PEDRO MOURA
University of Minho, Communication and Society Research Centre (Portugal)
Abstract
The relationship between the media industries and their audiences is increasingly complex. Concepts such as convergence culture foresaw a new kind of relationship, one where the consumers would also be producers, participating in the decision making of their favourite narratives. This article studied a contest sponsored by Disney that promoted the creation of fan videos prior to the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. It is focused on how the rules of the contest framed fan-made creations, also examining the winning videos. It concluded that, despite the most optimistic expectations, media industries are not only highly interested in maintaining control over their contents, but also over their users’ participation.
Keywords: fan videos, convergence culture, produsage, participation, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
******
Introduction
For decades, fans have been framed as particularly passionate (Hills, 2002), committed (Grossberg, Wartella and Whitney, 1998) and productive (Fiske, 1992) members of the media audiences. Some of them are historically very interested in interacting with and influencing the official producers of their favourite contents (Jenkins, 1992). The emergence of digital and online media promised renewed opportunities to do it. The popularity, widespread availability and individualization (Deuze, 2007; Van Dijck, 2009; Bird, 2011) of tools such as personal computers (Pereira, 2013), mobile phones and video recording devices (Buckingham, Pini and Willet, 2009) paved the way to different expectations regarding the audience’s role in the relationship established with the media. According to Buckingham, Pini and Willet, (2009, p. 52), « video and digital media in particular are believed to reconfigure the relationships of power between ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’, or ‘professionals’ and ‘amateurs’ ». Matt Hills highlights the existence of too optimistic expectations surrounding the concept of a user-lead and interactive web 2.0: “the enhanced ease of access and lower web 2.0 (cost/skill) barriers to participation are celebrated as a democratization of productivity” (Hills, 2013, p. 140). Despite a fair amount of criticism already received, these expectations – more or less transformed – are still popular, including amongst scholars (Webster, 2017).
This article presents a case study of an official fan contest promoted by Lucasfilm/Disney prior to the theatrical release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. It intends to problematize how fan video productions were framed by a media corporation when it encouraged the creative work of the audience, contrasting it with the most optimistic expectations regarding a shift of power towards the audiences. The analysis is centred on the contest rules and on the winning videos. Henry Jenkins’ proposals (2006) regarding the emergence of a convergence and participatory culture are the main theoretical backdrop of the work presented herein.
Convergence culture and fan productions
According to Jenkins (2006, p. 2) we are living within a culture “where old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways”. Within this recent, ongoing, uncertain and asymmetric process, the roles of producers and consumers would be blurred, as “we might now see them as participants who interact with each other according to a new set of rules that none of us fully understands” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 3). The emergence of the concepts of users and, most significantly, produsers (Bird, 2011; Carpentier, 2011) embody this expected shift: they can produce and share media contents, therefore they can and are “demanding the right to participate” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 24). The users are empowered by technologies, but they are driven by cultural reasons, as we are living within a participatory culture “in which fans and other consumers are invited to actively participate in the creation and circulation of new content” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 290). Besides, the industries, accustomed to fiercely protecting their intellectual property, will have to take their contributions into account or face “declining goodwill and diminished revenues” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 24). Inevitably, media will have to recognize that the rules have changed: “allowing consumers to interact with media under controlled circumstances is one thing; allowing them to participate in the production and distribution of cultural goods – on their own terms – is something else altogether” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 133).
