Call for Papers : Transmedia Histories

Media history is composed of a myriad of parallel histories, which makes comparisons difficult. Research in the field has indeed long focused on single types of – often legacy – media or single institutions within their national contexts. In the mid-2000s, however, the transnational turn allowed for new trends in research objectives to emerge. Research scopes overcame previous temporal and spatial frameworks and thereby became less driven by institutional perspectives than by contents and their circulation. Moreover, this new focus on transnational perspectives enlarged its scope to encompass a wider range of topics within media history, such as technologies and communication. The development of the history of communication, cultural industries, techniques, and international relations all contributed to a form of decompartmentalisation that paved the way for a more comprehensive history of media systems. These new approaches were made possible most notably by mass digitisation of media sources and the improvement of their online accessibility to researchers. International research networks, such as the Transnational Radio Encounters, have gathered around such transnational ambitions. The transnational turn was a major breakthrough that resulted in important publications (e.g. Mollier and Lyon 2012; Fickers and Johnson 2012; Badenoch, Fickers and Henrich-Franke 2013).

It remains, however, that research in media history continues to face borders it has not managed to cross yet: beyond geographical borders, those between media institutions and between different types of media (Cronqvist and Hilgert 2017, 134). This challenge gave the impulse for the establishment of the Entangled Media Histories (EMHIS) network in 2013. In a milestone article published in 2017, Marie Cronqvist and Christoph Hilgert defined the concept of entangled media histories “as a means of better understanding the dynamic interconnectedness of media across semiotic, technological, institutional and political boundaries in history” (Cronqvist and Hilgert 2017, 130). Rather than accumulating histories of different media, they advocated for a focus on the elements that bridge them. However, a lack of empirical studies persists, primarily due to the enduring division of knowledge and the practical challenges associated with navigating separate, multilingual archives. These factors discourage research that moves beyond compartmentalised, sector-specific approaches. Exceptions notwithstanding, monomedia perspectives still dominate the field of media history and too little research is being carried out on exchanges and cooperation between media.

This special issue aims to extend those efforts and reflections by inviting papers that prioritise a transmedia approach. We seek to present research that explores media history through the simultaneous analysis of different media, thereby emphasising the significance of the media ecosystems in which they co-evolve. ‘Media’ is understood in a broad sense here. It includes traditional media (books, posters, press, cinema, radio and television), but also more recent historical examples such as video games and the Internet (e.g. streaming services, podcasts, online news). The targeted timeframe is extensive, though – per the scope of TMG—Journal for Media History – a historical perspective has to be central. The special issue ultimately seeks to contribute to a decompartmentalised and interconnected history of media. The featured articles will not only place media history within a broader social, political, and cultural context but also foster a dialogue among them.

We invite articles that could fall within three promising research axes:

1. Transmedia circulations, adaptations and reciprocal influences

The aim of this strand of research is to identify and analyse various factors that facilitate the circulation of content and formats across media and/or that foster interactions between media:

• specific actors or media professions such as news and advertising agencies, foreign correspondents, exiles and diaspora representatives active in various media, translators, arrangers, cross-border media;
• spaces of circulation and exchanges that transcend traditional political and/or linguistic boundaries, such as fictional serial productions, co-productions, joint-broadcasts, technical cooperation associations in the telecommunications field, foreign-language press;
• socio-economic factors like concentration and financial globalisation, liberalisation and deregulation, convergence and new consumption habits.
• the rhythms and temporality of information, the modes of circulation (e.g. scissors-and-paste journalism), adaptations and reconfigurations (e.g. comics to radio)
• the transmission of practices and the mobility of people or resistance to these phenomena, i.e. factors that hinder or trouble transmedia circulation (seasonal and geopolitical conditions, legal matters, censorship, etc.)

2. Intersections, reconfigurations and new media genealogies

The goal of this strand is to refine our understanding of how media define themselves in relation to each other and how – from a diachronic-historical perspective – once-new media were perceived, integrated, and critiqued. We aim to identify productions and documentary resources that reflect such intertwined relations, such as anticipation tales, criticism in the press, advertising productions, etc. Potential questions to be addressed are:

• How did the advent of new media affect existing media? How were they perceived and narrated by other media?
• How do media publicize, promote, and criticize each other’s content? What are motives and strategies?
• What “media imaginaries” emerged and how did these perhaps shape new periodisations of media history?

3. New approaches, resources and methods

In what ways can the mass digitisation of archival collections and the advancement of computational analysis tools foster transmedia research? Computational research methods allow processing large volumes of data and in recent times also increasingly across languages and modalities (e.g. image, text, sound). Until recently, most projects that embraced data-driven approaches focused on a single media, mostly the press. Research now starts to explore how to set up the processing—and how to conduct the analysis—of transmedia data; projects in the likes of TwiXL: An infrastructure for cross-media research on public debates, Clariah Media Suite and Impresso - Media Monitoring of the Past II all welcomed this goal. The third axis of this special issue thus, a.o., seeks to

• identify new and/or digital approaches that facilitate and bolster comparisons.
• discuss methods which enable analyses of the circulation of contents and formats at scale, in order to enhance our understanding of information fluxes. We therefore look to understand the effects that such tools have on studying transmedia histories, based on concrete historical case studies.

We also welcome contributions utilizing a transmedia perspective which are beyond these thematic lines but are still complementary to the overall special issue.

In short, this special issue seeks to contribute to the clarification and development of a transmedia approach in the historical sciences. It aims to address transmedia from a historical, long-term perspective based on concrete historical case studies and original research and, more broadly, to promote a decompartmentalised, entangled history of media.

Submission procedure and important dates

Abstract submissions are due on May 31, 2025. They have to be in English and have present the main research question(s), academic literature, data, method and concrete historical case study the authors plan to use. Abstracts should not exceed 1500 words. Please submit your abstract and a short bio to all four guest editors at transmediahistories@gmail.com.

Since this special issue follows from the Transmedia conference referred to above, it is addressed primarily – but not exclusively! – to those who presented there. Those scholars, who already submitted an abstract before, can either send in the same abstract, or send in an updated version. Either way, make sure it complies with the above instructions.

In June, we will inform the authors whether they are invited to submit a full article. Selected authors shall be invited to submit an article of 6000-8000 words (including notes). Final acceptance depends on a double-blind peer review process. Deadline for the manuscript is November 1, 2025. Revised drafts are expected by March 1, 2026 (and, if necessary, a second round of rewriting and reviews in the ensuing months). Copy-editing will take place in the Fall. The special issue will be published in January 2027. If you have questions, please contact the editors of the special issue, Raphaëlle Ruppen Coutaz, François Vallotton, Martin Grandjean and Jesper Verhoef at transmediahistories@gmail.com.