Meta-reference

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Meta-reference (or metareference) is a category of self-references occurring in many media or media artifacts like published texts/documents, films, paintings, TV series, comic strips, or video games. It includes all references to, or comments on, a specific medium, medial artifact, or the media in general. These references and comments originate from a logically higher level (a "meta-level") within any given artifact, and draw attention to—or invite reflection about—media-related issues (e.g. the production, performance, or reception) of said artifact, specific other artifacts (as in parody), or to parts, or the entirety, of the medial system. It is, therefore, the recipient's awareness of an artifact's medial quality that distinguishes meta-reference from more general forms of self-reference. Thus, meta-reference triggers media-awareness within the recipient, who, in turn "becomes conscious of both the medial (or "fictional" in the sense of artificial and, sometimes in addition, "invented") status of the work" as well as "the fact that media-related phenomena are at issue, rather than (hetero-)references to the world outside the media."^[1] Although certain devices, such as mise-en-abîme, may be conducive to meta-reference, they are not necessarily meta-referential themselves.^[2] However, innately meta-referential devices (e.g. metalepsis) constitute a category of meta-references.