Circulating and enriching content aimed at children: Transmedia/Media mix…
Résumé
This part, which has four chapters devoted to very different productions, while dealing with the question of the transmedia(l) and the circulation of contents on different media, shows us a diversity of mechanisms and strategies. Although in all four cases displayed there is transmedia, albeit in varying forms and degrees, the transmedia fulfils different objectives in each case.
Transmedia refers to the distribution of the story on different media (Jenkins, 2006), which may be more or less close to an adaptation, while media mix, beyond this distribution, takes into account marketing and commercial considerations, in particular the profitability of a television series through its tie-ins (Steinberg, 2012). Behind these different forms, we discover a plurality of ways of addressing a children’s audience and of conceiving the interaction between different media. The four texts in this section reflect these differences, and one could argue that there is nothing in common between Pokémon on the one hand and Secret Path on the other – they are two worlds that seem to be at odds with each other. However, the presence of two other productions, Petit Poilu and The Long Long Holiday, allows us to overcome this opposition between a mass market product on the one hand and a critical, militant and esthetically innovative product on the other, by providing a less clear-cut diversity.