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Volume 27, Issue 2
  • ISSN 1387-6740
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9935
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Abstract

When stories (re)appear in YouTube videos, they are recontextualized not only by their titling and editing, but especially by chains of online comments. This article explores how a Northern Italian politician’s racialized story, which was first recontextualized by a TV news reporter on a YouTube video, is further recontextualized for different ends by commenters on that video. I show how these commenters negotiate and reframe the racial aspects of digital discourse and its sociocultural meanings through their various responses and across different temporal and spatial scales. By applying linguistic anthropological and sociolinguistic theories and narrative analytical tools to digital storytelling, this study emphasizes how racialized language is neither stable nor unidirectional, but is rather constantly negotiated discursively among various groups of virtual audience members. Besides investigating the pragmatics of narrative interaction in the digital realm, this article speaks to methodological challenges that surround the study of online storytelling.

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2017-10-06
2024-12-07

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Recontextualizing racialized stories on YouTube
Narrative Inquiry 27, 261 (2017); https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.27.2.04per
/content/journals/10.1075/ni.27.2.04per
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): digital Storytelling; Italy; Lega Nord; migration; narrative; racialized language; scales; stance; YouTube

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