According to Nick Couldry (2011) and S. Elizabeth Bird (2011), Jenkins’ proposals produce a faulty generalization: the practices of fans, from which Jenkins (2006, p. 12) generalizes his predictions, aren’t necessarily like the ones performed by other types of audiences (Couldry, 2011, p. 492) and not everyone is willing and/or has the resources to be a produser (Bird, 2011, p. 504). Besides, participation is a complex concept: according to Carpentier (2011), mirroring classic proposals such as the one by Arnstein (1969), it implies some exertion of power and the chance to participate in the decision making within the relationship established with the media. While some produsers may be « flexing their muscles against the power of media producers to define the terms of their engagement » (Bird, 2011, p. 506), the bigger picture is filled with media industries that are growing in power and « are becoming very adept at disciplining produsage » (Bird, 2011, p. 507), particularly when the chances of the latter reaching wider audiences via online spaces are a possibility. As Hesmondhalgh (2007) notes, the cultural industries are traditionally more concerned with controlling and preserving the circulation of their contents and intellectual properties than with refraining the creation of contents per se. Nowadays, some media corporations are even trying to harvest « the audience’s potential and actual activity(s) for their own benefit » (Reinhard, 2009, p. 10). This kind of strategy, of co-optation instead of prohibition, « would include any instance when the producer’s official website sanctions the activities they had once sought to shut down by providing space and content for these activities », framing it with Terms of Service (Reinhard, 2009, pp. 10-11). That is, the users’ activities would be encouraged as long as they would fit within the industries’ rules.
The use of the audiences’ insights by the media is not something new. As Jenkins noted before the emergence of digital and online media, television networks used to publicize audience campaigns made to ensure the survival of a given TV show when its continuity or return from a hiatus would be confirmed by official stances. It used to be presented « as evidence of their responsiveness to their viewership » (Jenkins, 1992, p. 28-29). Nowadays, fans’ textual-enunciative productivity (Hills, 2013) is in many cases fostered by the industry as a way to reach larger audiences by these brand advocates, to increase trustworthiness and goodwill amidst fans, or to simply benefit from the free work and advertising generated by more or less amateur users (Van Dijck, 2009; Hardy, 2011; Lozano Delmar, Hernández-Santaolalla and Ramos, 2013; Bourdaa and Lozano Delmar, 2016). The intertextuality between corporate and non-corporate (from independent media or fans, for instance) texts is growing and the frontiers between these axes are blurring. However, according to Hardy (2011), not in the way Jenkins foresaw: media corporations are actively seeking to order the intertextual space around their contents. Despite the obvious existence of episodes of resistance and the current users’ chances “to do far more than ever before, they’re hardly in charge” (Webster, 2017, p. 354).
Transmedia storytelling and Star Wars fandom
Henry Jenkins defines transmedia storytelling as the « integration of entertainment experiences across a range of different media platforms » (Jenkins, 2010, p. 948). Emerging “in response to media convergence”, transmedia storytelling is about “world making” using different media (Jenkins, 2006, p. 21). According to Weedon and Knight (2015, p. 406), “in some cases, the narratives are synergistic, in others complete stories in their own right”. This is a consequence of the transmedia in transmedia storytelling: the use of different media, with diverse affordances, and the contributions of different authors, from diverse crafts, aesthetics traditions or even generations, may lead the development of the narrative (or the multiple narratives under the brand’s umbrella) in divergent ways. The Star Wars universe organization exemplifies the apparent contradiction between the need for continuity and the development of more and sometimes divergent extensions, pointing to new audiences: “the corpus of the Star Wars Legends represents alternative possible worlds, which means descriptions of what could have been, as opposed to the canonical texts which represent the facts of the actual world of the franchise” (Ryan, 2016, p. 6).
Within this complexity, the role of the audience can be quite difficult:
To fully experience any fictional world, consumers must assume the role of hunters and gatherers, chasing down bits of the story across media channels, comparing notes with each other via online discussion groups, and collaborating to ensure that everyone who invests time and effort will come away with a richer entertainment experience (Jenkins, 2006, p. 21).
