This paper describes an ecological approach to new media narratives. The paper will appear in italian in Media Mutations conference proceedings book.
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Narratives as spatial stories in hybrid ecosystem Kai Pata Tallinn University, Center for Educational Technology email: [email protected]1. Introduction The rapid outburst of various kinds of mutually interconnected productive social media tools usable for lifelogging with mobile devices has created a possibility for initiating narratives as consumer-evolved hybrid ecosystems around popular books, TV-series, cartoons etc. Doyle and Kim (2007) wrote in “Embodied narrative: the virtual nomad and the meta-dreamer”: "as we now live in multiple realities, as we now occupy multiple spaces, our cultural dream- pool will soon include the very real, or lived, experiences of embodiment in virtual worlds, and in turn, new narratives will emerge." Henry Jenkins (2007) suggested in his blog post about transmedia storytelling that influential stories provide a set of roles and goals which readers can assume as they enact aspects of the story through their everyday life. The books, films, and commercially created transmedia narratives lead consumers into the distributed story world, where different media formats enable to grasp and add different dimensions to the story. For the narrative fragments created by the readers with social media the word extension is used, because these enable to extend the stories. In this paper I argue that narrative extensions are spatially used for personal placement in the hybrid narrative ecosystem, since audiences want to be immersed into the storyworld to participate and feel part of it. I will conceptualize narratives as geo- and onto-spatially located story prototypes that people use for their placement in the hybrid ecosystem and for seeking or creating the optimal interaction possibilities with it. The concepts and principles of ecology, such as ecosystem, have been used in different subject areas – information and knowledge management, media, digital system design, learning and semiotics – to study how the mediating environments, the information/contents of messages and the users’ perception and action are mutually interrelated. In this article I will introduce some ecological concepts and principles that may be useful in hybrid narrative ecosystems and discuss how the spatial format of narratives is created and supported by hybrid narrative ecosystem, and which narrative activities does it allow. 2. The Shadow of the Wind Case in new media environments In order to interrelate the ecology concepts with the situations in narrative hybrid ecosystem, I will use The Shadow of the Wind Case description: There is an imaginary “community” of users from different geographical locations in new media environments, who are not personally acquainted to each other but they all are attracted by one particular “story“ – based on the book „The Shadow of the Wind“ by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. The website of the book offers an annotated intinerary on the google-map to visit the geographical locations of the book in Barcelona (http://www.carlosruizzafon.co.uk/shadow-walk.html ). However, the book has not been deliberately created as a commercial transmedia narrative which targets proactive new media consumers. Yet, in the book Zafon has written lines that very well illustrate the idea, how narratives are empowered by readers: “Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it, and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.” These story-fans that in this case empower the book are familiar with and use actively various types of new media environments, such as Twitter, Instagram, Statigram, Tumbrl, etc. In all of these environments, the “digital services” like tag, hashtag and geotag; push and pull; mash and embed; share, follow and like may be used in such a way that the media contents initially uploaded by one user in one of these
Transcript
1. Narratives as spatial stories in hybrid ecosystemKai
PataTallinn University, Center for Educational Technologyemail:
[email protected]. IntroductionThe rapid outburst of various kinds of
mutually interconnected productive social media toolsusable for
lifelogging with mobile devices has created a possibility for
initiating narratives asconsumer-evolved hybrid ecosystems around
popular books, TV-series, cartoons etc. Doyleand Kim (2007) wrote
in Embodied narrative: the virtual nomad and the meta-dreamer:"as
we now live in multiple realities, as we now occupy multiple
spaces, our cultural dream-pool will soon include the very real, or
lived, experiences of embodiment in virtual worlds,and in turn, new
narratives will emerge." Henry Jenkins (2007) suggested in his blog
postabout transmedia storytelling that influential stories provide
a set of roles and goals whichreaders can assume as they enact
aspects of the story through their everyday life. The books,films,
and commercially created transmedia narratives lead consumers into
the distributedstory world, where different media formats enable to
grasp and add different dimensions tothe story. For the narrative
fragments created by the readers with social media the
wordextension is used, because these enable to extend the stories.
