Exploring the Media Multiverse in 2084

Narratives about the future of the mediascape tend to conceptualize it as a singular space, but today we are instead witnessing its pluralization into a Media Multiverse. To better understand this tension, we invited authors to provide fictional abstracts of future research projects on this emerging mediascape. Accordingly, we present 20 abstracts from 32 authors representing a diverse range of perspectives, from Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to interaction design, media studies, translation studies, semiotics, and the social sciences – incorporating but also going beyond HCI perspectives. No unified definition of the Media Multiverse is identified, but in general, authors imagine the Multiverse as a shared space of bodily engagement and situated experiences. As a first attempt in exploring the notion of the Media Multiverse, this paper is an example of how speculative abstracts can function as a method for data collection beyond simple scoping or trend identification within HCI.