Besides, according to Scolari (2013), the empowered audiences, now with real chances to interact among themselves and produce their own contents, may also demand to have a word to say on how the narratives unfold. This is historically evident in Star Wars, whose fans have been expressing very strong opinions about the course it should take (Brooker, 2002), exhibiting a kind of ownership sense (Shefrin, 2004) and fighting to preserve their own understanding of canonicity, even against George Lucas (Lyden, 2012). Jenkins (2006, pp. 148-159) describes different chapters of the uneasy relationship between Lucasfilm and Star Wars fans willing to produce their own contents. While the production company tried to promote, prohibit and/or regulate the creative acts of the latter, some fans rebelled against the official narrative and the institutional attempts of co-optation, like the transfer of fan creations property to Lucasfilm.
The agreement between Lucasfilm and Atomfilms.com, in 2000, to promote the creation and online publication of Star Wars fan films and contests is particularly relevant to this work, as it encouraged fan films, but with a no fan fiction rule. A popular fan production such as Star Wars: Revelations, released in 2005, “would be prohibited from entering the official Star Wars competition because it sets its own original dramatic story in the interstices between the third and fourth Star Wars films” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 154). Only endeavours such as parodies and documentaries would be accepted. Fandom should celebrate Star Wars and not “to create a story unto itself” using Lucasfilm characters, as a vice-president of marketing of the company said in an interview in 2002 (Jenkins, 2006, p. 149). The rules, transcript by Jenkins (2006, p. 154), also banned the chance to work with copyrighted material – from third parties, but also from Lucasfilm, which allowed the use of “action figures and the audio clips provided in the production kit section” of the official platform. According to Brooker (2002, p. 177), such initiatives hosted by “official fan sites” can be seen as “a further move to rein in fan activity and keep it in corporate ground”.
Methods
This paper is focused on the North American and Australian/New Zealander contest Go Rogue[1], which promoted the creation of user-generated videos before the premiere, in December 2016, of the movie Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. According to the announcement posted on the Star Wars official site[2], 30 September 2016 marked “the release of the first wave of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story products – and the kickoff of the «Go Rogue» UGC contest”.
As mentioned above, the article intends to analyse how an official contest framed the fans’ participation, having as main purpose to contribute to the debate on how much of the expected transformation of the relationship between the media and its audiences has come into force. Based on the answers arising from the analysis, it also aims to reflect upon the current industries’ goals when they foster their audiences’ participation. Considering the first objective, Henry Jenkins’ description of the Lucasfilm/Atomfilms.com contest promoted in 2000 was used as a landmark for comparison. After almost two decades, and considering the author’s proposals around convergence culture, there should be evident differences between both contests, particularly in the way corporate media see their relationship with their audiences, namely in terms of the rights of the latter to participate. The analysis started with the qualitative study of the contest rules.[3] As Wolff (2004, p. 284) stated, official documents « function as institutionalized traces, which means that they may legitimately be used to draw conclusions about the activities, intentions and ideas of their creators or the organizations they represented ». This first procedure intended to address the following research question: how are user-generated contents framed in the contest rules? The analysis was focused on technical and narrative aspects. Considering the theoretical framework outlined above, this kind of industry-led activities involving user-generated contents usually regulate both to ensure that fan productions don’t distance themselves too much from the official narratives. They do it by restricting the stories that can be told and the resources allowed to produce them. They also demand to hold all rights to contents that, despite being made by amateur users, become part of the industries’ present and future marketing efforts. These dimensions and the elements used in their assessment are itemized in Table 1.
| Dimensions | Components | Indicators |
| Technical aspects | Resources allowed and forbidden | Media elements (for instance, sound or video clips) distributed specifically for the contest via the official website (or similar) |
| Official products and media elements (owned by the participants) – Star Wars Canon | ||
| Official products and media elements (owned by the participants) – Star Wars Legends | ||
| Third parties’ elements | ||
| User-created elements | ||
| Ownership and copyrights | Property of the contents created after the contest | |
| Narrative aspects | Typology of movies allowed | Fan fiction |
| Parodies | ||
| Documentaries | ||
| Others | ||
| Starting points | Storytelling constraints – which story should be told? | |
| Cross-references | Divergences from the canon |
Table 1: Dimensions, components and indicators used
The analysis of the contest rules – the narrative aspects, in particular – were the entry point to the last step of the empirical work: the study of the videos published on the official site. Considering the scope of this article, amongst the seven videos available on the site – the winners of the different contests presented above – only the three regulated by the rules previously examined were analysed. The indicators of the narrative dimension, improved by the conclusions that arose from the first procedure, were used to “reduce the general infinity and define more precisely the scope” of the analysis (Mikos, 2013, p. 420). Therefore, this last procedure intended to account for the general narrative characteristics of the stories told, problematizing in particular which kinds of fan creations were favoured by the contest. Besides, the abidance/subversion of the rules by the winning videos was also taken into account.