In this paper I argue thatnarrative extensions are spatially used
for personal placement in the hybrid narrativeecosystem, since
audiences want to be immersed into the storyworld to participate
and feelpart of it. I will conceptualize narratives as geo- and
onto-spatially located story prototypesthat people use for their
placement in the hybrid ecosystem and for seeking or creating
theoptimal interaction possibilities with it.The concepts and
principles of ecology, such as ecosystem, have been used in
differentsubject areas information and knowledge management, media,
digital system design,learning and semiotics to study how the
mediating environments, the information/contentsof messages and the
users perception and action are mutually interrelated. In this
article Iwill introduce some ecological concepts and principles
that may be useful in hybrid narrativeecosystems and discuss how
the spatial format of narratives is created and supported byhybrid
narrative ecosystem, and which narrative activities does it
allow.2. The Shadow of the Wind Case in new media environmentsIn
order to interrelate the ecology concepts with the situations in
narrative hybrid ecosystem,I will use The Shadow of the Wind Case
description: There is an imaginary community ofusers from different
geographical locations in new media environments, who are
notpersonally acquainted to each other but they all are attracted
by one particular story basedon the book The Shadow of the Wind by
Carlos Ruiz Zafon. The website of the book offersan annotated
intinerary on the google-map to visit the geographical locations of
the book inBarcelona
(http://www.carlosruizzafon.co.uk/shadow-walk.html). However, the
book has notbeen deliberately created as a commercial transmedia
narrative which targets proactive newmedia consumers. Yet, in the
book Zafon has written lines that very well illustrate the idea,how
narratives are empowered by readers: Every book, every volume you
see here, has asoul. The soul of the person who wrote it, and of
those who read it and lived and dreamedwith it. Every time a book
changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages,its
spirit grows and strengthens. These story-fans that in this case
empower the book arefamiliar with and use actively various types of
new media environments, such as Twitter,Instagram, Statigram,
Tumbrl, etc. In all of these environments, the digital services
like tag,hashtag and geotag; push and pull; mash and embed; share,
follow and like may be used insuch a way that the media contents
initially uploaded by one user in one of these
2. environments can be viewed in many different locations and
ways, for example situated onthe maps by geotags, filtered by
certain meaning-associated tags and hashtags, woven intosome
narratives by embedding, mashing or remixing. With the activation
of certain services,each user has combined a specific personal
narrative environment to aid his productivestorytelling activities
with the self-created or found media contents associated in a
personallymeaningful way with that story. For example, they can
take pictures, write impressions,annotate and tag the contents,
modify the original, self-created or found story contents,remix
contents and share them. These users, the new media environments
and thegeographical locations of users and the story, as well as,
the media contents associated withthat story form the hybrid
narrative ecosystem of The Shadow of the Wind.3. Ecology of
narratives in The Shadow of the Wind ecosystemNext, my intention is
to find analogies between ecology concepts and principles and
thenarrative storytelling of The Shadow of the Wind Case. Ecology
as a discipline deals withdifferent levels of structural elements
of ecosystems, both biotic and abiotic. Note that thereis no
consistency in literature what to consider as biotic and abiotic
factors in digitalenvironments users, media content, technology and
services have all been classified asliving species or as part of
the abiotic environment. In ecology the biotic factors areorganized
in a set of entities grouped in a growing complexity order:
individual organism,species, population, community and ecosystem.
The sub-disciplines of ecology deal withthese complexity levels,
therefore, I will introduce the concepts in association with
them.Behavioral ecology focuses on the communicative interactions
of individual organisms ofthe animal species with variable
phenotypes and behavior. Individual organisms haveawareness and
they interact, communicate, move, reproduce, and die while living
in certainconditions and environments. Depending on these
interactions the fitness the extent towhich an organism is adapted
to cope in the particular environment is determined.Adaptability is
the extent how much a system (organism, population, species) is fit
to theenvironment where it functions and it is measured with its
ability to stay alive and reproduce.Individual organisms are
self-directed they operate for their own benefit or profit.
