Intermediality

Intermediality is a theoretical framework in media studies and the arts that studies the relations, exchanges, and interdependencies among different media forms. It investigates how media influence one another across production, distribution, and reception, how content is transferred or reframed between forms, and how meaning shifts when a work moves from one medium to another.

The term builds on ideas from intertextuality and mediality and has been developed by theorists such as Irina Rajewsky and colleagues, gaining traction across literary studies, film studies, and art criticism. It encompasses practices such as adaptation, remediation, cross-media storytelling, and multimedia installation, treating media not as isolated carriers but as mutually entangled environments that shape aesthetics, narrative modes, and audience experience.

Key concepts include intermedial transfer (the movement of content between media), intermedial borrowing (one medium adopting conventions from another), and mediatization (the integration of media logic into culture). Researchers also examine reception across platforms, the materiality of technologies, and how hybrids blur boundaries between art forms, such as a filmic text, theatre with projections, or video games that draw on cinema.

Methodologically, scholars analyze form–content interactions, performative and spatial arrangements, and audience perception. Related notions include intertextuality and remediation as intellectual antecedents. In contemporary culture, intermediality helps explain transmedia storytelling, multimedia installations, and cross-platform cultural practices, offering a framework for understanding how media continuously reshape and redefine each other.