Narratives Online
Shared Stories in Social Media

Investigates how stories are shared in online contexts and provides a method for studying them.

Ruth Page (Author)

9781107139916, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 January 2018

240 pages, 4 b/w illus. 25 tables
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.7 cm, 0.48 kg

'An original piece of cutting-edge research in narrative and social media. It presents an innovative combination of methods applied to engaging case studies of shared stories in online contexts, thus developing our understanding of a new and complex narrative genre. A significant contribution to mediated narrative analysis, pushing forward the frontiers of the field. Multifaceted and stimulating. Share this story!' Nina Nørgaard, University of Southern Denmark

Stories are shared by millions of people online every day. They post and re-post interactions as they re-tell and respond to large-scale mediated events. These stories are important as they can bring people together, or polarise them in opposing groups. Narratives Online explores this new genre - the shared story - and uses carefully chosen case-studies to illustrate the complex processes of sharing as they are shaped by four international social media contexts: Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Building on discourse analytic research, Ruth Page develops a new framework - 'Mediated Narrative Analysis' - to address the large scale, multimodal nature of online narratives, helping researchers interpret the micro- and macro-level politics that are played out in computer-mediated communication.

1. Introducing shared stories
2. Mediated narrative analysis: The toolkit for analysing shared stories
3. Stories in Wikipedia articles: is sharing ever neutral?
4. Co-tellership in the context of Wikipedia talk pages
5. Shared stories and bonding icons in Facebook community pages
6. Collective identities and co-tellership in Facebook comments
7. Shared stories and social television practices in Twitter
8. Co-tellership in retweets
9. Citizen journalism and shared stories in YouTube
10. Creative sharing and laughter in YouTube comments
11. Shared stories revisited.

Subject Areas: Media, information & communication industries [KNT], Social interaction [JFFP], Sociolinguistics [CFB], Language [C]