Theycompete with other organisms from this or from other species
for limited resources.We may consider several types of digital
organisms in narrative ecosystems such as digitalmedia contents,
digital tools and services for narrative production, and the
produsers. Theproduser term is associated with the produsage
concept introduced by Bruns (2008).Produsage concept combines users
production and consumption as inseparable of eachother in the
surrounding environment. Digitally we can limit the produsers to
these users whohave created accounts for produsage in new media
environments, since only they can interactwith the described hybrid
ecosystem. Each element of the narrative created/used by
produsermay be considered as a specimen of the symbiotic digital
organism, consisting of aproduser-created media element and some
produser-activated services of digital tools. Forexample, a
produser has visited a location from the story, taken a picture
with Instagram,added the geotag and the hashtags of the story and
some other personally meaningfulhashtags as well, pushed this image
to Twitter with a tweet (see Fig. 1, left), or embedded itto his
Tumblr blog story and Tweeted about it (see Fig. 1, right).
3. Figure 1. The story elements from Twitter represent
symbiotic produser-activated organismsfrom the Embodied Place and
the Creation species, which are composed of contents andservices
that give the variability to these organisms withn the
species.These digital organisms have variability in characteristics
and behavior due to theprodusers intentions, perceptions and
cultural belonging. They may have some awareness ofother narrative
story elements for example by tags, hashtag; by geotags and web
address; theyare inhabiting certain geographical and virtual
locations; they may interact with othernarrative story elements in
these locations of the habitat, for example by embed and
mashservices; they may migrate from one location to another for
example by push and pullservices; in different locations they may
have different ability to reproduce, and be modifieddepending of
the software platform possibilities and user habits in the
communities; they mayhave a different life-span in these
environments, for example at Twitter wall the digitalorganisms
might die sooner than in Tumblr, since the use of hashtagging habit
that allowsfiltering and reuse is culturally weaker. The
variability is associated with different fitness ofthose narrative
story elements in different surroundings of the hybrid narrative
system.One communication-based phenomenon described by behavioral
ecology is swarming(Bonabeau, Dorigo & Theraulaz, 1999) that is
a self-organized behavior where localinteractions between
decentralized organisms of some species can create complex
organizedbehavior. Individuals in swarms have ecological relations
to the collective. They maintaintheir individuality and viability
in case if the collective swarm intelligence and viabilityemerges
(Sauter, Matthews, Parunak, van Dyke & Brueckner, 2005). In a
swarm everyindividual organism is only responsible for its
individual actions, but the actions all togethercause shared
intelligence to emerge. Swarming is based on mutual awareness
andcommunicative acts between organisms, either on direct real-time
signals or on the signalsthat are offloaded to the environment
using it as a shared memory. Reading swarm signalsfrom the
environment and directly from the swarm members enables organisms
to maintainindividual wellbeing and accommodate themselves to be
fit. Such swarming systems canaccomplish global tasks and form
complex patterns through simple local interactions ofautonomous
organisms.For example in hybrid narrative systems we may consider
communicative interactionsbetween active produsers such as
requesting, informing and sharing (Tomasello, 2008)narrative story
elements to be used for initiating the swarming of narrative story
elements.Each narrative story element, created and activated by
produsers as part of their narrative
4. activities around the story, can stay tuned to the local and
global surroundings and the othernarrative story elements currently
alive in the hybrid narrative system (for example bycommunicative
signals of tags and hash- and geotags), and this may cause
swarmingphenomena to appear in meaningful places of the virtual or
geographical locations.For instance, if a narrative element
associated with the story is tagged, hash- or geotaggedin Tumblr or
Instagram, these may be accumulated and found by many produsers
using tagsas signals inspiring the other produsers to create
similar elements. The swarm signaling byaccumulated tags in the
hybrid narrative system is a self-organized process, in which
sometags will perish since they are rarely used and others may
survive since being frequentlyadded by many produsers. The swarming
that appears due to real time awareness of narrativeelements may be
found more in the environments that use the flow, such as
Twitter.Figure 2. The variations of the Quote species from
Instagram, Tumbrl and Twitter habitats.Population ecology deals
with the populations of organisms of species. It focuses on
thedependence of individual organisms on the other organisms in the
population of species, aswell as on their dependence on the
informational connections between individual organismsin the
populations. Population ecology uses the concepts of variability,
abundance, densityand the distribution of individual organisms
within one population and within one species incertain habitats.
