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A Recipe for Audience Engagement: An Examination of Cross Media Storytelling with Digital Media

Abstract:

“A Recipe for Audience Engagement and the accompanying creative piece, The Shipwrecked Bakery, were created in response to the question, ‘How can digital media be used to enhance a story?’ The exegesis focusses on a set of case studies, each an existing cross media work with digital media elements. The three case studies – webcomic Questionable Content, the online marketing campaign for Monsters University, and YouTube series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries – are introduced and examined. Each investigation examines the real world structure of the project, the effect this structure has on the story, and the way this culminates in the project’s overall presentation and reception. This same structure is applied to The Shipwrecked Bakery, as the results of these investigations directly informed the development of its structure and cross media elements. The exegesis concludes by answering the initial question. Digital media can be used to enhance a story by lending the story a greater sense of verisimilitude, situating the story in a world the audience is familiar with, and fleshing out characters and environments beyond what may be allowed by the story structure. “

The exegetical component of my Honours thesis, A Recipe for Audience Engagement, is available for download.