Transmedia Storytelling, A Long-Dead Soviet Psychologist, & Hulu’s East Los High:

Applying Vygotsky’s Expanded Insights to Encourage Your Audience Members to Access More of the Texts in Your Transmedia Project (A Highlighted Summary of Patrick E. McNabb’s PhD Dissertation)

Question: How do you encourage your audience members to access the additional texts in your transmedia project?

This is an important question for any multi-text media project but it is an absolutely crucial question when a transmedia project is considered. (“Media”, at least as the term is used in this article and the Dissertation it highlights, is an artifact that contains human communication and can be used to distribute/convey it.)

After all, while each text in a transmedia project can or should be able to stand alone, the audience member who consumes the additional texts will gain a richer understanding of its storyworld. In turn, this understanding can deepen the audience members’ engagement with the project and potentially entice them to consume even more texts of the project, both for those that exist now and in the future, with obvious storytelling (as well as commercial) implications.

Transmedia Storytelling

Transmedia Storytelling (transmedia for short) is a narrative practice consisting of a storyworld with a single, possibly ongoing, master story arc that is comprised of multiple narratives distributed across multiple texts and expressed via multiple media forms.

Recent examples of transmedia projects include the Witcher franchise and the multiple (and often overlapping) storyworlds of the Marvel Universe, while veterans include the Star Wars, Star Trek, and Matrix universes.

However, that does not mean that transmedia projects are always big-budget blockbuster franchises. As transmedia practitioner and authority Phillips (2011/2012) describes them, some examples of transmedia are more one-time affairs that largely consist of smaller pieces. While these projects may still have a primary text or core of texts, they are more fragmented than their large franchise counterparts, with their small pieces consisting of story clues and details scattered across platforms such as websites. Examples that Phillips mentions include Cathy’s Book, Perplex City, and Cthalloween.

On more of a middle ground between these two extremes was Lost, which was centered around broadcast television with social media and fan interaction designed into and experienced with it (Graves, 2011).

Regardless of its individual make-up however, what unites all forms of transmedia storytelling is the need by producers for audience members to interact with their projects and for producers to intentionally structure their transmedia storytelling to promote audience interaction, (preferably) by taking advantage of technology that the audience already uses (P. Rutledge, personal communication, May 17, 2019). (Note that “producers” is meant in this discussion to describe all of the instigators, designers, production personnel, distributors, and anyone else involved in the creation, production, and promulgation of the media. It is not meant to be confused with the entertainment industry’s definition of producer or transmedia producer that have credit-specific roles in the American entertainment industry.)

East Los High

This dual need is made more difficult when the transmedia project is distributed in a saturated media market (aka mediasphere) and when the project is targeted at an audience that has an abundance of options that could/can compete for their attention.

Hulu’s East Los High (ELH), particularly Season 1 of that series, was a transmedia project that successfully threaded this needle. In ELH’s case, the target audience was adolescent and young-adult American Latinxs, a highly coveted — and potentially distractable — target audience who have an abundance of options within their congested American mediasphere (Wang & Singhal, 2016).

As scholars Wang and Singhal (2016) document:

In addition to the millions of viewers who watched it on Hulu, hundreds of thousands visited the show’s Web site [EastLosHigh.com] to access full episodes, transmedia extensions, and other resources. Tens of thousands of visits occurred after season 1 ended. The trend over 9 months indicated that viewers were spending more time on the East Los High Web site, and almost half returned for multiple visits, showing the potential of transmedia edutainment as a sustainable platform for large-scale, longer-term audience engagement. (p. 1008)

ELH was an entertainment-education project that was designed to address the inordinately high rates of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections observed in the adolescent and young adult population of Latinxs residing in the United States, particularly in southern California where the project is set. The project was based on the Sabido entertainment-education methodology which had been used successfully in foreign media markets, including Latin America where it was originally developed, to motivate targeted audiences to adopt or maintain recommended behaviors and to access enabling resources.

“Entertainment-education” is a form of education where the targeted audience members are entertained while they learn, thus encouraging them to consume more of the content and learn more as a result. As a rule, these projects are also a lot of fun to watch and have proven popular with audiences, which can add to their commercial appeal and may help to explain why such entertainment-focused platforms like Hulu have hosted them.