Species is an abstraction for the class of organisms, having some
commonqualities, characteristics and behavior and ability to give
offspring. Species exists in time as arange of qualities,
characteristics and behaviors inherited or learned from those
individualorganisms that were fit to the living conditions.For
instance, in hybrid narrative systems tags and hashtags may
describe the qualities of thenarrative story elements; the
services, which are used for sharing these story elements
allowcertain behaviors for the story elements; and produsers
interaction with these contents allowsthem to be multiplied and
modified in different new media environments. In The Shadow ofthe
Wind ecosystem the following species could be empirically found by
labelling the themesthat reappeared in different media
environments: the Book, the Reader, the Author,the Illustration
(see Figure 1), the Quote (see Figure 2), the Caption, the
EmbodiedPlace (see Figures 1 and 3) and the Embodied Action.In
narrative ecosystems the species may be discovered either by
inductive or deductive way.In the inductive analysis the emergent
content categories may be disovered as memes orpatterns and
labelled as species as was done in this paper. In the deductive
analysis one mayalso look for certain pre-defined expected species
that are related with the initial story. Thatmay be useful, if one
is interested in investigating how a certain narrative or
transmedianarrative with its complex characters, roles, activities,
visuals, language, concepts etc. mightinfluence the produsers. For
example the character of Julian Carax and the Fathers BookShop (it
was classified and generalised as the Place species) seemed to be
inspiring theprodusers in the Shadow of the Wind ecosystem.
However, in this paper it was not aimed todemonstrate what
characteristics of the original book might have evoked the
produsers tocontribute to The Shadow of The Wind ecosystem. To see
how the original book, hasinvolved different produsers to create
the Quote species an interested reader might for
5. example compare the frequencies of most popular quotes, such
as Books are mirrors: youonly see in them what you already have
inside you. appearing in Twitter, Tumbrl andInstagram, or see the
quotes qualitative transmutations as Figure 2 demonstrated and
positwhich of these organisms of the same species might survive
longer (be liked and shared byother produsers) in the narrative
ecosystem.Figure 3. The examples of the Embodied Place species from
Twitter (left) and Tumbrl(right) habitats.Each species uses a
particular niche this concept denotes the abstract range of biotic
andabiotic conditions that enable the fitness of the organisms of
this species. The niche may bevisualized as a n-dimensional space
(Hutchinson, 1957). While niche is an abstractconceptualization
what the species would need for fitness, a habitat is a distinct
part of thereal environment, a place where an organism or a
biological population normally lives oroccurs and can be most
likely to be found.For example, the story images with different
hashtags in Instagram can create an abstractmeaning-space, an
ontospace defined by their basic categories of being this may
beconsidered the niche for the story image species (see Fig. 6),
whereas different geotagsallow marking the geographic range, which
is virtually enriched with Instagram storyimages and all together
forms the hybrid space of the habitat (see Fig. 4).Figure 4. A
hybrid location The Calle de la Princesa in the The Shadow of the
Windecosystem.Population is a group of individuals from the species
occupying a certain habitat in a certainarea. Populations have the
ability for homeostasis that is keeping the population density
6. within certain ranges independent of environmental
disturbances in this area. For example,the population of story
images from the Quote species may inhabit Instagram, Tumbrland
Twitter, but the distribution and density of these populations is
different in Twitter it isthe lowest since it is a habitat that
favors the compressed tweets by default and only theaddress of the
image appears in the initial tweet, also migrating the images
(pushing fromInstagram) requires an extra effort. The textual
quotes are more competitive (take less effortto create and remix)
than those that are illustrated with the image of the quote. The
organismsin a population that are physically situated close-by can
influence each other more frequently,intensively and many-sided
ways. For example, when a produser is sorting the narrativeelements
into feeds by tags and hashtags, the similar contents are mashed
and appear closeby(see Figure 5), and it becomes possible noticing
different species of that story and the internalvariety.Figure 5.
