Beyond Transmediality: The Potterian Discourse on Social Media

Abstract

After the multimodal adaptation of novelistic writing, social networks, in turn, mark the development of transmedia writing that unfolds through the predominance and diversity of native web discourses. Fans of novelistic and cinematic works use social networks to make reality an extension of the world they dream of and wish to integrate by producing what is called not only “literary arts,” encompassing a temporal, historical, and diachronic perspective, but also new discursive forms. Our study focuses on these new discursive forms constructed by Harry Potter fans, namely pseudonyms, comments, and memes. We explore how these are constructed and how they can be analyzed, but above all, we seek the purpose of their existence beyond pure transmediality. Indeed, to do this, after noting their placement in an interdiscourse due to transmediality, the analysis of these discursive assemblages arising from a Levi-Straussian discursive bricolage leads us to the deconstruction of these statements. Certainly, relying on discourse analysis, particularly on dialogism and pragmatics, we have been able to identify the marks of identification and belonging that characterize these discourses. Particularly, there is a recycling of a Potterian cultural knowledge that opens an original intermedial creation horizon in their digital multimodal interdiscursive assembly, the unpredictability, increase, and composition of which call for a more in-depth investigation into the analysis of digital discourses specific to fandom communities that mark their digital identity beyond traditional transmediality.