Transmedia Historiography as Educational Practice: Narrativising Colombian Cultural Memory

Abstract

Both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity for understanding transmediality – itself the use of multiple media technologies to tell stories and communicate information – is the sheer breadth of its interpretation. Though primarily still seen as a commercial practice, this article explores the application of transmedia practices to the communication of history across multiple media platforms, questioning what this approach means to understandings of transmediality. More specifically, the article furthers discussions of the contribution that transmedia storytelling can make to educational practices, identifying new strategies for how transmedia storytelling is now being used to capture and narrativize historical memories, as media-based educational resources. To do so, the article focuses on the Colombian armed conflict and the Desarmados project, which I use to theorise how transmediality can work as historiography, allowing for not only a new way of experiencing and remembering history, but as that which can reshape history for the better, reconciling the past and the present.