Abstract:

In the era of the Internet, media literacy is surrounded by an array of paratextual information that inevitably extends the core curriculum of education. Learning becomes impregnated within and constituted by an intertextual web that pushes textual boundaries outward the classroom, and vice-versa. As an emerging cultural practice, video remixing is an important gateway into a larger learning culture that helps support students as they construct their identities and navigate their social environments [1]. Video remixing has a pedagogical value: to extend and enrich the intertextual web of transmedia storytelling, conceived as a process of experiencing a whole story from different discursive pieces. From a rhetoric point of view, we treat remix as a digital argument that works across the registers of sound, text, and image. In this paper, two distinct but complementary modalities of remixing are discussed: the speculative transmedia extension of stories (interpretations from a canon source that contradicts reality or belief); and the digital transcreation of short stories (reactions to narrative dissonances). Particularly, we look at responses able to encourage and organize students’ creativity. Our analysis indicate that the two modalities of video remixing are organized around the “what if?” practice of storytelling, in contrast to Jenkins’ model of “what is” strategy of transmedia extension [2]. We conclude by suggesting a possible approach for dealing with the complexity of the “what if?” that also incorporates the “what is” in transmedia storytelling: the three acts’ pattern of Campbell, The Hero’s Journey. [3].

Keywords:

Media literacy, video remixing, creativity, transmedia storytelling, The Hero’s Journey.