IReport for CNN Transmedia Storytelling On The Brazilian Protests in 2013

Abstract

This study discusses the limits and potentials of the concept of transmedia storytelling to describe citizen coverage of the 2013 protests in Brazil in the collaborative section iReport for CNN on CNN.com. The section is characteristically intermedia because it connects to online social networks and doubles as a monthly television program with the same name. But to what extent could it also be characterized as transmedia? Systematic observation of the citizen coverage between June and July 2013 revealed a restructuring of certain editorial spaces on the site aimed at user-proposed perspectives as well as communicational activity across online social networks; both important aspects for its transmedia characterization. Furthermore, the visible hierarchical differentiation of journalistic reporting puts the transmediatic potential of the collaborative experiment into perspective by reducing the importance of expanding the narrative horizontally despite the study showing regular social scheduling for journalistic coverage as evidence of the dynamics of transmedia.

Keywords

• Transmedia Storytelling
• Collaborative Journalism
• Protests
• iReport for CNN