Part of the education is delivered by characters who often function as role models or otherwise provide wise counsel and other information that helps to promote and reinforce the educational goals of the project. In ELH Season 1 these include the characters Paulina, Dr. Sanchez, Ileana the Counselor, and, collectively and separately, Soli and Paulie. These characters also play key roles in the entertainment aspect of the project, to the point where the education offered is so intertwined with — and reinforcing of — the various plots that comprise the Season that the education can be almost indistinguishable from the entertainment.

To better engage ELH’s targeted audience in the saturated American media market, the Sabido method was combined with transmedia storytelling in an approach that had rarely been tried before. In line with that, the episodes were observed to be the anchor texts of ELH. These were primarily platformed on Hulu but they were also featured for a time on the project’s official website, EastLosHigh.com. There the episodes were displayed on their own specific webpages and were also collated in various manners elsewhere on there to assist the audience members in accessing the episodes, such as on webpages that collected the episodes via the respective Seasons they were featured in.

ELH centers on the lives of two protagonist teenage cousins (primas), Jessie and Maya, as they and their friends grapple with issues of sexual health and personal empowerment in the context of their lives in and around the eponymous East Los High. For good measure (and likely entertainment value) the narrative also contains a large amount of stolen cocaine, a secretly recorded sex tape, championship dancing, a vengeful ex-girlfriend, a lot of hunks, and some great — and later very healthy — Mexican food.

Season 1 of the project consisted of 24 broadcast-television formatted episodes with 20–22 minutes of show content. (The later seasons were cut down to 12 episodes each, although several between-Season extensions were webcast.) The episodes were first made available to the audience members consecutively from June 3, 2013 to July 3, 2013, as is detailed in Appendix D2 of the Dissertation — “A List of the Season 1 Episodes”. Spots for insertion of commercial breaks were included in the episodes, which could bring the total episode time for audience members up to the standard 30-minute, free-broadcast, television program length. Such factors as the type of Hulu subscription the audience member accessed the shows with determined whether or not commercials were enabled (Gonzalez, 2013; Ramasubramanian, 2016).

The extensions were the texts that were functionally subordinate to the anchor texts. While they could be consumed on their own, they used or referred to elements of the greater ELH storyworld and may have been better understood by audience members who were familiar with that context. These texts were presented in several different formats, including video, text, and interactive. For example, the short video extension entitled “Veggie Tacos” had actors in character, where they explained how to cook some of the food featured in the show. The extensions could be accessed in several different ways, giving audience members flexibility in how they acquired and interacted with their chosen texts. Some were available on Hulu but the vast majority were available on EastLosHigh.com, with a slight overlap in between. It wasn’t determined for the Dissertation when the individual extensions were first made available to the audience members. However, it is presumed that at least the Season 1 extensions containing narrative information were released contemporaneously with the episodes that occupied a similar place on the Season’s narrative chronology.

Answer

East Los High was both an educational and commercial success. And audience members were documented accessing the various platforms that the project was distributed on and many of the texts those platforms contained, as illustrated by the block quote featured earlier from the scholars Wang and Singhal.

But what encouraged the audience members to do that?

PhD student Patrick E. McNabb wondered about this, and to answer his question he turned to what may seem like an unlikely source — the work of the long-dead Soviet Psychologist Lev Vygotsky.

Vygotsky’s work was relatively unknown in the West until it was published there in the late 1970s. However, since then his ideas have borne fruit and have been expanded on by many other researchers. McNabb’s Dissertation, which he composed to help fulfill the requirements of his PhD in Media Psychology, is among the latest of these investigations and applications of Vygotsky’s ideas.

Vygotsky and the Vygotskian Concepts

When Vygotsky died of tuberculosis at the age of 37 in 1934, he left behind a rich body of thought on how children learn and how they can be taught.

One of Vygotsky’s fruitful ideas was the Zone of Proximal Development, which he described as,

“the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86).

Vygotsky postulated that the Zone of Proximal Development is not static, but instead moves as the learner progresses in their learning — “what is in the Zone of Proximal Development today will be the actual developmental level tomorrow — that is, what a child can do with assistance today she will be able to do by herself tomorrow” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 87).

Scholars Ilhan et al. (2013) provide support for the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development when they use an analogous concept termed negative capability. Citing the transmedia research of Long (2007), they observe that negative capability occurs when audience members are enticed to explore a storyworld. An example of this occurs when gaps are strategically placed in a narrative. Another example occurs when mysteries about the narrative are incorporated into it, such as when questions are posed in the course of the narrative that aren’t immediately answered. These structures resemble what transmedia practitioner and theorist Pratten (2015, pp. 103–106) talks about when he refers to beats in transmedia storytelling. He describes these as dramatic devices outside of timing in interactive stories that assist in moving the story forward by providing a trigger — “an event that moves the experience forward” — followed by conditions that are offered to the audience member and then followed/completed by the ultimate action of the audience member.

