GLOSSARY
Zappers
Industry term for viewers who move nomadically and restlessly across the television dial, rarely watching more than small segments of any given program.
Zappers
Industry term for viewers who move nomadically and restlessly across the television dial, rarely watching more than small segments of any given program.
Zappers
Industry term for viewers who move nomadically and restlessly across the television dial, rarely watching more than small segments of any given program.
Zappers
Industry term for viewers who move nomadically and restlessly across the television dial, rarely watching more than small segments of any given program.
Zappers
Industry term for viewers who move nomadically and restlessly across the television dial, rarely watching more than small segments of any given program.
CHAPTERS
DISCLAIMER
Zappers
Industry term for viewers who move nomadically and restlessly across the television dial, rarely watching more than small segments of any given program.
CREATIVE TEAM
Participation
The forms of audience engagement that are shaped by cultural and social protocols rather than by the technology itself.
Participatory Culture
Culture in which fans and other consumers are invited to actively participate in the creation and circulation of new content.
Grassroots Convergence
The informal and sometimes unauthorized flow of media content when it becomes easy for consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content.
Interactivity
The potential of a new media technology, or content produces within that medium, to respond to consumer feedback. The technological determinations of interactivity, which are often pre-structured or at least enabled by the designer, contrasts with the social and cultural determinations of participation which is more open-ended and more fully shaped by consumer choices.
Knowledge Communities
According to Pierre Lévy, communities that emerge around the sharing and evaluation of knowledge.
Lovemarks
Term coined by Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, to refer to companies that have induced such a strong emotional investment from consumers that they command “loyalty beyond all reason”.
Loyals
According to common industry discourse, the most dedicated viewers of a particular series, often those for whom the program is a favorite. Loyals are more likely to return each week, more likely to watch the entire episode, more likely to see out additional information through other media, and more likely to recall brands advertised during the series.
Media
According to Lisa Gitelman’s definition, “socially realized structures of communications, where structures include both technological forms and their associated protocols, and where communication is cultural practice.”
Modders
Amateur game designers, most often those who modify existing commercial games.
THE AUTHOR & THE BOOK
Transmedia Storytelling
Stories that unfold across multiple media platforms, with each medium making distinctive contributions to our understanding of the world, a more integrated approach to franchise development than models based on urtexts and ancillary products.
Serious Fun
Term coined by True Majority to refer to the fusion between political activism and popular culture.
Spin: Efforts by campaigns and other political groups to shape the public’s response to events or messages.
Spoilers/ Spoiling
Initially this term referred to any revelation of material about a television series that might not be known to all participants of an Internet discussion list. Increasingly spoiling has come to refer to the active process of tracking down information that has not yet been aired on television.
World-Making
The process of designing a fictional universe that will sustain franchise development, one that is sufficiently detailed to enable many different stories to emerge but coherent enough so that each story feels like it fits with the others.
Zappers
Industry term for viewers who move nomadically and restlessly across the television dial, rarely watching more than small segments of any given program.
Fan Culture
Culture that is produced by fans and other amateurs for circulation through an underground economy and that draws much of its content from the commercial culture.
Fan Fiction
Sometimes called “fanfic”, a term originally referring to any prose retelling of stories and characters drawn from mass media content.
Emotional Capital
Term coined by Coca-Cola president Steven J. Heyer to refer to the ways consumers’ emotional investments in media content and brands, increases the brand’s worth.
Empowerment Age
According to Trippi “if information is power, then this new technology – which is the first to evenly distribute information – is really distributing power. The power shifting from institutions that have always been run top-down, hording information at the top, telling us how to run our lives, to a new paradigm of power that is democratically distributed and shared by all of us”.[1]
Expert Paradigm
According to Peter Walsh, a structure of knowledge dependent upon a bounded body of information that can be mastered by an individual and often dependent upon the authorization bestowed on individuals by institutions of higher learning.
[1] Jenkins, H. (2008) Convergence Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide. U.S.A. New York: New York University Press. Page: 222
Delivery Technologies
Relatively transient technologies – such as the MP3 player of 8-track cassette – that facilitate the distribution of media content.
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Casuals
Industry term for viewers who maintain minimal loyalties to particular programs, watching them when they remember and sometimes wandering off if a particular episode does not hold their interest.
Collective Intelligence
Pierre Lévy’s term to refer to the ability of virtual communities to leverage the knowledge and expertise of their members, often through large-scale collaboration and deliberation.
Convergence
The flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want. Convergence describes technological, industrial, cultural and social changes in the ways media circulates within our culture.
Corporate Convergence
The commercially directed flow of media content.
Black Box Fallacy
The attempt to reduce convergence to a purely technological model for identifying which black box will be the nexus through which all future media content will flow.
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Additive Comprehension
According to Niel Young, the expansion of interpretive possibility that occurs when fictional franchises are extended across multiple texts and media.
Affective Economics
A new discourse in marketing and brand research that emphasizes the emotional commitments consumers make in brands as a central motivation for their purchasing decisions.
Affinity Spaces
According to James Gee, spaces where informal learning takes place, characterized by, among other things, the sharing of knowledge and expertise based on voluntary affiliations.
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Glossary
