Proposing a Practical Media Taxonomy for Complex Media Production

Abstract

This article proposes a taxonomy of media designed to clarify the production and critique of complex media publication. I examine the conflation of ideas described by the word media and review prior taxonomic categorizations of this fuzzy concept. Media is broken into layered categories of content, media form, and media channel based on the semiotic and technological roles in mediated communication and then is described as a flow of decisions made in the creation and publication of communicative products. Finally, this taxonomy is applied to clarify the different functions of multimedia, crossmedia, and transmedia storytelling.