In terms of transmedia storytelling, the audience member movement that these authors describe is termed transmedia migration, which is analogous to when students move as they progress through more Zones of Proximal Development.

Patching is an example of migration behavior specific to transmedia storytelling. Ilhan et al. (2013) describe this as occurring when an audience member derives their own unique understanding of a story, or multiple stories, from different texts or other story elements within a storyworld. Patching is described by the authors as a form of transmedia consumption, a broader term that they define as “the consumption of diverse, dispersed narrative elements across multiple media for the purpose of co-creating unified and meaningful story consumption experiences” (p. 529). The authors warn that since the choice of what texts the individual audience members will consume is ultimately up to them, they may not consume every text within a storyworld that a producer distributes a story across.

Theorist McLeod (2012;2018) comments that it is the More Knowledgeable Other that guides the student, providing the assistance that the student needs to gain mastery of the knowledge or skill-task at hand. The More Knowledgeable Other, such as a teacher, peer, or collaborator, serves as a guide to help the student accomplish a task and achieve a new level of mastery. These actions can be in real-time, but they can also be set up in the form of instruction(s) to be consumed later. In the case of transmedia storytelling, an example could be when a producer includes a narrative structure that performs such actions.

The assistance that McLeod refers to has been termed Scaffolding by other researchers, including Wood et al. (1976). As the great psychologist Albert Bandura (2011) observed, “effective efficacy builders do more than convey positive appraisals; they structure situations for others in ways that bring success, and avoid placing them prematurely in situations where they are likely to fail” (p. 32).

Transmedia storytelling facilitates social experience and active learning by offering audience members the opportunity to explore and learn more about a storyworld by migrating from one text to another. And, by virtue of their choice in the texts that they consume, the application of transmedia storytelling allows for audience members themselves to determine where their Zone of Proximal Development is.

It also allows audience members a choice in what resources or other options they will use in their own Scaffolding, and which resources or other options they will use to create their own Scaffolds. In the process of consuming the additional resources or other options, the audience members gain a more detailed understanding of the storyworld and progress further into it.

Audience members are aided in part by certain structures that can be included in the texts of a transmedia storytelling project to facilitate this, and that could function as Scaffolds if the audience member acts on them. An example can be when an audience member goes from a story episode on a television series and movie hosting website like Hulu or Netflix to another website that features smaller video features that elaborate on an aspect of an issue featured in the televised episode. The two websites could be connected to each other in some manner by a structure that acts as a Scaffold that can be used by the audience member to locate the second website from the first. Interactivity, such as this, in storytelling, is argued to increase engagement, which in turn enhances learning (Gambarato & Dabagian, 2016; P. Rutledge, personal communication, February 13, 2019).

As a framework, the Zone of Proximal Development, Scaffolding, and More Knowledgeable Other can be used to provide a lens for understanding how structures among the transmedia storytelling platforms and texts support the migration that increases engagement.

What McNabb Observed

In McNabb’s Dissertation, he demonstrates how this framework can work and gives examples of how it could occur. To formally start, he asked the Research Question: “How can the concepts of the Zone of Proximal Development, Scaffolding, and More Knowledgeable Other be used to theoretically describe the transmedia structure of ELH, Season 1?”

To answer this, he used a qualitative case study methodology to deconstruct sampled and other selected texts from Season 1 via the three Vygotskian concepts. All of the texts selected were those officially included with the project (aka “canonical”) as opposed to those texts that were created by audience members, such as are found in some social media posts or in fan fiction (aka “fanon”).

McNabb found that each of the Vygotskian constructs occurs on two different, yet overlapping, categorical, levels: (a) within the narrative outside of any ways that it is platformed, and (b) structurally, as a function of the transmedia components. (How the levels overlap is explained later in this article.)

The following table describes these levels. It is followed by descriptions of how each of the Vygotskian concepts was found to manifest on each level.