Filtering the story images species community in the narrative
ecosystem with thehashtag #carlosruizsafon enables the produser to:
grasp the most catching aspects of TheShadow of The Wind; see the
variability within different story-species for inspiration;deduce
the fitness of story element species in this ecosystem by their
frequence of usage;evoke to contribute either an innovative way or
by adding some similar content that in turnmight fuel
swarming.Populations are unable to reproduce themselves if the
density of organisms in this area staysbelow the critical level. To
keep optimal density populations use different strategies, such
asthe formation of various aggregations. The Instagram habitat
allows the critical mass of thestory images for their wellbeing.
Since the story images are distributed by hashtags intodifferent
sub-niches in the meaning-space the co-existence of different
viewpoints to thestory in the same habitat might become possible
(see Fig. 6).
7. Figure 6. The meaning niche of The Shadow of the Wind
composed by plotting the ofInstagram hashtags as the
multi-dimensional space differentiates the more popular
attractionareas in the meaning niche. The Embodied Place, the Book,
the Caption and theQuote species in narrative ecosystem may be
considered as the spatial story prototypes.We may also say that
different habitats of Instagram, Twitter and Tumbrl contain
somesimilar niche dimensions that allow the story images to inhabit
these spaces (for examplethe hastags #carlosruiszafon;
#theshadowofthewind). Populations grow rapidly only if thereare
many resources available and their growth decreases when the
resources become scare.Resources are part of the abiotic elements
in ecosystems and I will discuss what might be theabiotic parts in
hybrid narrative ecosystems further on.Different species use
different population strategies: a) the opportunistic
(r-strategy)populations prevail in changing environmental
conditions that allow rapid population growth,short and one-time
lifecycles and no care for offspring. In this sense Twitter as the
produser-awareness based storytelling environment favors the
r-strategy for narrative contents: thecontents have a viral ability
to spread, but they disappear quickly from the flow and they arenot
taken care of (e.g. edited). The stabile (k-strategy) populations
invest more energy ontheir few offspring. For example, Tumbrl and
Instagram enable k-strategy populations ofstory elements, in which
the contents are well edited and annotated with tags and
hashtags,which allows better sharing, reuse and multiplication.A
recent literature in evolutionary theory emphasizes the idea of
niche construction as anecological factor (Odling-Smee, Laland
& Feldman, 2003) stressing the two legacies thatorganisms
inherit from their ancestors, genes and a modified environment (an
ecologicalinheritance) with its associated selection pressures.
They argue, that organisms have aprofound effect on the very
environment as a feedback loop, which must persist for longenough,
and with enough local consistency, to be able to have an
evolutionary effect.As an analogy, for any narrative story element
the niche as its meaning-space is determinedby all the specimen
that the produsers activated and tagged. Specimen of the narrative
storyelements need to adapt to the niche, but also create and
modify this niche and the speciesconceptualization of that kind of
narrative story elements. In hybrid narrative systems the tag-based
information of the meanings of the produser-activated narrative
story elements can beaccumulated as an ecological inheritance into
the meaning niche for a story, which may beused for the narrative
swarming.
