A Transmedia Topology of <i>Making a Murderer</i>

Abstract

This article constructs a transmedia topology of the Making a Murderer text, demonstrating influences of various forms of documentary, interactive gaming culture, and post-digital writing on the series itself as well as on the paratextual cloud of works that grew up around it. Here we define transmedia topology as a tracing of what we could call the geography of the text, as defined by its features and boundaries (or lack thereof). We will discuss the intentionality of the series creators, as well as the emergence of a transmedial textuality that is owed largely to audiences and the textual terrain. The Making a Murderer series thus becomes the basis for a larger transmedia narrative that sprawls across social-digital networks, a pastiche of multifarious public reaction and unsanctioned investigation. The article maps the ecologies of interaction, participation and creation with and of the text by the audience to map the thresholds of the transmedial text and investigate new approaches to analysing transmedial work in the context of non-fiction media forms.