Level: Narrative

This is how the Vygotskian concepts work within the storyworld presented by the ELH Season 1 project. Problems are presented that have corresponding Zones of Proximal Development (aka learning areas) plus Scaffolding that is a resource or resources or other options, such as information, that can assist the character(s) in solving, or further progress in solving, the problems they encounter. Certain characters, who function as manifestations of the producers’ efforts as More Knowledgeable Others, are the narrative devices that are often used by the producers to directly introduce or make available Scaffolding to the characters grappling with the problems. (Note, however, that other elements in the storyworld that relay Scaffolding can also function in this manner implicitly.)

Level: Structural

This is the level at which the transmedia structure of the ELH project exists. The problem in this context is the existence of the gap between a text and other related text(s), such as in the collection of canonical texts, although gaps also exist between canonical ELH project texts and texts that exist outside of the canon, such as external resources or texts that are produced by audience members. The gap itself is the Zone of Proximal Development, and the Scaffolding is the assistance provided by the More Knowledgeable Others (the producers) that an audience member can choose to use to cross, or, to use another word, to traverse, that gap.

Zone of Proximal Development

Narrative Zone of Proximal Development

The narrative Zones of Proximal Development were found to encompass the conceptual learning areas that are bracketed by the introduction of a problem and its resolution in the ELH narrative. Many of the problems are concerned with issues of sexual health and personal empowerment since ELH was designed to be an entertainment-education project promoting prosocial sexual health practices. These problems are depicted by characters as they experience them in the course of the narrative.

The following schematic illustrates the form that the Zones of Proximal Development were found to take in the Narrative of the ELH project:

Introduction of a Character’s Problem ►►► Zone Of Proximal Development (Learning Area that is Traversed with Scaffolding) ►►► Successful Resolution of the Problem

Structural Zone of Proximal Development

The structure of the Zones of Proximal Development was found to be the gaps between related texts. Technically, the gaps could exist between any texts that the audience member consumes, and possibly in any order. However, given the definitions for the Zone of Proximal Development and More Knowledgeable Other cited earlier, the audience member’s choices and order of consumption are guided, if not constrained, by the actions of the More Knowledgeable Other(s), which collectively are the producers in the ELH Season 1 project.

In a transmedia project, audience members need to access additional text(s) if they wish to further immerse themselves in the storyworld and have a richer experience. Producers can include devices in these texts and create relationships among these texts in an effort to encourage audience members to favor a certain subsequent text or texts over others. As they do, the audience members traverse these structural forms of the Zones of Proximal Development.

The following schematic illustrates the form that the Zones of Proximal Development were found to take in the Structure of the ELH Project. Note that this is not an inclusive list of choices, and in some cases the extensions, were found to contain multiple types of the content listed here.

Current Text: Episode [Zone of Proximal Development (Text Gap)] Next Text to Be Consumed: (placeholder for text selected) [next Zone of Proximal Development (Text Gap)] … (repeats until the audience member stops consuming additional texts)

Possible Next Text Choices:

Episode or other text that follows this episode chronologically in the Season 1 storyworld timeline

Extension with narrative information

Extension with related prosocial theme resource information

Extension that offers both narrative and prosocial theme information

Extension that could assist an audience member with learning about the storyworld that ELH is based on, and/or accessing aspects of the storyworld in real-life

Current Text: Extension [Zone of Proximal Development (Text Gap)] Next Text to Be Consumed: (placeholder for text selected) [next Zone of Proximal Development (Text Gap)] … (repeats until the audience member stops consuming additional texts)

Possible Next Text Choices:

Episode or other text that follows this extension chronologically in the Season 1 storyworld timeline (if applicable)

Text(s) within the ELH Season 1 canon that is/are linked to this extension, directly or indirectly, besides narratively

Text(s) outside of the ELH Season 1 canon that is/are linked to this extension, directly or indirectly

Scaffolding

Narrative Scaffolding

Narrative Scaffolds were found to be options, such as information, behaviors, or resources, that were made available to the characters within the narrative that the characters could choose to use to solve the problems that they deal with, thus assisting them with traversing the corresponding Zones of Proximal Development. Since many of the problems that the characters face involve the ELH project’s prosocial themes of sexual health and personal empowerment, the narrative Scaffolds often reflect real-life resources or other options that were available to the targeted audience at the time and place in which the project was first made available. (See the Dissertation for examples)

However, even if a More Knowledgeable Other only offers one Scaffold it is still the choice of the character/student as to whether or not they will choose to use it. In other words, the character who is dealing with the problem in question is assumed to have free will in the context of the storyworld and has the option of not using a Scaffold that is made available to them. This is, in essence, the same situation that would exist if a student declined to use any of the methods or other suggestions to solve a problem posed by a More Knowledgeable Other and then chose to devise their own completely original method of solving the problem. Then the student is essentially back at square one since they are deciding to rely on the “independent problem solving” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86) that may have got them to the respective Zone of Proximal Development in the first place. In that sense, it is postulated here that this “null Scaffold” (termed here) always exists even if it is not stated and/or is only inferred, especially since the Scaffolds proper are those that are offered by the More Knowledgeable Other, whether implicitly or explicitly.