The contest official rules – an analysis
Throughout 14 pages, the terms that regulate the participation of fans in a contest associated with a transmedia narrative are presented in detail. The promoters are identified on the first page: Disney Online is the sponsor of the activity, which is administered by LeadDog Marketing Group, Inc.. The contest comprised, in fact, three different local challenges (p. 5):
- One intended for legal residents of the 50 United States (plus the district of Columbia) and Canada (except Quebec), aged between 13 and 17 years old;
- One for participants of the same geographical origin, but 18 years old or over;
- One for legal residents of Australia and New Zealand over the age of 13.
Each of these local competitions would have a winner that would be announced prior to the premiere of the movie Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. To participate, contestants should create an original video with no more than two minutes. The rules contained advice concerning how to record the videos: they should be shot in Widescreen – « like a movie screen » (p. 4) –, contestants should ensure proper lightning and sound capture, and it was suggested they use a tripod to keep the camera steady. The file formats and their maximum size were also specified. To upload their videos, participants should have an account on the official Star Wars site, using it to submit their creations. No purchase would be needed or would benefit the contestants’ chances: this is emphasized several times throughout the rules. Each participant could upload just one content. While multiple people could collaborate in the making of the video[4], only the person that would submit it would be recognized as the contestant and, therefore, be the only one “eligible to win any prize » (p. 6). The winners would be awarded with several prizes, including a four-day trip for two people (the participant and a guest) to San Francisco, California (USA), where they would attend the screening of Rogue One. During the screening, the winners’ videos would also be showed (p. 10).
Moving beyond this general characterization of the rules towards the more precise dimensions of analysis presented above, there are several traces of technical and narrative constraints. The latter are less recurrent. Contestants could record a considerable variety of contents, as the rules allowed « live action, traditional animation, CGI, stop-motion, and/or flash animation » videos (p. 2). A no fan fiction rule was not included, for instance, in contrast to the contest held more than a decade ago and described by Jenkins (2006). In fact, fans were invited to create fan fiction: to « have fun », to put their own « spin on the Star Wars franchise » (p. 3). However, the videos’ starting points should be what was already known about the first standalone Star Wars movie, as the stories should, at the same time, be original and « pertaining to Rogue One » (p. 2). Therefore, the movie’s premise and « the characters that have been revealed » (p. 3) were the starting points suggested. At the time of the contest, both were already presented by, for instance, the teaser[5] and in the official trailers[6]. Consequently, there were already some indications about the characters of Rogue One and what the movie would look like.
The stories submitted should be in English (spoken or subtitled) and suitable to be seen by any kind of audience, which restrained the use of elements such as violence, nudity or slang. And, remarkably, it could not « include any reference to Star Trek » (p. 3) or other (unspecified) third party intellectual properties (IP) either. No reference related to the canon was found: the stories could, in theory, diverge from it or use non-canonical licensed products – with the sole condition of not distancing themselves in excess from Rogue One‘s narrative, as already mentioned.