8. The community ecology focuses on the coexisting communities
of species (note that theconcept is different from what is a
community of people), their composition, interactions,organization
and succession, as well as, on the trophic flows from autotrohic to
heterotrophicspecies. A community is a temporary coalition of
naturally occurring group of populationsfrom different species that
live together in the same habitat interacting with each other
andwith the environment. For example we may describe a trophic flow
analogy of pushing thestory images from Instagram to Tumbrl or
Twitter (see Fig 1, right). In this case the initialimage created
in Instagram may be seen as an autotrophic organism, whereas the
blog-post ortweet with the image from Instagram is like the
heterotophic organism that needs the trophicflow from Instagram.
However, the blog-posts and tweets without images in Twitter
andTumbrl may be considered autotrohic organisms, and are situated
at the beginning of thefood-chains.Important characteristics of the
sustainable community are the diversity of species within
thecommunity, their connectedness and aggregation, the
resource-sharing interactions betweenspecies such as antagonism
(the existence of one species excludes the existence of
otherspecies), competition (mediated suppression between species),
and mutualisms that areassociated with energy and matter exchanges
(including parasitism, symbiosis,commensalism) as well as
communicative interactions between species. Competition hasbeen
viewed as one of the strongest and most pervasive forces in
community ecology,responsible for the evolution of many
characteristics of organisms. The results of between-species
competition are mutualisms (symbiosis, parasitism). Previously I
have described thewithin-species competition in Twitter among the
textual and illustrated the Quote species.Within-species
competition causes territorial or aggregated distribution that in
one handstrengthens competition and induces hierarchies but on the
other hand it also increases communication, learning from each
other, and may promote the suitable microclimate for
narrators.Different species of The Shadow of the Wind ecosystem
seem to have different frequency,which may be associated with
general storytelling habits associated with book-narratives there
are many organisms that belong to the Quote or to the Book species,
however theEmbodied Place and Embodied Action appear rarely.
Therefore, it may be predicted thatprodusers in the hybrid
narrative story ecosystem cannot be easily engaged to
embodiedaction in geographical locations unless the density of such
offloaded story pierces increases.The ecosystem ecology deals with
the trophic relations the energy and matter flow inecosystem. The
transformations of matter and energy are mediated through the
functions andbehaviors of living organisms and abiotic components.
The basic principle of ecology is thatin natural systems the
resources are limited by abiotic factors and biotic species role is
tocompose, exchange, accumulate and decompose energy and matter. In
order to understandbetter the abiotic resource-based interactions
between narrative species at least two abioticfactors should be
determined: the energy and the matter. In hybrid narrative
ecosystems it ispossible to use attention of produsers as one of
the analogues of energy, and the createdmeanings, emotions and
actions may be suitable for the analogy of matter. Different
narrativespecies need the use produser-attention to stay alive,
reproduce and participate in thecomposition, exchange, accumulation
and decomposition of the story meanings, evokingthe produsers
emotions and actions in the hybrid narrative ecosystem.Ecosystem
ecology assumes that trophic relations between species within
ecosystem allowthe one-directional flow of energy and matter
through the ecosystem. The direction of theflow along the trophic
chains is directed from lower autotrophic organism levels (that
areable to assemble energy into the energy rich products) towards
heterotrophic organisms (thatneed energy-rich products to exist) to
those that dissemble matter and free the energy. The
9. temporal deposition of energy-rich products may also remove
them from the ecosystem flowsfor some time periods. The
permeability of a natural ecosystem to flow energy and
materialswill depend on the nature of the architecture of the
components of the system, theconnections in the trophic chains and
the side-paths and hubs in the trophic web andcharacteristics of
individual species. Secondly, the individuals within one species
andbetween the species interact with each other and these
interactions impact on the energy flow.Productivity is the ability
of systems (such as populations, ecosystems) to accumulate energyin
matter in time, and this concept may be used for comparing the
systems.The different produser-activated narrative story elements
may have variety of tag, hashtagand geotag-based connections
between them as well as there are connections betweenprodusers and
between narrative habitats that are made by mashing, embedding,
pulling andpushing services. All these connections provide the
connectivity for narrative ecosystem. Theproduser attention
(=energy) allows transforming provided information at separate
narrativeelements (=matter) into meanings, emotions and actions
(=matter). The narrative flow iscreated around the story which is
fuelled by producers attention and which has several by-products,
that may be accumulated to the hybrid narrative ecosystem and
further used assignals for narrative activities (as was described
in marrative swarming).4. Spatiality of narrative
ecosystemsSpatiality is a key concept in hybrid narrative
ecosystems. The unitedness of two spaces (theniche and habitat)
into a hybrid narrative ecosystem allows produsers movement
acrossvirtual-, geographical- and meaning-locations, initiating the
redefinition of these locationsbased on storytelling (e.g.
