ABSTRACT
Let’s start with a question: what is transmedia? Here, we mean this question not as a lead-in to presenting any kind of rudimentary, oft-cited definition, but rather as a genuine question. The transmedia phenomenon has led to the burgeoning of transmedia studies across media, film, television, cultural, and communication studies across the academy, not to mention the wider creative and cultural industries. The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies seeks to be the ultimate publication for scholars and students interested in comprehending all of the various aspects of transmediality, be it in terms of media industries and their platforms, digital and mobile communications, advertising and marketing sectors, audience behaviors and cultural practices, or socio-political forms like media activism, identity, literacy, and education. This collection, which gathers together original articles by a global roster of contributors from a variety of disciplines and industry backgrounds, sets out to contextualize, problematize, and scrutinize the current status and future directions of transmediality, exploring the industries, practices, cultures, arts, and methodologies of studying convergent media content across multiple media platforms. Now is the time to offer this ultimate publication about transmedia studies, given the central yet multifaceted ways in which transmediality has come to materialize in the media landscape.