In comparison to the narrative constraints, the technical ones are far more frequent. The rules seem to be more concerned with preventing legal problems than with restricting the stories that could be told. The existence of a subsequent judging phase devoted to the selection of the most appreciated videos might explain the prevalence of technical constraints rather than narrative ones. Therefore, aspects such as legal liabilities and the use of copyrighted materials (from Disney/Lucasfilm and third parties) constitute the core of the contest rules. When possible, Disney makes sure that all liabilities related to the videos remain with the participants, as long as they weren’t the result of the company’s “modification, adaptation, translation, creation of a derivative work or other act for which Contestant is not responsible” (p. 9).
Considering the resources allowed and forbidden, the rules suggested the use of an asset pack that would be provided to all participants. However, it did not have to be necessarily employed. The pack had « Lucasfilm music » (p. 2), two artwork backgrounds and a customized backdrop. The contestants could not, by any means, « modify or augment any Lucasfilm IP included in the Pack » (p. 6). The restrictions related to the sound elements were particularly recurrent and stressed throughout the rules. On page 2, for instance, they are presented in capital letters, bold and underlined: “YOU CANNOT USE ANY SOUND MATERIALS (E.G., MUSIC OR SOUNDCLIPS) OTHER THAN THE MUSIC THAT IS INCLUDED IN THE PACK”. This sentence is followed by another – also heavily highlighted in the exact same way – that makes it possible, but not compulsory, to use Star Wars licensed toys, accessories and clothing (no distinction is made between Star Wars Canon and Legends/Expanded Universe). No other clause in the rules would have this triadic emphasis: it was restricted to the headings of the four different parts of the document and, of course, to the pair of restrictions just mentioned. The use of any of these elements was made possible by a limited license granted by Disney to the contestants: Lucasfilm IP and any Star Wars official products could only be used « for the purposes of creating a Video for this Contest » (p. 7). Any other use of the asset pack or licensed products was « strictly prohibited » and constituted « an actionable violation of Sponsor’s rights » (p. 8). Therefore, there was no transfer of ownership of any of those elements from the sponsor to the participants: the license would « automatically expire at the end of the contest » (p. 7). Apart from the asset pack and Star Wars licensed products, participants could only use materials created by themselves. Specially regarding sound, as the rules stated that participants could use sound effects, « so long as they are not musical or from a recording by someone else » that did not star in the video, including software or sound devices (p. 3). The contestants could not advertise their own products or services either (p. 7).
Despite being invited to put their spin on the franchise, the videos could not create or imply any idea of association or endorsement. That is, the participants’ contributions were, by no means, part of the company’s Star Wars. When Disney publishes a fan-made video like these, it is « ACTING AS A PASSIVE CONDUIT FOR THE POSTING/PUBLICATION OF VIDEOS » (p. 9, capital letters in the original). However, this « passive conduit » required holding « all rights in and to » the videos submitted by the contestants (p. 7). This was the counterpart for the authorization for using Lucasfilm/Disney intellectual property: « a non-exclusive, sublicensable, irrevocable and royalty-free worldwide license » (p. 7) for exploiting by any means the submissions. The contestants should waive, if legally possible in their home jurisdiction, « any Moral Rights of Authors » (p. 8): for instance, the company could use the submissions « with or without attribution » or « create derivative works » without permission or payment (p. 7). The contestant also had to recognize that Disney « has wide access to ideas, stories, designs and other literary/artistic materials » and, therefore, there could be future contents « competitive with, similar to (or even identical to) » the submissions (p. 8).
The awarded videos – stories, characters and typology
In spite of the emphasis given by the rules to the technical aspects, they also highlighted several times that it would be the narrative ones determining the three winners. The fulfilment of the technical features would only ensure that the videos would be eligible to be evaluated. Considering the narrative indicators being used, the analysis of the winning videos[7] will be centred on the typology of videos awarded and their stories (starting points and cross-references with the rest of the Star Wars universe). As the rules highlighted the use of Rogue One‘s characters and premise, Star Wars licensed products and the music included in the asset pack, the presence or absence of these resources will also be taken into account.
