Matthew Freeman - Transmedia/Genre: Rethinking Genre in a Multiplatform Culture

Imagine you are searching through the interface of Netflix , as we assume you must have done at some point or another. You are browsing its catalogue of seemingly unending content. As you do so, it quickly becomes apparent that Netflix s entire navigation principle is based on coded sets of tagsotherwise known as genres. Some basic online research reveals that, as of 2021, Netflix has over 27,000 genres listed on its platform (Lilly ). So, two observations immediately come to mind when browsing Netflix in this way. The first is that Netflix s approach to tagging content under particular genre categories is not in any way bound by medium, production context, country of origin, year of release and so on. Its entire approach to genre is instead something much wider, broader and more diverse than many studies of film or literary genre have considered previously. A quick search for thriller, for example, brings up everything from Netflix Original Before I Wake (2016) to The Silence of the Lambs (1991), both mixed in with television series The Alienist (2018). And the second observation is that by mixing film and television from many eras and production contexts, Netflix s genre tags function as the platforms marketing mechanism, grouping titles together so as to engage certain demographics. Genre, recalibrated for Netflix , creates personalisation out of chaos.

Netflix s use of genre tags may be commonplace and even fairly obvious to describe, but it demonstrates a very important point: that genre, while working differently when viewed from either industrial, technological or participatory perspectives, remains the bedrock of todays transmedia landscape. So says Alison Norrington , Creative Director at StoryCentral Ltd., a transmedia consultancy firm that works globally with clients including the likes of Walt Disney Imagineering, SundanceTV, AMC Networks and FOX International: In this messy, fragmented media landscape, where content is everywhere and so too are our audiences, genre is perhaps the only remaining constant (). Which is all in spite of the fact that genre, at least in academic circles, has largely fallen away in recent decades, precisely at a time when academics need it the most. We are all part of a media convergence age where the meaning-making power of genre is both more important and less stable than it was before, with audiences increasingly fragmented across an ever-diversifying set of platforms and channels. Yet operating complexly within such fragmentation, todays genresoften formed via a set of interconnected, hyperlinked digital platforms that afford highly individualised perspectives on mediaare being shaped and reshaped almost continuously by these different platforms and channels. Each of these genres is thus in constant dialogue and re-negotiation with one another as a result of the extensive transmedia experiences that surround them. And yet as Norrington declared, with digital platform s characterised by their expansive, fragmentary nature, genre is indeed crucial to how we navigate and make sense of todays media landscape, even if the processes underpinning this are not fully understood.