MediaEntity

MediaEntity
	Cover of the 2013 book
Author(s)	Emilie Tarascou and Simon Kansara
Website	www.mediaentity.net
Current status / schedule	Completed
Publisher(s)	Delcourt

Last updated April 23, 2019

MediaEntity is a Turbomedia webcomic created by Emilie Tarascou and Simon Kansara since 2012. Following the story of a young man whose social media account suddenly started generating compromising messages, the webcomic features a large amount of free bonus content that fits its paranoid theme. The webcomic was first released in print form in 2013, using augmented reality features.

Webcomics are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or in comic books.

Social media are interactive computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. The variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently available introduces challenges of definition; however, there are some common features:

Social media are interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications.
User-generated content, such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through all online interactions, is the lifeblood of social media.
Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization.
Social media facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.

Augmented reality view of the real world with computer-generated supplementary features

Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real-world are "augmented" by computer-generated perceptual information, sometimes across multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory, and olfactory. The overlaid sensory information can be constructive or destructive and is seamlessly interwoven with the physical world such that it is perceived as an immersive aspect of the real environment. In this way, augmented reality alters one's ongoing perception of a real-world environment, whereas virtual reality completely replaces the user's real-world environment with a simulated one. Augmented reality is related to two largely synonymous terms: mixed reality and computer-mediated reality.

Synopsis

MediaEntity is a paranoid thriller that follows the story of young trader Éric Magoni, whose account on the fictional social media website MediaEntity starts generating compromising messages out of its own. Éric is the first such victim of the website, which has a scheme that goes much deeper than first appears.^[1] The webcomic is about the loss of control over one's digital identity, as it poses ethical questions regarding the future of people's data and the companies that hold them.^[2]

Thriller is a broad genre of literature, film and television, having numerous, often overlapping subgenres. Thrillers are characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving viewers heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and anxiety. Successful examples of thrillers are the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

Trader (finance) person who buys and sells financial instruments

A trader is person or entity, in finance, who buys and sells financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, commodities, derivatives, and mutual funds in the capacity of agent, hedger, arbitrageur, or speculator.

Development

MediaEntity is the result of a four year long collaboration between visual designer Emilie Tarascou and screenwriter Simon Kansara. The duo based their work on the company Mutation Narrative, which was founded in December 2009 to promote audio-visual creation and publishing. Tarascou and Kansara noted in 2012 that they had enough funds to continue the project for at least five years.^[3] The MediaEntity website features a large amount of bonus content which, though not essential for the basic understanding of the webcomic, amplifies the reading experience.^[4] Tarascou and Kansara have created two social media accounts, an alternate reality roleplaying game titled MediaEntity: Smoke Screen (which allows players to take on the role of an illegal immigrant in the MediaEntity universe), and an interactive web series titled MediaEntity: Roots.^[1]

An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions.

A web series is a series of scripted or non-scripted videos, generally in episodic form, released on the Internet and part of the web television medium, which first emerged in the late 1990s and become more prominent in the early 2000s. A single instance of a web series program can be called an episode or "webisode", however the latter term is not often used. In general, web series can be watched on a range of platforms, including desktop, laptop, tablets and smartphones. They can also be watched on television.

The first volume of MediaEntity was released in print in August 2013. The seven-page booklet offered its content using augmented reality, which could be accessed using a mobile phone or tablet after downloading a required application. A second volume came out in January 2014.^[1]

MediaEntity was rereleased in a new digital form in 2018, with a new interactive treasure hunt. This time, readers were encouraged to explore an augmented reality mystery through PDF-files hidden within thumbnails, and Morse code messages posted on social media.^[2]^[5]

The Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format developed by Adobe in the 1990s to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. Based on the PostScript language, each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts, vector graphics, raster images and other information needed to display it. PDF was standardized as an open format, ISO 32000, in 2008, and no longer requires any royalties for its implementation.

Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures or videos, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and image-organizing programs normally use thumbnails, as do most modern operating systems or desktop environments, such as Microsoft Windows, macOS, KDE (Linux) and GNOME (Linux). On web pages, they also avoid the need to download larger files unnecessarily.

Morse code is a character encoding scheme used in telecommunication that encodes text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations called dots and dashes or dits and dahs. Morse code is named for Samuel F. B. Morse, an inventor of the telegraph.

Related Research Articles

Social software, also known as Web 2.0 applications or social apps, include communication and interactive tools often based on the Internet. Communication tools typically handle the capturing, storing and presentation of communication, usually written but increasingly including audio and video as well. Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a pair or group of users. They focus on establishing and maintaining a connection among users, facilitating the mechanics of conversation and talk. Although we do not have a generally accepted definition, social software generally refers to software that makes collaborative behaviour, the organisation and moulding of communities, self-expression, social interaction and feedback possible for individuals. Another important element of the existing definition of "social software" is that it allows for the structured mediation of opinion between people, in a centralized or self-regulating manner. The most improved area for social software is that Web 2.0 applications can all promote cooperation between people and the creation of online communities more than ever before.

Display advertising is advertising on websites or apps or social media through banners or other ad formats made of text, images, flash, video, and audio. The main purpose of display advertising is to deliver general advertisements and brand messages to site visitors.

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man is a 1964 book by Marshall McLuhan, in which the author proposes that the media, not the content that they carry, should be the focus of study. He suggests that the medium affects the society in which it plays a role mainly by the characteristics of the medium rather than the content. The book is considered a pioneering study in media theory.

Henry Jenkins III is an American media scholar and Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts, a joint professorship at the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He also has a joint faculty appointment with the USC Rossier School of Education. Previously, Jenkins was the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities as well as co-founder and co-director of the Comparative Media Studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has also served on the technical advisory board at ZeniMax Media, parent company of video game publisher Bethesda Softworks. In 2013, he was appointed to the board that selects the prestigious Peabody Award winners.

Digital Life is a research and educational program about radically rethinking of the human-computer interactive experience. It integrates digital world and physical world. It makes interfaces more responsive and proactive

Ramona Pringle is a Canadian digital journalist, television host, multiplatform media producer, actress and professor. Currently she is the Director of the Transmedia Zone at Ryerson University, an incubator for innovation in media, and a Technology Columnist for CBC.

BD-J, or Blu-ray Disc Java, is a specification supporting Java ME Xlets for advanced content on Blu-ray Disc and the Packaged Media profile of Globally Executable MHP (GEM).

Media psychology is the branch of psychology that focuses on the interaction of human behavior and media and technology. Media psychology is not restricted to mass media or media content; it includes all forms of mediated communication and media technology-related behaviors, such as the use, design, impact and sharing behaviors. This branch is a relatively new field of study because of advancement in technology. It uses various methods of critical analysis and investigation to develop a working model of a user's perception on media experience. These methods are used for society as a whole and on an individual basis. Media psychologists are able to perform activities that include consulting, design, and production in various media like television, video games, films, and news broadcasting. Media psychologists are not considered to be those who are featured in media, rather than those who research, work or contribute to the field.

Transmedia storytelling is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies, not to be confused with traditional cross-platform media franchises, sequels, or adaptations, but usually working together with these other mediums.

Virtual graffiti consists of virtual objects and/or digital messages, images, multimedia or other annotations or graphics applied to public locations, landmarks or surfaces such as walls, train stations, bridges, etc. Virtual graffiti applications utilize augmented reality and ubiquitous computing to anchor virtual graffiti to physical landmarks or objects in the real world. The virtual content is then viewable through devices such as personal computers, smartglasses, set-top boxes or mobile handsets, such as mobile phones or PDAs. The virtual world provides content, graphics, and applications to the user that are not available in the real world. Virtual graffiti is a novel initiative aimed at delivering messaging and social multimedia content to mobile applications and devices based on the location, identity, and community of the participating entity.

