Transmedia Storytelling & Web 4.0 — an upcoming love story : Investigating transmedia storytelling across Web 2.0 & 3.0 to assess its relationship with Web 4.0

Sammanfattning: The world wide web has gone through several distinct eras since its launch in 1989, going through the eras Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0. There is an upcoming era, Web 4.0, where the web will become seamlessly integrated with people's everyday life. However, creating consumer engagement across platforms has already been recognized as challenging in Web 3.0 (Dolan et al., 2016). A type of storytelling, known for creating engagement is transmedia storytelling (TS). TS is a technique of telling one single story across multiple platforms, and when enjoyed together becomes a full experience. There is limited research conducted on the relationship between TS and the web, which became the problem of this study. The purpose of this study is to explorethe research gap and it was fulfilled by asking two research questions. The first oneestablished an understanding about the relationship between TS and Web 2.0 and 3.0, tounderstand how TS evolves and adapts to the web. Based on the built foundation, the second question aimed to explore the possibilities of TS and Web 4.0, and how they could benefit from each other and grow together. To answer our research questions this paper utilised the method of a multiple-case study that examines two cases, one in Web 2.0, and one in Web 3.0. The data was manually collected, traced and broken down into instances using reverse engineering. To analyse the data, it was rebuilt with visual mapping to understand the connections, and lastly compared to the web characteristics and TS principles. Concluding the findings and analysis, it can be established that TS evolves alongside the web, utilising and adapting to the new characteristics. In Web 2.0, TS relied heavily on offline sources such as DVD’s and TV, while in Web 3.0, it existed solely online. The participatory activity also grew from Web 2.0 to 3.0, where the users were an active part of the campaign evolving in Web 3.0. TS manages to create engagement across platforms, and benefits from new technical innovations. After the individual case reports, and cross-case analysis, it could be concluded that TS has good chances of continuing to adapt in the rise of Web 4.0. This study explored the research gap further, offering valuable insight onthe topic and opening for various further research possibilities, where TS and web cancontinue being investigated.