Narrative Inquiry - Volume 35, Issue 2, 2025

Abstract

We study co-constructed narrative exchange in online storytelling. Our test case is the Finnish YouTuber Niilo22, an unemployed person who broadcasts frequent video clips of his everyday activities while chatting on stock issues and interacting with his followers. Followers engage in lively commentary and team up to make evaluative interpretations of Niilo22’s life on the go. The interpretive frames imposed draw on pre-existing story templates rooted in culturally shared actor categories. We propose the concept of storybaiting to denote the two-way dynamic between Niilo22 and his followers whereby responses triggered by the clips produce further input in the narration, resulting in shared and circularly progressive authorship. This action blurs the ownership of the story and dilutes the teller’s privileges. Life storying in online platforms turns into interactive storybaiting where everybody involved gives and takes cues to evaluate the social media personality and position him in regard to repeated story templates.

Abstract

Migration is part of the “global movement potential” (Albrow, 2014, p. 14) that is currently shaping social change worldwide. This article focuses on the narratives and narrative practices of migrants. It is assumed that narrative is an attempt to come to terms with migration experiences. The research interest focuses on the what, how and why of migrant narratives and the role of digital media in everyday storytelling. The empirical basis is the study “Transnational living”, in which people from various African, Arab and European countries were included. The research methods are committed to an understanding-interpretative paradigm. Discourses from migration, narration and mediatization research form the theoretical framework of the analysis.

Abstract

This paper is the first to address the impact of gendered, cultural and religious discourses on an under-researched subaltern group of infertile Muslim women bloggers. Taking a small story and case study approach, the analysis focuses on interactivity and positioning (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008, Georgakopoulou, 2008) in one woman’s stories as she works hard to address normative expectations and dominant discourses which abound in Muslim societies. The paper highlights the stigmatisation and isolation women face, not only in the physical world, but sometimes in the online world too. We argue that Weblogs provide a unique and unexplored space where discourses of gender, sexual, and other identities are resisted and challenged. Simultaneously Weblogs can serve as both supportive and exclusionary sites in which bloggers’ rights and duties become regulated. The study opens a window into the world of infertile Muslim women and has important implications for relevant healthcare and policy making.

Abstract

Individuals and groups construct identity through storytelling. Sometimes individuals use these to remember past events and group narratives to foster a sense of belonging. The individual and group interact and build relationships through shared memory. The present paper examines the mediatic representations of individual perceptions of the Holocaust in @eva.stories that evoke, revive, and revitalize Holocaust collective memory. Based on Multimodal Discourse Analysis, we analyzed and organized the findings according to the following communication categories: content, mode, and medium. Using Instagram to enliven Eva’s storytelling creates a unique duality between the audience and the implicit story content‎. Consequently, multimodal storytelling via Instagram bridges the historical past to the present generation. We conclude that the collective memory’s retelling and preservation constantly change due to cultural and political contexts. Consequently, as today’s online environments are a crucial sphere of discourse, online spaces play a role in creating, maintaining, and spreading collective memories.

Abstract

The digitalization of oral history (OH) has resulted in the availability of multiple interviews conducted with the same narrator under different circumstances. To explore the comparability of such materials, we analyze interviews with a Holocaust survivor from the Fortunoff Video Archive (1979) and the Visual History Archive (1997), focusing on instances in which she tells the “same” episode. We demonstrate that life-story segments before and after the episode provide clues for sense-making and reflexively constitute the narrative environment. The specific interactional features of OH as a situated practice contribute to the story’s recognizability and discursive alteration. Similarities and differences are detectable due to the coherence established by the social setting of OH, including its availability in a digital archive, which guarantees comparability and incorporates a broader chronology. The main contribution of our paper is methodological, as it outlines an apparatus for the comparative analysis of OH across multiple databases.

Abstract

Interviews have long depended on recordings, but the interview ‘text’ has traditionally been transcribed and published in written form. Scholars therefore hailed the advent of digitization for making recordings available to a broader audience and displaying their orality. Despite this growing interest in the significance of speaking voices, other sonic aspects of interviews are still largely ignored. Set within the frameworks of multimodal research and audionarratology, this article explores the sonic environment of an interview conducted by journalist Heinz Ludwig Arnold with German author Günter Grass in 1970, subsequently published in written form in 1990 and released as an audio recording in 2011. It analyses how voices, background sounds and noises impact on narratives told and on the interview trajectory at large and how they can inform our interpretation of interview materials. The article argues for a more comprehensive approach towards the sonic dimension of audio-recorded interviews and interview narratives.

This article reviews Narrative, perception, and the embodied mind: Towards a neuro-narratology9781032152745

This article reviews Storythinking: The New Science of Narrative IntelligenceUS$ 24.99978-0231206938

This article reviews Migrant Workers’ Narratives of Return: Alienation and Identity Transformations9781032202587£ 130.009781003263005£ 38.99