Structural Scaffolding

The structural Scaffolds are the relationships and the devices that set up, maintain, and/or conclude relationships among the texts in the project that, it is plausible, the producers implemented or embraced in order to encourage audience members to choose certain texts over others. (See the Dissertation for examples)

There were two categories of the structural type of Scaffold observed in the ELH project: direct and indirect. The direct category comprises devices that explicitly link a text to another text or texts within the project and/or outside of it. Examples include the graphical placement of texts on the webpages of the EastLosHigh.com website, the context that those texts are found in, titles and other descriptions of the texts on the EastLosHigh.com webpages, and direct references to specific real-world resources featured in certain texts, especially the extensions.

The indirect category comprises shared themes and/or topics that could be used by an audience member to assist them in choosing a subsequent text or texts over other texts. Examples include those themes and topics related to the sexual health and personal empowerment educational goals of the project. Others are themes and topics that are suggested by the inclusion of certain extensions in the project that have the potential to assist audience members in learning more about the storyworld. These include extensions that feature information or resources about the real world that the storyworld is based on, how to access aspects of the storyworld in real-life, or additional narrative, such as backstory on events featured in the episodes.

More Knowledgeable Others

The producers were observed and deduced to function as the More Knowledgeable Others in the ELH Season One project and their efforts were manifested in the project in several different ways, as is detailed below.

Narrative More Knowledgeable Others.

Scaffolds were found within the narrative that relate to problems the characters face, particularly as they grapple with events and issues concerning the prosocial themes of the project. These Scaffolds are often presented by characters that were observed to function as manifestations of the producers’ efforts as More Knowledgeable Others when these efforts were in the guise of these characters in the narrative.

Some characters, by virtue of the professional roles they play, also represent professions and/or types of people that could be found by audience members in real-life to provide them such resources. These characters, by virtue of where they work, can also indicate the types of places where these resources or other options could have been accessed at the time the project was first made available.

In the context of the Vygotskian concepts the characters that are dealing with the problems posed in the narrative, especially those problems related to the prosocial educational aspect of the project, effectively function as students since they are posed problems that they are depicted as solving, or at least, that they are in the process of attempting to solve. They do this by considering, choosing, and utilizing resources or other options that are provided to them, or that have been provided to them, by a More Knowledgeable Other(s) who is guiding them or that otherwise provided the Scaffolding.

In some cases, the Scaffolds presented are implicit, in that they are presented in the narrative with no direct attribution to a character acting as a More Knowledgeable Other. Examples include depictions of individuals in the narrative who are incurring or who have incurred consequences from following recommended or discouraged information or practices, as well as events that showcase these depictions in action.

But that does not mean that a More Knowledgeable Other is not present. These implicit Scaffolds highlight how, in the ELH project, all of the elements that comprise the canonical texts of the project that the producers incorporated are ultimately manifestations of the project’s producers, as opposed to elements like external interpretations that the audience members might incorporate.

In other words, a More Knowledgeable Other is always the source of the Scaffolding offered, even if the More Knowledgeable Other is not personified in the narrative but instead is manifested by some other aspect of the storyworld. To restate McLeod (2012;2018), it is the More Knowledgeable Other that guides the student, providing the assistance that the student needs to gain mastery of the knowledge or skill-task at hand.

Structural More Knowledgeable Others

Whereas the structural Scaffolding is what the audience members are provided to Scaffold with, the guidance is how they are provided the Scaffolding.

There were two types of this guidance observed in the ELH project: structural, and the content of that structure, the former termed structural guidance here and the latter termed content guidance.

The producers provided structural guidance to the audience members by how they determined such factors as the distribution and availability of texts, as well as the selection of what texts were included in the canon and how they organized them graphically on media platforms, such as EastLosHigh.com.

