Abstract:
This thesis investigates the evocation of real-world relationality by works of fiction authored for social media. In particular, it examines Nothing Much to Do (2014), a literary adaptation web series which spreads its modernisation of Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing (1612) across YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr. Moving beyond the popular phrase ‘transmedia,’ the thesis characterises this narrative structure as an example of ‘distributed adaptation,’ a term which encompasses the limitations and innovations involved in adapting a well-known story across multiple platforms. Updating the medium-specific lenses of both adaptation studies and digital narratology, it undertakes an exploration of the various social media environments involved in Nothing Much to Do’s narrative expression. This analysis reveals that the series’ creators were able to diversify their narrative contributions by embracing the affordances unique to each platform, and further still by proactively engaging with the user behaviours and conventions most popular across them. These efforts also enabled Nothing Much to Do’s creators to elicit the relational dynamics invested in real-world social media practices, directing them towards the fictional bodies of the characters so as to heighten the audience’s attachment to the series. This thesis thus contributes new knowledge to longstanding debates about media predicated upon mimicry of the real, proposing that distributed adaptations such as Nothing Much to Do evince the pleasure of knowingly engaging with overtly fictional content as though it were real.