The document stated five criteria that would regulate de evaluation made by a panel of judges appointed by Disney Online. The winners would be selected based on « a clear grasp of animation and/or filmmaking as an art form », the quality of the storytelling, the design and development of characters, the video’s originality and its « overall entertainment value » (p. 4). In case of a draw, the last criterion would be used to break the tie. And it was this last criterion that stood out the most amidst the winners. The three fan-made videos that were favoured by Disney can be labelled as parodies[8] made essentially using stop-motion and Star Wars music and toys. Each video is presented alongside a small synopsis, which has the author’s name (first and last, but this one is shortened to its first letter) and city. They did not show fans « flexing their muscles” against corporations, reusing Bird’s expression (2011, p. 506): the contents awarded are, with more or less intensity, celebrations of some of the most popular features of the saga as a whole. Therefore, they were not absolutely restricted to Rogue One’s premise and characters, however both were always present, even if briefly. More than to tell a story about the theft of the Death Star plans or what could have happened between the robbery and the opening chase of A New Hope, the videos intend to be funny, to make humour about some distinguishing features of the Star Wars universe, some of them have already became popular memes – Admiral Ackbar’s “It’s a trap” or the stormtrooper incompetence, for instance.
In general, the winners complied with the rules. However, there are two relevant exceptions. One video uses Lego figures that are not Star Wars licensed products nor, of course, handmade by the contestants. Two of them did not follow the rules’ advice regarding privacy, namely about the use of the first name. In fact, the one made by an underaged teen from the US and Canada not only presents the author’s first and last name, but also ends with his age and three pictures of him during the creation of the video. Therefore, the contest showed some flexibility regarding the rules, both in its technical (the use of Lego figures and identification issues) and narrative (weak connection to Rogue One’s narrative) dimensions. However, the interpretative analysis done highlighted something more relevant: all videos are benevolent in terms of contents, they are based on the most celebratory culture surrounding Star Wars (Ackbar’s memes, for instance) and not on the most disputed elements of a saga full of heated controversies. That is, they all contribute to Lucasfilm/Disney’s purposes with a regulated fan contest:
- the awarded contents did not challenge the institutional order that the company tries to establish, but reinforced and legitimized it;
- the contest was a charming – but controlled – PR stunt: the saga’s apparent opening to welcome the audiences’ efforts was a way to foster the latter’s awareness and goodwill while advertising the company’s apparent inclination to develop Star Wars alongside the fans;
- the contest was a way to gain free, technically competent and diverse contents, from independent sources, to be used during the promotion of Rogue One.
Finals remarks
This article presented an exploratory case study of a contest promoted to engage fans in the creation of videos that, in the best cases, would no longer be theirs. The reward for the winners was the chance to play a part in Disney’s Star Wars: they accepted to produce videos that would belong with no costs to Lucasfilm/Disney, which would be using them as they wanted. Therefore, the contest helped to reinforce the symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1977) around the Star Wars transmedia universe: the contest rules and the winning videos celebrated Disney’s Star Wars, reminding one several times of who is in control and awarding fans willing to accept the institutional order. As stressed throughout the contest official rules, the many elements of Star Wars are Disney’s property. Their use was only made possible in exchange for the fans’ co-optation in the companies’ promotional efforts. After the marketing campaign, the grants were revoked. This is a trace of how fearful the media industries still are in protecting their contents, continuing to reproduce the traditional models related to intellectual property and copyrights (Kim, 2012), despite the most optimistic expectations surrounding the concept of convergence culture. Should this be a surprise, mostly after an investment of $4 billion? We do not think so. It would be naïve to expect that a hugely lucrative and familiar business model – one that is thriving and successfully adapting to a complex media environment – would be radically changed.