The producers provided content guidance by how they included content that could be used to link certain texts, such as shared themes and/or topics across texts and explicit directions in certain texts directing the audience to access or provide certain other texts. (Examples of texts that an audience member would be asked to provide include the suggestions or comments that the character Paulie asks for in his Ask Paulie extensions and the character Ceci asks her prima for in her Vlogs.)

Putting It Altogether

The point of the study was to understand what the producers did, psychologically, to encourage the audience members of ELH Season 1 to access the multiple texts that comprised the project. More specifically, the research question asked how the three Vygotskian concepts could be used to theoretically describe the project’s transmedia structure. However, in describing the transmedia structure it was determined that it was also necessary to describe how the narrative could be deconstructed via these concepts since the transmedia structure and the narrative were found to overlap in several ways.

The first examples of this overlapping discussed here concern findings regarding the narrative’s chronology. Following the causal logic of the chronology, an audience member would plausibly be able to determine which narrative-containing texts should follow one another and thus choose and/or consume those text(s) accordingly. The chronology also provides a contextual basis for the often-observed placement of narrative-containing extensions on the specific episode webpages on EastLosHigh.com where these extensions and episodes occurred at a similar place on the narrative’s timeline.

Other examples of the narrative and the transmedia structure overlapping concern the fact that the storyworld was intended to resemble the real-world of the targeted audience members. Problems and Scaffold/resources that are mentioned in the narrative are meant to be representative of, or actually be, what the targeted audience members would deal with and/or find in their real lives, at least at the time that the texts were first made available. And when characters address other people in the narrative, they are often, in reality, addressing the targeted audience members.

This is demonstrated with the examples of Ceci and Paulie in their series of extensions, and it is in addition to the Scaffolding, including resources and information, that they referenced in the episodes. Using the ELH storyworld’s population as a proxy for the audience is also demonstrated with other characters such as Soli, Paulina, Ileana, and Dr. Sanchez. Like Ceci and Paulie, they function as a way that the producers can communicate to the audience in their roles at the More Knowledgeable Others. For example, these characters were often observed offering, referencing, or otherwise discussing Scaffold/resources with other characters. Many of these resources are found or reflected in the extensions and other web features found on EastLosHigh.com. Examples include the links found on the website to the many prosocial organizations that partnered with the ELH project. At the time that the ELH texts were first made available, these organizations could have provided or linked audience members to many of the resources referenced in the project.

Another example of overlapping that was found involves the content of all the texts, and not just those texts that contain narrative information. Themes and/or topics were found to be shared among certain texts. It is plausible that these shared attributes could function as a form of guidance (Scaffolding) that could aid an audience member in choosing and/or consuming a certain subsequent text or texts over others. In ELH, these subsequent text(s) could provide content related to the content in the initial text(s) consumed. Examples of this include additional information about a particular plot, resource information, information about the real-life world that the storyworld is based on, how to implement certain aspects of the storyworld in real-life, or information about the production of the ELH project.

Deconstructing the reviewed texts via the three concepts also revealed several other findings. As noted, the Zones of Proximal Development on the narrative level were observed to be the conceptual spaces that are encompassed by the introduction and resolution of problems that characters are depicted dealing with, particularly those related to the prosocial educational goals of the project. In some cases, the full resolutions of at least one of these occur past the Season 1 timeline. For example, as referenced in the Dissertation, see Ceci’s commentary regarding her efforts to raise the baby that resulted from her unintended pregnancy in the one-year-later follow-up feature that takes place in the second part of Episode 24. Note also that the Zones are not limited to just the narrative contained in the episode texts. Some were observed to encompass extension texts that also contained narrative information.

As also noted, on the structural level the Zones of Proximal Development were observed to encompass the space between texts that were consumed and those that could then be consumed, and Scaffolding is provided in various forms by the producers that serves as their formal guidance regarding which text(s) should next be consumed. In this regard, an overlap between the narrative and structural forms of the Zone of Proximal Development occurs when a narrative Zone of Proximal Development occurs across more than one text. If an audience member wants to consume all the narrative information regarding these Zones of Proximal Development, then they must consume all the applicable texts. This overlap could be different from the causal, chronological order mentioned above because the texts in these Zones of Proximal Development could be consumed in any order that the audience member wishes, or at least they could once all the texts were made available (for example, see the phenomenon called “patching”, referenced earlier). However, the texts would likely not make a lot of sense out of causal order until certain narrative details, such as the sequence of events and the reasons for these events, are understood by the audience member.

