Analyzing Narrative Online

Analyzing Narrative Online: Affordances and Practices offers a comprehensive introduction to exploring narratives in fast-evolving social media spaces such as Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, TikTok and YouTube. It traces the rise of “small stories” as a form of storytelling that thrives within the logics of immediacy, ephemerality, and curated sharing.

Adopting a technographic, hands-on approach, this book addresses the theoretical issues and methodological choices that shape narrative discourse research, equipping readers with robust, replicable tools for analysing stories in context. Building on their innovative research in narrative and sociolinguistics, De Fina and Georgakopoulou unpack the unique features that distinguish digital stories and storytelling practices from other face-to-face situations. Across six engaging chapters, the authors showcase a wide range of practical examples, from vlogs, memes and conspiracy narratives to Instagram influencers and political commentary, illustrating the interplay between personal expression and platform design. They demonstrate how participants in storytelling practices shape and reshape their stories, emotions, and identity while being simultaneously facilitated and constrained by the very platforms used to circulate stories. The book further highlights the influence of design features on reframing events and collective sense-making.

This applied guide is ideal core reading for programmes in digitally oriented discourse analysis, narrative analysis, sociolinguistics, and language and media. It is also an invaluable resource for researchers designing projects on online discourse and storytelling of all kinds.

Anna De Fina is Professor of Italian Language and Linguistics in the Italian Department and Affiliated Faculty with the Linguistics Department at Georgetown University. Her interests focus on narrative, discourse and identity, discourse practices among immigrant and transnational communities, and super-diversity. She has published extensively on these topics.

Alexandra Georgakopoulou is Professor of Discourse Analysis and Sociolinguistics at King’s College London. She has developed small stories research as a paradigm for the analysis of everyday storytelling, with a current focus on curated storytelling on social media. She has (co-)authored and edited 18 books on narrative, identities and digital communication.