Antoine Bello is a French-American author born in Boston, Massachusetts, whose works have been widely translated. His novels touch on multiple subjects, such as the relation between reality and fiction, human cognition and journalism. He writes in French, his native tongue. He has been living in the greater New York Area since 2002.

Augmented learning is an on-demand learning technique where the environment adapts to the learner. By providing remediation on-demand, learners can gain greater understanding of a topic while stimulating discovery and learning.

Andrea Phillips is an American transmedia game designer and writer. She has been active in the genres of transmedia storytelling and alternate reality games (ARGs), in a variety of roles, since 2001. She has written for, designed, or substantially participated in the creation of Perplex City, the BAFTA-nominated Routes, and The 2012 Experience, a marketing campaign for the film 2012.

Invizimals is an augmented reality video game franchise developed by Novarama and published by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. The series, which originally began in 2009 as a video game on PSP, has since inspired toys, trading cards, comics and an animated television series telling an interconnected transmedia story.

Zviane is a comics creator and a musician from Montréal, Quebec.

Check, Please! is a 2013 webcomic written and illustrated by Ngozi Ukazu. The webcomic follows vlogger and figure-turned-ice hockey skater Eric "Bitty" Bittle as he deals with hockey culture in college, as well as his identity as a gay man. Ukazu provides fans of Check, Please! a variety of extra content through her Tumblr and a dedicated Twitter account; establishing a piece of transmedia storytelling to expand on worldbuilding. A large fan base has accumulated around Check, Please!, and when Ukazu set up a Kickstarter campaign to fund the physical release of a first volume of the webcomic, she reached her goal with ease.

Webcomics in France, literally "bande dessinée en ligne", are usually referred to as either blog BD or BD numérique. Early webcomics in the late 1990s and early 2000s primarily took on the form of personal blogs, where amateur artists told stories through their drawings. The medium rose in popularity in economic viability in the country in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The Turbomedia format, where a webcomic is presented more alike a slideshow, was popularized in France in the early 2010s.

Messenger Kids is a messaging app and platform developed by Facebook in December 2017. The platform is designed for a young audience as an safer alternative to the Facebook Messenger platform. User can register without phone numbers, but only with their first and last names only. It was initially launched for iPad tablets with the iOS operating system in the United States only, though later support for iPhone and Android devices was added and it was rolled out in Canada, Peru, and Mexico.

References

1 2 3 Garcia, Victor (2013-08-23). "MediaEntity: la BD transmédia se met au papier". L'Express .
1 2 "MediaEntity, et si nos identités numériques nous dépassaient ?". RTBF . 2018-06-01.
↑ "Talent qui monte : Emilie Tarascou met le "turbomédia" avec sa série BD sur le Net". La Nouvelle République des Pyrénées . 2012-12-18.
↑ Thomann, Xavier S. (2014-03-25). "Salon du Livre : Bande dessinée numérique : un nouveau champ de création". Actualitte. The dedicated site provides additional content that is not essential to the understanding of the work, but which enriches the reading experience.
↑ Lisef (2018-05-07). "MediaEntity, la BD transmédia qui vous propose de mener l'enquête". 9emeart.

External links

Official website (French)
MediaEntity on Comixology

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[Lexpress-1] 1 2 3 Garcia, Victor (2013-08-23). "MediaEntity: la BD transmédia se met au papier". L'Express .

[RTBF-2] 1 2 "MediaEntity, et si nos identités numériques nous dépassaient ?". RTBF . 2018-06-01.

[Republique-3] "Talent qui monte : Emilie Tarascou met le "turbomédia" avec sa série BD sur le Net". La Nouvelle République des Pyrénées . 2012-12-18.

[4] Thomann, Xavier S. (2014-03-25). "Salon du Livre : Bande dessinée numérique : un nouveau champ de création". Actualitte. The dedicated site provides additional content that is not essential to the understanding of the work, but which enriches the reading experience.

[5] Lisef (2018-05-07). "MediaEntity, la BD transmédia qui vous propose de mener l'enquête". 9emeart.