Transmedia Selves: Identity and Persona Creation in the Age of Mobile and Multiplatform Media

This book examines the mediated shift in the contemporary human condition, focusing on the ways in which we synthesise with media content in daily life, essentially transmediating ourselves into new forms and (re)creating ourselves across media.

Across an international roster of essays, this book establishes a transdisciplinary theory for the ’transmedia self’, exploring how technological ubiquity and digital self-determination combine with themes and disciplines such as celebrity culture, fandom, play, politics, and ultimately broader self-conception and projection to inform the creation of transmedia identities in the twenty-first century. Specifically, the book repositions transmediality as key to understanding the formation of identity in a post-digital media culture and transmedia age, where our lives are interlaced, intermingled, and narrativised across a range of media platforms and interfaces.

This book is ideal for scholars and students interested in transmedia storytelling, cultural studies, media studies, sociology, philosophy, and politics.

Dr Matthew Freeman is Reader in Multiplatform Media at Bath Spa University, where he is the Research Lead for Film and Media and Co-Director of The Centre for Media Research in the Bath School of Art, Film and Media. Matthew led the university’s Communication, Cultural and Media Studies submission to REF2021, and is currently the Course Leader for the the BA (Hons) Media Communications degree. Matthew is the Founder & Director of Immersive Promotion Design Ltd., a new breed of R&D-led marketing consultancy that supports virtual and augmented reality creatives and businesses to better communicate with their audiences about the magic of immersive content. The company is based at The Studio in Bath, Bath Spa University’s new enterprise & innovation hub for creative technology.