Christy Dena has coined a new term for research into entertainment that crosses media – transmodiology. In Latin, it means across, beyond or through media or modes. Thus, a researcher who studied both games and storytelling could fit under this umbrella. So could a person who was a student of both web comics and comics or both literature and hypertext literature. I don’t think it will catch on anytime soon in colloquial use, but its intent is more academic – Dena is using the word for the first time in a scholarly paper she’s writing. The name of her blog “Cross-Media Entertainment” – still seems more likely to be understood in colloquial use.

Meanwhile, I’m stuck with the term “new media”, since I made it one of my WordPress categories early on, and it’s actually a tag on Technorati, though not one that seems to have a lot of content to go with it. When I can, I try to use specific categories that are already in use. “Hypertext literature” is already in use in certain circles. “Interactive storytelling” is the term in use by Chris Crawford, and it means something different than “interactive fiction”, which is actually normally used to denote text adventure games and their many variations. “Web comics” are easily understood and self-descriptive, although there are works that push the boundaries of what people commonly understand as a comic. If it has a lot of text and illustrations, is it a comic? Does it have to be static to be a comic, or can it be interactive?

To an extent, we’re stuck using words that are already in use, but if somebody has influence and gets there first, they just may be able to instigate the entry of a new term into circulation. After all, I’m using “interactive storytelling” only because Chris Crawford uses it – and because I understand how he defines it, and it makes sense to me. If enough other people pick up on the same term and use it the same way, then we will together cause it to come into circulation – although the slang of teen-age girls is more likely to influence the future development of language than are the words coined by any other group of people in society. (Studies have proved this.)