This project seeks to use crowd-sourced data gathering to analyse the way that Judge Dredd changes over the fifty years since he first appeared in 2000AD 's second issue.

This project will build an international collaboration to develop a re-usable, open access, online tool and accompanying methodology to generate shareable, quantitative data on the ways that transmedia characters function.  

Transmedia characters form the basis of the vast storyworlds of Disney (Marvel, Star Wars), Paramount (Star Trek), Japanese manga and many others which dominate the global media landscape. This has previously been researched in terms of transmedia theory and storyworlds, but the coherence of the fictional characters central to such narratives remains largely unexplored, so there is little understanding of how they are produced and received in different geographical contexts and cultures.  

This project provides a tool which will aid international collaboration on this topic through developing a straightforward, uniform data-gathering method, tested on a sample of pan-European texts from the past 80 years featuring Donald Duck - a character chosen for two reasons. 

Firstly, Donald Duck has a long history as a transmedia and transnational character. He first appeared in The Wise Little Hens animation in 1934, then adapted into an American newspaper strip later that year, with translations published in Italian and French comic books in 1935. Disney comics were launched in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Finland and the Netherlands after World War II, reprinting American stories. However, European publishers soon ran out of material, and during the1950s were forced to create their own. They then began sharing strips, so as well as featuring American reprints and their own material they would print stories created in other countries, which would be translated and redrawn to fit local contexts. This transnational re-presentation of characters and stories forms the focus of this project. 

Secondly, data on all comics featuring Disney characters is readily available through INDUCKS - an international database operated by a volunteer team of indexers. The main European publishers of Disney comics, including DPG Media and Egmont, also make use of the INDUCKS database as a living archive and have indicated their willingness to be interviewed for the project. This will enable knowledge exchange, as their publishing insights are sought in exchange for new information about how Donald Duck functions transnationally. 

Data will be gathered by engaging the Donald Duck fan community to crowdsource information. Evaluating the suitability of this approach for an academic exercise will be an important outcome of the project, providing other researchers with insight into utilising the large data gathering opportunities it offers.  

All outputs, including the data entry system, fan-engagement techniques, and the dataset itself, will be made available open access to encourage other researchers to conduct their own studies using the tool and share their data.  Providing unified tools means that any datasets generated can be easily shared, leading to the possibility of future work comparing data across many different characters, and so moving towards a deeper understanding about how this key aspect of the transmedia landscape functions, at a time when these characters are becoming a significant part of our global culture.