Geographies of Free Labor: Conceptualizing and Analyzing the 'Transmediascape'

• In Event: Labor in Media Industries

Abstract

This paper suggests the notion of transmediascape as an analytical framework for discerning the fuzzy geographies of present-day transmedia productions as well as ongoing changes in mediated forms of cultural production and consumption. Briefly put, the concept is meant to refer to the materialization of transmediality into a landscape of media platforms and augmented places, and routes between these. We apply the notion of transmediascape to an actual case of cultural production within the music domain, a marketing campaign by boyband One Direction, with the specific intent to make manifest the ways in which consumers are invited into these landscapes as co-producers, or, as is our outlook here, as free labor. In doing so, we are ultimately able to enter into a critical discussion about the power dynamics that play out between different agents involved in the making of transmediascapes.

Authors

• Karin Fast, Karlstad University

• Linda Ryan Bengtsson, Karlstad U

• Raul Ferrer Conill, Karlstad U