This does not mean that things remain the same, that the current audiences and media industries are and behave in relation to one another in the exact same way as before, when the possibilities and challenges were not the same. The contest analysed is a proof of how both changes and continuities may coexist. Compared to the one presented by Jenkins (2006), regarding the similar initiative of 2000, the constraints are far less relevant on the narrative side. In fact, the two contests diverge in this respect. Go Rogue is subtler: creating a fan fiction story was no longer demonized a priori; in fact, contestants were invited to “put their spin” on the franchise. The more qualitative and informal judging phase ensured that the awarded contributions were coherent with Lucasfilm/Disney’s interests, doing it outside the formal burden of the rules and preventing, in theory, potential initial backlashes. Besides, the emphasis on the technical aspects might be explained by several reasons. They were, as mentioned before, a way to prevent legal problems, to protect intellectual property and to ensure the videos’ ownership after the contest. But they were also a way to warrant the usability of fan-made contents: by encouraging their recording in widescreen, with proper lighting, image stabilization and sound capture, the rules moulded the contents to be aesthetically and technically capable of being screened alongside Rogue One or used in its promotion. This is another dimension in which the official contents (and institutions) function as landmarks, structuring others wanting to belong to the spaces they order.
Acknowledgements
This article was written in the scope of the PhD research project funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (SFRH/BD/124039/2016).
Bibliography
ARNSTEIN S. R. (1969), « A Ladder Of Citizen Participation », Journal of the American Institute of Planners, vol. 35, no. 4 (July), p. 216-224.
BIRD S. E. (2011), “Are we all prosumers now? Convergence and media audience practices”, Cultural Studies, vol. 25, no. 4-5 (July-September), p. 502-516.
BOURDAA M. and J. Lozano Delmar (2016), « Contemporary participative TV audiences: Identity, authorship and advertising practices between fandom », Participations: Journal of Audiences & Reception Studies, vol. 13, no. 2 (November), p. 2-13.
BOURDIEU P. (1977), “Sur le pouvoir symbolique”, Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, vol. 32, no. 3, p. 405-411.
BROOKER W. (2002), Using the Force – Creativity, community and Star Wars fans, New York and London, Continuum.
BUCKINGHAM D., M. Pini and R. Willett (2009), “‘Take back the tube!’ The Discursive Construction of Amateur Film- and Video-Making”, in David Buckingham and Rebekah Willett (eds.), Video Cultures: Media Technology and Everyday Creativity, Basingstoke, Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 51-70.
CARPENTIER N. (2011), « Contextualising author-audience convergences – ‘New’ technologies’ claims to increase participation, novelty and uniqueness », Cultural Studies, vol. 25, no. 4-5 (July-September), p. 517-533.
COULDRY N. (2011), « More Sociology, More Culture, More Politics. Or, a modest proposal for ‘convergence’ studies », Cultural Studies, vol. 25, no. 4-5 (July-September), p. 487-501.
DEUZE M. (2007), “Convergence culture in the creative industries”, International Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 10, no. 2, p. 243-263.
FISKE J. (1992), « The Cultural Economy of Fandom », in L. A. Lewis (ed.), The Adoring Audience – Fan culture and popular media, London and New York, Routledge, p. 30-49.
GROSSBERG, L., E. Wartella and D. C. Whitney (1998), MediaMaking – Mass media in a popular culture, Thousand Oaks, SAGE.
HARDY J. (2011), « Mapping commercial intertextuality: HBO’s True Blood », Convergence, vol. 17, no. 1 (February), p. 7-17.
HESMONDHALGH D. (2007), The Cultural Industries – 2nd Edition. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi, Singapore, SAGE Publications.
HILLS M. (2002), Fan Cultures. London and New York, Routledge.
HILLS M. (2013), “Fiske’s ‘textual productivity’ and digital fandom: Web 2.0 democratization versus fan distinction?”, Participations: Journal of Audiences & Reception Studies, vol. 10, no. 1 (May), p. 130-153.
JENKINS H. (1992), Textual Poachers – Television fans & participatory culture. New York and London, Routledge.
JENKINS H. (2006), Convergence Culture – Where old and new media collide. New York, New York University Press.
JENKINS H. (2010), « Transmedia Storytelling and Entertainment: An annotated syllabus », Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, vol. 24, no. 6 (December), p. 943-958.