Barcelona as #thecityofshadows), and enables interaction
andcommunication between the produsers and the story-elements that
they create. Being in ageographical location (e.g. in old town of
Barcelona) a produser can explore the meaningniche that augments
it, discover different attractive areas in the meaning niche
related withthat location by other narrators (e.g. #love, #erotic,
#tragic, #time, #mysterious, #thrilling,#shadow), and view the
story elements situated in the virtual locations, which try to
competeor cooperate with each other in order to capture produsers
attention. The produser canassociate his new story element with one
or many of these places in the meaning-niche,adding particular
(hash)tags. When certain meanings are frequently used the
story-elementsaccumulate, increasing the produser-attraction to
certain meaning-places and shaping theniche, which in turn
influences, which properties of the story elements may give
advantagesfor survival. Any attractive meaning-dimension in the
meaning-niche representation(#theshadowofthewind) may be used to
discover other geographical or virtual locationsassociated with the
same meaning, and it can direct produsers from one geographical
location(e.g. La Rambla, Tibitabo in Barcelona at Fig. 6) or
virtual location to another. Emotional oraction potentialities (see
Fig. 3) may appear in the virtual or geographical locations of
thenarrative ecosystem due to the meaning-niche tags. Discovering
the similarly-minded peoplemay be promoted as well.Characteristic
to the hybrid narrative ecosystem are the produser-created
proactive story-elements the extensions with different
characteristics and fitness that inhabit particularvirtual or real
locations with suitable meaning-niches. Storytelling in spatial
mode is creatingand revisiting meaningful places in the hybrid
narrative ecosystem as a self-directed activityfor personal
placement. The feedback-loop to and from the ecosystem is created
by produser-participation in the composition and adaptation of the
meaning-niches and habitats. Thestories appear as a result of
accumulated swarming activities of many produsers and may
bedescribed as abstract story-species, which are adapted to and fit
to certain attraction areas inthe hybrid ecosystem space. For
instance, one may conceptualize these story-species asmemes. These
story-species have trophic and communicative connections with each
other
10. that channel the narrative flows in hybrid ecosystem and
cause the productivity of narrativeecosystems. An emergent
narrative flow that crosses attractive story-places may
becomedetectable only in time and may reveal the causal storylines
as patterns of shared mind, whichappear due to self-regulated
processes in the hybrid narrative ecosystem.5. ConclusionsThis
paper discussed the possibilities of using ecology concepts for
investigating narrativephenomena in new media environments.
Particularly the hybrid narrative The Shadow of TheWind ecosystem
was investigated with the focus of produser-created contents. The
spacelimits of this paper inhibited to take an insight, which
elements of the initial story in the bookwritten by Zafon, and in
what way, might have influenced the produsers in developing
certainstory-pierces in this ecosystem. It might be a subject of
future studies how a novel or acomplex transmedia narrative as an
ecosystem itself may function, and how it might beextended by
produsers storytelling activities. This paper suggested that
narrative ecosystemscould be studied at different ecosystem levels
to reveal the spatiality of narratives and well asthe narrative
flows in such ecosystems. Considering the spatiality of narratives
enablesdesigning story elements that are fit to the transmedia
ecosystem networks and may initiatefandom interactions with the
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