Ego Media: Networked Narrative and Small Stories
In this talk, Professor Alex Georgakopoulou of Kings College London will explore questions such as: what activities are viewed and branded as a story by apps, and with what semiotic and other facilities are they supported? Who is positioned as an ideal, creative, authentic storyteller? Why? And what is at stake for the users? Professor Georgakopoulou draws on the project Life-writing of the moment: The sharing and updating self on social media’ to explore networked narratives and small stories, followed by a discussion with by Dr Korina Giaxoglou and Dr Michael Humphrey.
Alex Georgakopoulou is Professor of Discourse Analysis & Sociolinguistics, King’s College London. She has developed small stories research, a paradigm for studying the connections of everyday life stories with socio-cultural processes and identities: e.g. the (re)formation of adolescent peer-groups, relations of intimacy, (post)feminist politics, visibility and the construction of Influencer selves. She is currently completing a monograph on ‘Quantified Stories: A narrative analysis of algorithms and metrics on social media’ (with Stefan Iversen & Carsten Stage, Palgrave) and the CUP Handbook of Discourse Studies (ed. with Anna De Fina).
Korina Giaxoglou is Lecturer in Applied Lingusitics and English Language at The Open University, researching the ways we craft and share stories, with a special focus on stories of life and death online. Her research interests include the sociolinguistics of narrative, (mediated) discourse analysis and, mostly recently, 'small' stories in contemporary personal, social and political life.
Michael Humphrey is Assistant Professor of Digital Storytelling at Colorado State University and a contributing writer at Forbes.com. Both his research and journalism examine the role of technologies in shaping and retaining stories of individual and shared life, and is currently working on a monograph about the narratives of 'mass families' found on YouTube. As a visiting scholar at OCLW, he will study the role of mediated small stories through the lens of Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero's concept of the narratable self.
Please see below for the event programme (PDF):