In terms of Scaffolding, it was noted that the producers likely provided guidance to the audience as to which texts should next be consumed both directly and indirectly. In particular, there was a need to drive audience traffic to and from the various platforms that the project was hosted on.

This need to encourage audience members to migrate to a subsequent text that can be hosted on a different platform than the text that they have just consumed is particularly critical in the cases of those plots that can only be fully understood when all of the texts containing their narrative information are consumed.

The Soli and Paulie relationship plot is one example. This plot is spread across the breadth of the season’s episodes and several extensions. The plot and its texts also serve an educational purpose by demonstrating how a couple can successfully incorporate much of the prosocial information communicated in the project, which includes many of the prosocial sexual and personal empowerment practices advocated and demonstrated. Learning more about the couple’s developing relationship may serve as an incentive for audience members to consume the plot’s texts. This theme/topic is referred to as indirect in the present study because it links the texts in-kind without specifically directing the audience to the related texts and is unlike such direct links (aka direct structural Scaffolds) as the “Want More? East Los High.com” banner that is seen at the end of every episode right before the credits.

Based on the evidence collected for this study, the indirect links, which are termed in the present study as indirect structural Scaffolds, could be what Pratten (2015), previously discussed, termed beats, and they could operate via the negative capability which was also previously discussed in reference to the research of Ilhan et al. (2013) and Long (2007). It is plausible that when an audience member is introduced to, or reminded of, a certain theme and/or topic in one text, and they know that there are other texts that also have more content about this theme and/or topic, then they will be enticed to explore these other texts.

This enticement is likely enhanced when there is more information, including solutions, about a problem or issue concerning the theme and/or topic available in the other text(s). For example, in the ELH project, many of these texts contain content on problems or issues that the characters face, while other texts have content about resources/Scaffolds that can solve the problems and/or provide further information about a problem or issue.

Soli and Paulie’s first kiss is an event in the narrative that helps to highlight this potential indirect structural Scaffolding. The kiss takes place during the second party featured in the season. Viewers of Episode 12, the anchor text that depicts the party, will see Soli and Paulie meeting up and then later see them intimately dancing together. But they will likely not know what transpired in-between unless they consume the extension featured on that episode’s page on EastLosHigh.com titled “Soli and Paulie”, which, when accessed, reveals the subtitle “…first kiss?” on its own page on that website. If an audience member had consumed the texts concerning Soli and Paulie’s relationship prior to the kiss they may have learned that Soli and Paulie were growing closer romantically together, even if the audience member had only consumed the episodes. However, this extension, which is placed directly below the episode on its episode page in an example of direct structural Scaffolding, specifically shows the encounter that leads up to and culminates in their kiss.

Ceci’s pregnancy and early child-rearing plot is another example of a plot that can only be fully understood by consuming both the applicable episodes and extensions. Many of the narrative gaps that are contained in the episodes regarding this plot are filled in by Ceci in the extensions that are referenced as Ceci’s Vlogs. There, Ceci offers commentary on the current events in her life to the audience via her prima, to which the Vlogs are ostensibly addressed, as well as conveying resource and other prosocial practice information related to these events.

The plots centered on Ceci’s pregnancy and early child rearing and Soli and Paulie’s relationship demonstrate how auxiliary texts can be used by a transmedia storyteller to provide additional story elements while maintaining the anchor text(s) focus on the overall story.

In the ELH project, other uses for the auxiliary texts that were observed relate to how the audience is relayed additional information about the prosocial sexual health and personal empowerment practices that are advocated for in the narrative and how they can implement such practices. Another category of auxiliary texts augments the anchor texts, and the narrative as a whole, still further. These extensions provide information about the real world that the storyworld is based on, how the ELH project was produced, and/or how audience members can personally experience aspects of the storyworld or the real world it is based on.

In the process, auxiliary texts can provide content that can further link anchor texts to each other, link auxiliary texts to each other, and link auxiliary texts to anchor texts. All of this can add depth to the audience’s understanding of these texts and the storyworld, and it is in addition to the content that is contained in the anchor texts.

In ELH, the auxiliary texts are represented by the extensions, while the anchor texts are represented by the episodes. However, this dichotomy is relative to individual transmedia projects and the producers that craft them, and transmedia projects can have multiple configurations, as Phillips (2012) noted.

