Adaptation Studies in Media and Culture

Adaptation studies has moved beyond debates over faithfulness to examine how stories migrate, transform and accrue new meanings across cultural, technological and economic contexts. Scholars now interrogate not only the end product but also the processes, practices and industries that shape adaptations. Comparative analysis of source and target texts remains important, yet research also attends to archival materials, production logics and audience reception as integral to understanding adaptation as a dynamic rather than static phenomenon. Recent theoretical work emphasises intermediality, global flows and the ethics of cultural translation, demonstrating how adaptations can challenge power structures, foster transcultural dialogue and reshape identity constructs. This field bridges literary criticism, film and media studies, cultural history and production studies, offering tools to analyse everything from digital game retellings to theatre translations. Practically, such scholarship informs creative industries, heritage institutions and policy makers engaged in co-productions and international distribution, underlining the centrality of adaptation in a world of ubiquitous remixing and cultural hybridity.

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Adaptation Studies in Media and Culture publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in adaptation studies in media and culture across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Intermediality: Study of interactions and exchanges between different media forms within an adaptation.

Processual approach: Analytical focus on the stages, documents and practices that lead to a finished adaptation.

Transcultural adaptation: Transformation of a work across cultural boundaries, involving negotiation of local values and global narratives.

Indigenisation: Adaptation strategy that embeds a source text in the cultural, linguistic and historical norms of a new context.

References

1. Media between Media: ‘Making-of’s and the Hidden Faces of Film Adaptation. European Review (2023).
2. Animation, Adaptation, and the Plague. Adaptation (2023).
3. Bahram Tavakoli’s the Stranger as a transcultural movie adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. Cogent Arts and Humanities (2024).