Augmented Storytelling and Netflix Series Promotion Strategy
Résumé
The study focuses on two cases: Stranger Things, a science fiction series released in 2016, and 13 Reasons Why, which deals with a number of issues related to adolescence, including suicide, broadcast from 2017 to 2020. In other words, we are examining how Netflix promotes its series through transmedia storytelling strategies. Jenkins (2006) defines transmedia storytelling as “a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience”. The main hypothesis guiding this research is as follows: Netflix’s original series are fictional universes, in other words, imaginary worlds based on real potentialities (Dolezel 1998). They are therefore reserves of stories from which the platform draws its marketing sources. Each fictional universe thus serves as a pretext to extend or prolong the storytelling in transmedia promotion strategies based on one central story, which Jenkins (2006) calls “mothership”.