Guiding audience members to auxiliary texts and motivating them to access them makes sense since the goals of the ELH project include driving audience traffic to EastLosHigh.com to explore its webpages and other texts. If they are already on the site and accessing the episodes from it, then a goal that the producers would likely have for the audience member would be to stay on the site and explore it, such as by exploring the webpage that they are already on and the other texts it contains, and exploring other webpages on the website as well as the texts that they contain. Once the audience member is there and/or once they have begun exploring the site, they are offered direct and indirect structural Scaffolding that can serve to link the texts that are there. With the direct form, an association can plausibly be assumed to exist between a text and one or other texts based on the space they share, how it is graphically shared, and/or any direct instructions to the audience regarding other texts that may exist in the content of the text that is currently being consumed or that was the last to be consumed. With the indirect form, a text may share a theme and/or topic with one text and/or others.

In terms of the More Knowledgeable Others, it was observed that the producers perform this role in the ELH project, and their efforts manifest differently depending on the level of the project. On the narrative level, guidance is offered to the audience through the story’s elements. On the structural level, guidance is offered by how the structure of the project is arranged and how the structures of the individual, canonical texts that comprise the project are arranged. Certain other efforts were observed to occur because the producers’ efforts as More Knowledgeable Others overlap on both the narrative and structural levels due to the content contained in the canonical texts.

For their part, the audience is intended to consume the narrative and act on the project’s structure by choosing and consuming additional texts. And performing these actions can have a progressive effect.

As the audience members perform these actions, they learn more about the content of the texts or refresh themselves regarding that content. In the act of considering and choosing these texts, they will also learn, or refresh themselves, about the context of those texts. Together, these actions could help the audience member to choose and consume subsequent texts, and the cycle can repeat until the audience member has consumed their last text. In terms of the Vygotskian concepts, as the audience members choose texts and consume them their Zones of Proximal Development progress and they also correspondingly encounter more Scaffolds that they can consider using. While these may include Scaffolds that the audience members have created on their own, or that are derived in varying degrees from Scaffolding and other information that the producers have provided, McNabb’s Dissertation demonstrates that the producers can potentially influence the Scaffolding that audience members use by providing information that could be used for it.

So, What Does This Mean for Projects That are Entertainment-Only?

You may be asking at this point: This is all great for entertainment-education, but what does this have to do for projects that are meant to be purely entertainment? Well, if you think about it, at a fundamental level all entertainment is education in that all entertainment conveys information. For example, a dancer conveys information by the ways that they move, a musician conveys information by the way they play their instrument, and a transmedia project conveys information by the way it depicts who and what are in its storyworld.

What This All Means for Transmedia Practitioners

McNabb’s dissertation demonstrates how an understanding of the three Vygotskian concepts can be used to scientifically deconstruct a transmedia project to show where behavioral devices exist that could plausibly provide incentives for an audience member to consume additional texts in that project and to continue engaging with it. In the process, it identifies examples of possible Scaffolding in and among the texts reviewed, as well as the forms that the Zone of Proximal Development takes depending on which level is considered and whom the More Knowledgeable Other(s) are.

Patching, previously discussed in reference to the research of IlHan et al. (2013), will likely always occur with a transmedia project given such factors as the individual differences among audience members and the many texts that can comprise a transmedia project. However, formally identifying Scaffolding may help producers to see where it is and where it is not so that they can modify their project to be better in line with whatever goals they have for it, potentially influencing the patching behavior of audience members to encourage them to migrate in ways that are desired by the producers. Producers could also design their projects with Scaffolds in mind and deliberately incorporate them into it, again with any goals that they have for it, while also understanding how producers and audience members can function in terms of the other two Vygotskian concepts discussed and used in this study.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to Jeff Gomez, a transmedia expert and practitioner, who has been offering Patrick practical suggestions on how to make Patrick’s media psychology expertise available to a wider public and who provided the first comments on (now Dr!) Patrick E. McNabb’s Dissertation from an Industry perspective.

Further feedback is welcome and constructive critiques are always appreciated.

References

All citations are taken from Patrick’s Dissertation, of which this article is ultimately a practical, highlighted summary. Please consult the Dissertation to locate the original references.

Where to Access McNabb’s Dissertation for Free

For further reading, and to locate the sources of the citations, Patrick’s Dissertation can be accessed and/or download at no cost via Google Scholar at https://scholar.google.com/citations? view_op=list_works&hl=en&hl=en&user=rm2kZeYAAAAJ or via the Profile section of his LinkedIn profile at https://www.linkedin.com/in/pmcnabb/