Transmedia Literacy. From Storytelling to Intercreativity in the Era of Distributed Authorship. The research Program in Digital Culture (IN3 — Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) is organizing a one-day international seminar on Transmedia Literacy. From Storytelling to Intercreativity in the Era of Distributed Authorship in Barcelona on December 10th. We invite researchers, scholars, PhD candidates, experts and practitioners to submit papers, case studies, and transmedia projects for presentation at the seminar. Possible topics include but are not limited to: Cultural Production, Crossmedia and New Authorship Narrative Models and Processes of Transmedia Storytelling Theories of Fiction/Representation Reception Theory in Gender and Media Studies Digital Rhetoric and Information Aesthetics in Transmedia Storytelling Participatory Cultures and Fan Cultures Transmedia and Education Crowdfunding/crowdsourcing Productions Political Economy of Transmedia Screenwriting and Semiotics of New Media Interdisciplinary contributions are especially welcome.

1. Transmedia Literacy. From Storytelling to Intercreativity in the Era of
Distributed Authorship.
Is the community a medium? Is
“That’s me!” the message?
The story of #Placevent: we are
using social media to hack the
academy
by
Valentina Bazzarin
(University of Bologna)
and the crew of Placevent [HUB]

2. It’s my job!
Source: http://www.almalaurea.
it/universita/occupazione/occupazione11

3. Digital Agenda Action 59
Make digital literacy and skills a priority of the "New skills for new jobs"
Flagship to be launched in 2010, including the launch of a multi-stakeholder
sectoral council for ICT skills and employment to address demand and supply
aspects.
What is the problem ? A changing labour market
With the European labour market radically changing it is clear that new skills will be needed for the jobs of tomorrow.
Shortage of adequate skills in some sectors or occupations already co-exist with unemployment across the EU.
Why is EU action needed ? IT training is crucial
All EU people must have access to IT training as acquiring digital skills can help people in getting new employment
opportunities.
What has the Commission done?
The 'New skills for new jobs' flagship was adopted in November 2010 making digital literacy and skills a priority.

4. Facebook/Twitter
Source: Eurobarometer 2011

5. Research/Action
We run a research/action plan observing and collecting students’ self and community
representation, using both digital-ethnographic methods and interviews, and assigning
them problem-solving tasks.
Sample: 2 groups of 20 students (most females, 2 males in each edition) attending the
last year of the Master Degree in Sciences of Social and Public Communication.
Fieldwork: The virtual places in which students segmented the job-market, where they
are scouting and mashing information and defining their position are a blog (placevent.
wordpress.com) and personal or community profiles in the main social media.
In this research we observed practices of use social media platforms and the evolution
of their representation

6. www.placevent.wordpress.com

7. Why a blog?
[...] individual interpretations are shaped and reinforced
through ongoing discussions with other readers. Such
discussions expand the experience of the text beyond its
initial consumption. The produced meanings are thus
more fully integrated into the readers’ lives and are of a
fundamentally different character from meaning
generated through a casual and fleeting encounter with
and otherwise and unremarkable (and unremarked upon)
text.” (Jenkins 1992;45)
“

8. Hypothesis
We suppose that ritual practices of the Internet interaction are developing,
although these have not been completely codified yet, because in virtual
communities we can observe a process supporting and enhancing shared
social meanings and identities. Additionally, we found that individuals may
belong to and identify with more than one community contemporaneously and
serially, changing affiliations with great fluidity.
But if you show to the students a different perspective and a different model
of coworking based on sharing skills and knowledge students are able to create
new ecosystems and to innovate traditional formats and content.

9. Analytics

10. Twitter @placevent1
by hootsuite

11. Ethnography
The main result of this activity is that students
feel empowered by witnessing their belonging to
a group promoting innovation through practices
of communication, as well as by overlapping and
matching networks of relationship and widening
the community or engaging new shareholders.
Social media spaces are open, organizable and
organized as actual traditional arenas are. This
fluidity of boundaries, rules and roles needs to be
described both maintaining the heritage of
previous descriptions (McLuhan’s, 1962 or
Castell’s, 1996) and by understanding the
characteristics of new 2.0 media, such as the rise
of ritual fluid identities and the trend to decline of
passive audiences as we observed in this
research.

12. Action Method
•
•
•
describing the framework (open data
when it is possible);
keywords selection;
transmedia storytelling.

13. Teaching philosophy
Source: http://hackingtheacademy.org/

14. High tech bricoleur
Bricoleur Vs ingé nieur.
“Le bricoleur est apte à
exé cuter un grand nombre de taches diversifies; mais, à la diffé rence de l’
̂
ingé nieur, il ne subordonne pas chacune d’elles à l’obtention de matiè res premiè res et d’outils
concus et procuré s à la mesure de son projet: son univers instrumental est clos, et la rè gle de son
̧
jeu est de toujours s’arranger avec les “moyens du bord”, c’est-à -dire un ensemble à chaque
instant fini d’outils et de maté riaux, hé té roclites au surplus, parce que la composition de l’
ensemble n’est pas en rapport avec le projet du moment, ni d’ailleurs avec aucun projet
particulier, mais est le ré sultat contingent de toutes les occasions qui se sont pré senté es de
renouveler ou d’enrichir le stock, ou de l’entretenir avec les ré sidus de constructions et de
destructions anté rieures. L’ensemble des moyens du bricoleur n’est donc pas dé finissable par un
projet (ce qui supposerait d’ailleurs, comme chez l’ingé nieur, l’existence d’autant d’ensembles
instrumentaux que de genres de projets, au moins en thé orie); il se dé finit seulement par son
instrumentalité , autrement dit, et pour employer le langage meme du bricoleur, parce que les
̂
é lé ments son recueillis ou conservé s en vertu du principe que “ca peut toujours servir”' (Lé vi̧
Strauss, 1962).

15. Civic Hacking
#terremoto
#monitoraggiocivico
#openricostruzione

16. Product(s)
- senior students are doing peer education with juniors;
- events format (commUni.Action, #merrycompass);
- social media plans and content production;
- civic hacking.

17. #CommUni.Action

18. Discussion
- students’ media diet is changing, but the turning point is
to translate this change in new forms of knowledge;
- work practices are changing too. We can start to train
students to represent themselves as community of
opinion leaders and not just as followers exploiting the
academy as a base-jumping platform;
- living in a city characterized by the presence of the
academy engages students of public and social
communication as civic hackers.

19. Conclusions
This year we are experimenting a kind of
peer education and this is the first video the
young students realized.
The core of the old community remains but
the format is developing to find room and
application of new skills shared in a larger
group (11 senior students + 20 young
students).
The leadership role is fluid and is related to
the specific goal the community has to
achieve.
Some people left the group during these 2
years and the most common explanation is
“I don’t like this methodology” or “now I am
focused on my new full time job in
communication”

20. Think T(h)ank(s)
Speech by
Valentina Bazzarin
valentina.bazzarin@unibo.it
@vbazzarin
and @placevent1 crew
placevent2013@gmail.com