research projects including gathering data via interviews and surveys. You should be able to communicate complex information, orally, in writing and electronically, and be able to communicate material of a specialist or highly technical nature. It is essential that you are a regular and experienced user of social media and have practical skills in social media applications in either business or academic contexts

Closing date 11 October 2010. The post begins on 10 January 2011. More Information