Convergence Culture and Transmedia Storytelling in Contemporary Italy

In their Preface to the Italian translation of Henry Jenkins’s Convergence Culture in 2006, WuMing One and WuMing Two announced that “in the best of all worlds” the book would have caused a major debate, in Italy, on the Internet and the new technologies of communication (“Prefazione” 2007). While Wu Ming’s prediction did not come true, evidence that transmedia storytelling and media convergence are fundamentally shaping Italian culture in the age of digital media warrants our scholarly attention. In this context, this special issue “Convergence Culture and Transmedia Storytelling in Contemporary Italy” engages with contemporary theory and criticism to explore how various narrative forms and forms of entertainment are conceptualized, produced, and received across multiple media platforms, in Italy, in an age of transnational media flows, networks, and markets.