''MediaEntity'' is a

Turbomedia Webcomics in France are usually referred to as either blog BD (comic strip blogs) or BD numérique (digital comic strips). Early webcomics in the late 1990s and early 2000s primarily took on the form of personal blogs, where amateur artists told st ...

webcomic Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books. Webcomics can be ...

created by Emilie Tarascou and Simon Kansara since 2012. Following the story of a young man whose

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social me ...

account suddenly started generating compromising messages, the webcomic features a large amount of free bonus content that fits its paranoid theme. The webcomic was first released in print form in 2013, using

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory Modality (human–computer interaction), modalities, including visual, Hearing, auditory, hap ...

features. ''MediaEntity'' won the jury prize at La Nuit des Médias 2010.

Synopsis

''MediaEntity'' is a paranoid

thriller Thriller may refer to: * Thriller (genre), a broad genre of literature, film and television ** Thriller film, a film genre under the general thriller genre Comics * ''Thriller'' (DC Comics), a comic book series published 1983–84 by DC Comics i ...

that follows the story of young

trader Trader may refer to: * Merchant, retailer or one who attempts to generally buy wholesale and sell later at a profit * The owner of a trading post, where manufactured goods were exchanged with native peoples for furs and hides. * Trader (finance), ...

Éric Magoni, whose account on the fictional social media website MediaEntity starts generating compromising messages out of its own. Éric is the first such victim of the website, which has a scheme that goes much deeper than first appears. The webcomic is about the loss of control over one's digital identity, as it poses ethical questions regarding the future of people's data and the companies that hold them.

Development

''MediaEntity'' is the result of a four year long collaboration between visual designer Emilie Tarascou and screenwriter Simon Kansara. The duo based their work on the company Mutation Narrative, which was founded in December 2009 to promote audio-visual creation and publishing. Tarascou and Kansara noted in 2012 that they had enough funds to continue the project for at least five years. The ''MediaEntity'' website features a large amount of bonus content which, though not essential for the basic understanding of the webcomic, amplifies the reading experience. Tarascou and Kansara have created two social media accounts, an alternate reality

roleplaying game A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal ac ...

titled ''MediaEntity: Smoke Screen'' (which allows players to take on the role of an illegal immigrant in the ''MediaEntity'' universe), and an interactive

web series A web series (also known as a web show) is a series of scripted or non-scripted online videos, generally in episodic form, released on the Internet, which first emerged in the late 1990s and became more prominent in the early 2000s. A single in ...

titled ''MediaEntity: Roots''. The first volume of ''MediaEntity'' was released in print in August 2013. The seven-page booklet offered its content using

, which could be accessed using a mobile phone or tablet after downloading a required application. A second volume came out in January 2014. ''MediaEntity'' was rereleased in a new digital form in 2018, with a new interactive treasure hunt. This time, readers were encouraged to explore an augmented reality mystery through

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

-files hidden within

thumbnail Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures or videos, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and image- ...

s, and

Morse code Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one ...

messages posted on social media.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.mediaentity.net/ (French)
''MediaEntity''
on

Comixology Iconology Inc., d/b/a ComiXology (styled comiXology), is a cloud-based digital distribution platform for comics owned by Amazon, with over 200 million comic downloads . It offers a selection of more than 100,000 comic books, graphic novels, and ...

French webcomics 2010s webcomics 2012 webcomic debuts