KIM J. (2012), “The institutionalization of YouTube: From user-generated content to professionally generated content”, Media, Culture & Society, vol. 34, no. 1 (January), p. 53-67.
LOZANO DELMAR J., V. Hernández-Santaolalla and M. Ramos (2013), »Fandom-generated content: An approach to the concept of ‘fanadvertising’ », Participations: Journal of Audiences & Reception Studies, vol. 10, no. 1 (May), p. 351-356.
LYDEN J. C. (2012), « Whose Film Is It, Anyway? Canonicity and Authority in Star Wars Fandom », Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 80, no. 3 (September), p. 775-786.
MIKOS L. (2013), « Analysis of Film », in U. Flick (ed.), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis, London, Sage, p. 409-423.
PEREIRA S. (2013), « More Technology, Better Childhoods? The Case of the Portuguese ‘One Laptop per Child’ Programme », CM: Communication Management Quarterly, no. 29, p. 171-198.
REINHARD C. L. (2009), « Discourse swings in understanding audiences: Case studies on Hollywood’s cooptation of audience activity(s) as emergent discourse ». Paper presented at International Communication Association, Chicago, United States. <https://rucforsk.ruc.dk/ws/files/3418447/Aud_Pushers_040109.pdf>.
RYAN, M-L. (2016), “Transmedia narratology and transmedia storytelling”, Artnodes, no. 18 (November), p. 1-10.
SCOLARI C. A. (2013), Narrativas transmedia: cuando todos los medios cuentan, Barcelona, Deusto.
SHEFRIN E. (2004), « Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and participatory fandom: mapping new congruencies between the internet and media entertainment culture », Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 21, no. 3 (September), p. 261-281.
VAN DIJCK J. (2009), « Users like you? Theorizing agency in user-generated content », Media, Culture & Society, vol. 31, no. 1 (January), p. 41-58.
WEBSTER J. G. (2017), « Three myths of digital media », Convergence, vol. 23, no. 4 (August), p. 352–361.
WEEDON A. and J. Knight (2015), “Media literacy and transmedia storytelling”, Convergence, vol. 21, no. 4 (November), p. 405-407.
WOLFF S. (2004), « Analysis of Documents and Records », in U. Flick, E. von Kardorff and I. Steinke (eds.), A Companion to Qualitative Research, London, Sage, p. 284-289.
Pedro Moura is a PhD student at the University of Minho, Portugal (Doctoral program in Communication Sciences). He is also a researcher at the Communication and Society Research Centre and was part of the Portuguese team that participated in the project Transmedia Literacy, funded by the European Union (TRANSLITERACY – 645238/Horizon 2020 – Research and Innovation actions). His main research interests are related to media reception, transmedia storytelling and media education/literacy.
Notes
[1] Aimed at US, Canada (except Quebec), Australia and New Zealand residents. In parallel, there were two other similar initiatives: one for some countries from South-East Asia, Germany and Mexico, and another, named My Rogue Story, for children (8-12 years old) from the United States and Canada (also excluding Quebec).
[2] <http://www.starwars.com/news/go-rogue-and-tell-your-star-wars-story-in-upcoming-contest>
[3] The rules can be found at <http://cdnvideo.dolimg.com/cdn_assets/e37226580c69351004882dcdc8cecb8e229d7a77.pdf>
[4] They (or their parents/guardians, if they were minor) would have to sign a written permission to participate.
[5] Published on YouTube at 7 April 2016. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wji-BZ0oCwg&t>
[6] The first one was uploaded on YouTube at 11 August 2016 and it is available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frdj1zb9sMY>. The second one was published on 13 October 2016 and it is available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC9abcLLQpI>.
[7] Available at: <http://www.starwars.com/go-rogue-contest>.
[8] The Oxford Living Dictionaries defines it as “an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect”. Definition available at: <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/parody>.