Tales from the Timeline: Narrative and Social Media

Conference: Experimental Narratives

Dates: 27 February-27 June 2015

Abstract:

Ever since the emergence of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, their narrative potential has been seized upon by users and theorists alike. In particular, despite its obvious constraints, Twitter has given rise to a wide variety of new genres, including the twiller, the twovel and the twister. Twitter has also been used to retell literary, epic and religious narratives and to contribute to transmedia storytelling experiences. My paper will explore the extent to which such narratives may be described as experimental, focusing specifically on the extent to which they respond to the affordances of Twitter. I will argue that it is impossible to fully comprehend this new breed of networked narratives without discussing the issues of control and context that arise from their distribution and reception in ‘real time’.

Source: Manual