Creating a mobile urban tourism storytelling application presents several interactivity challenges on how to convey an engaging multimedia experience on-site. This article describes a methodology for fast prototyping of a multimedia mobile applications dedicated to urban tourism storytelling. The application can be a game that takes advantage of several locationbased technologies, freely available geo-referenced media, and augmented reality for immersive gameplay. The goal is to create serious games for tourism that follow a main narrative but where the story can automatically adapt itself to the current location of the player, assimilate possible detours and allow posterior out-of-location playback. Adaptable stories can use dynamic information from map sources such as points of interest (POI), elevation or virtual buildings. The main focus is for these locationbased storytelling games to create more engagement between the tourists and the urban environment. To explore this concept, an application was designed for the city of Porto: Unlocking Porto. This location-based game with a central, yet adaptable, story engages the player into the main sights following an augmented reality path while playing small games. The article discusses and presents solutions for media acquisition, interactive storytelling, game-design interface and multi-disciplinary coordination for mobile app development.
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As the fourth industrial revolution unfolds and the use of digital humans becomes more commonplace, understanding digital humans' potential to replace real human interaction or enhance it, particularly in storytelling marketing contexts, is becoming evermore important. To promote interaction and increase the entertainment value of technology-enhanced storytelling marketing, brands have begun to explore the use of augmented digital humans as storytelling agents. In this article, we examine the effectiveness of leveraging advanced technologies and delivering messages via digital humans in storytelling advertisements. In Study 1, we investigate the effectiveness of narrative transportation on behavioral responses after exposure to an interactive augmented reality mobile advertisement with a digital human storyteller. In Study 2, we compare how consumers respond to augmented digital human versus real human storytelling advertisements after conducting an exploratory neurophysiological electroencephalography study. The findings show that both types of agents promote narrative transportation when the story fits the product well. Moreover, a digital human perceived as more human-like elicits stronger positive consumer responses, suggesting an effective new approach to storytelling marketing.
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The city archives of ‘s-Hertogenbosch (the Netherlands) hold extensive World War II heritage, including diaries, letters, and photographs. To bring these stories to life an interactive exhibit was developed entitled ‘Encounters in Wartime’. This mobile, interactive exhibit, uses speech recognition technology to enable visitors to engage with three WWII-era characters through interactive dialogues. Using the four-stage conceptual model of virtual heritage preservation for visitor experience as a framework, this case study describes the design and development process of the exhibit, highlighting the challenges of applying storytelling tools and interactive technology to intangible heritage. We report on a pilot version of the exhibit, which was tested with visitors to a public event in ‘s-Hertogenbosch. The findings indicate high visitor engagement and emotional connection with the characters as a result of the digital presentation. The study concludes with practical implications for integrating interactive technology and storytelling in the context of intangible heritage.
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The Internet’s dominant role in recent years has caused a change in the relationship between media producers, suppliers and consumers in the traditional media landscape. The cultural sector must therefore decide what to do with today’s digital media in response to the general public’s changing role, and for the purpose of improving accessibility. The use of multiple media resources and particularly resources like the Internet and mobile telephony seems to be inevitable. The only question that remains is: how? This paper addresses this question by focussing on social tagging and storytelling, and reports the results of an empirical study on tagging behaviour using the social tagging platform (see also Van Vliet et al., 2010).
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Augmented reality (AR) mobile app advertising offers new opportunities for interactiveconsumer engagement to boost advertising effectiveness and elicit positive consumerresponses. In this study, we investigate the role of escapism by analyzing itsantecedents and consequences. We aim to shed light on how AR mobile app adver-tising can be used to enhance escapism experiences by considering two psychologicalmechanisms of mental imagery: narrative transportation (in response to ad storytelling)and spatial immersion. The consequences of escapism experiences include positivesocial media sharing, purchase intentions through brand attitudes, and new brandengagement via AR mobile app advertising. Prior brand preference does not affect therelationship between escapism and consumer responses after exposure to immersiveAR advertising. Our findings have meaningful implications for how industrypractitioners can enhance escapism in the context of AR mobile app advertising.
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Fans constitute a very special kind of audience. They have been marginalized, ridiculed and stigmatized, yet at the same time they seem to represent the vanguard of new relationships with and within the media. ‘Participatory culture’ has become the new normative standard. Concepts derived from early fan studies, such as transmedial storytelling and co-creation, are now the standard fare of journalism and marketing text books alike. Indeed, usage of the word fan has become ubiquitous. The Ashgate Research Companion to Fan Cultures problematizes this exaltation of fans and offers a comprehensive examination of the current state of the field. Bringing together the latest international research, it explores the conceptualization of ‘the fan’ and the significance of relationships between fans and producers, with particular attention to the intersection between online spaces and offline places.
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At this critical moment in time, April 2020, when we are living with the cataclysmic event of Covid-19, television – a medium declared almost dead at the beginning of this millennium – has become a vital resource for solace, daydreaming, social ritual, knowledge and storytelling. In conditions of lockdown, we turn towards television, not away from it (Ellis, 2020; Negra, 2020). We are checking news on national channels, and tuning to live broadcasting for campaigns to help the health services and communities in need, such as with the globally broadcast One World: Together At Home special. We are curling up on the sofa to engage with gripping drama, like Ozark streaming on Netflix, re-watching favourite series from the beginning, such as Buffy or Breaking Bad, and taking part in television quiz shows like Pointless, even watching repeats, to recreate a pub quiz atmosphere in the living room. On a darker note, we are also overloaded with corona news; the ritual evening news bulletin can be a source of anxiety and a cause of sleeplessness. Television infrastructure can break down, from broken satellite dishes to lost remote controls, which are tricky to fix when technicians are not so readily available to help; and television can be an economic burden. The cost of streaming Breaking Bad can push the limits of monthly contracts and data packages. Television both lightens and darkens the mood of domestic spaces and social relations in lockdown culture.
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