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64] Digital Media and Storytelling in Higher Education the needs of the audience, the fans, and coordinating interactions; (6) mediating between interfaces; and (7) maintaining the recipients’ interest in the storyworld in real time. The hierarchical yet complementary narratives and narrative fragments of transmedia storytelling can only be examined in a complex way. Javanshir, Carroll, and Millard (2020) have developed a taxonomy that can greatly assist researchers in examining this multifaceted phenomenon. The first step in analyzing the transmedia story stream is to examine the narrative on each public broadcast channel to see whether it represents the whole narrative or is simply an addition to it. The next step is to explore the channel navigation path of the recipient: how the complementary elements lead to each other (e.g., through links, direct verbal instruction, or advertisements). It is also important to examine the extent to which the user’s interactive participation is required to unfold the narrative on a given channel (e.g., a recipient may be interactive while playing a video game or taking part in an escape room, but passive when watching a film or play), and whether the reception is synchronous or asynchronous. Based on these aspects, three basic modes of transmedia storytelling can be identified. The first is when a fictional story universe is presented in several complete narratives on several channels. In this case, the channels are isolated from each other (e.g., film 1, film 2, play, book, and play). The second mode is the portmanteau, where a single story is told through multiple channels, but the micro-narratives can be read separately (e.g., website 1, website 2, characters on Facebook, and YouTube video). The third mode contains narrative elements which appear in different, branching channels, and the story is only understood through their simultaneous reception (For example, when an app is linked to a certain channel). In terms of the path of reception, the transmedia narrative can be linear (one channel points to another to determine the path), non-linear (the receiver decides the path) or cumulative (a mixture of the two). Another possible approach to transmedia storytelling research is to examine, from the point of view of the audience, what the audience considers to be the mothership narrative in the complex construction and how they receive narrative extensions. In his research, Jacob (2021) investigated which of three major Hollywood fantasy transmedia productions were considered by German audiences (n = 671) to be the mothership narrative (i-e., the first narrative in the storyworld). The responses showed that 88.77% of the audience had first encountered the film and considered it to be the mothership narrative, followed immediately by online content, wikis and websites. Almost half of the movie-goers also read the original book after watching the movie, and a third of the respondents tried the video game that continues the storyline, as well as other related movies, and series. The least popular was the extension in comic book form.
