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Stories and Social Media Routledge Studies in Sociolinguistics Stories and Social Media Routledge Studies in Sociolinguistics 1 Emergent Lingua Francas and World Orders The Politics and Place of English as a World Language Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew 2 The Economics of the Multilingual Workplace François Grin, Claudio Sfreddo and François Vaillancourt 3 Stories and Social Media Identities and Interaction Ruth E. Page Stories and Social Media Identities and Interaction Ruth E. Page First published 2012 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business First issued in paperback 2013 © 2012 Taylor & Francis The right of Ruth E. Page to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Typeset in Sabon by IBT Global. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Page, Ruth E., 1972– Stories and social media : identities and interaction / Ruth E. Page. p. cm. — (Routledge studies in sociolinguistics ; 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Social media. 2. Narration (Rhetoric)—Social aspects. 3. Discourse analysis, Narrative. 4. Storytelling—Social aspects. 5. Online social networks. 6. Online authorship. 7. Online identities. 8. Identity (Psychology) I. Title. P96.N35P34 2012 302.23'1—dc23 2011024740 ISBN: 978-0-415-88981-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-14861-7 (ebk) ISBN: 978-0-415-83702-6 (pbk) For my family Contents List of Figures ix List of Tables xi Permissions xiii Preface xv 1 Introduction: Stories and Social Media in Context 1 2 Second Stories Told in Discussion Forums 24 3 Narratives of Illness and Personal Blogs 49 4 Storytelling Styles in Facebook Updates 66 5 Celebrity Practice: Stories Told in Twitter 93 6 Narrative and Commentary in Collaborative Storytelling 117 7 Space and Identity in Stories on the Move 140 8 Fakes, Fictions, and Facebook “Rape”: Narrative Authenticity 163 9 Familiar, Reconfi gured, and Emergent Dimensions of Narrative 186 Notes 211 Glossary 217 References 221 Index 237 Figures 1.1 Timeline of web genres and terms. 6 1.2 Narrative dimensions and possibilities. 11 4.1 Comparison of Attitudinal APPRAISAL subtypes in 2008 and 2010 updates (as a percentage of all APPRAISAL). 76 4.2 Authorship of updates with APPRAISAL according to gender (as a percentage of all updates). 76 4.3 Comparison of the number of updates containing at least one nonverbal display of affection in 2008 and 2010, according to the gender of the update author. 78 4.4 Total nonverbal displays of affection according the gender of the update author (as a percentage) for 2008. 79 4.5 Total nonverbal displays of affection according the gender of the update author (as a percentage) for 2010. 79 4.6 Comparison of the number of updates containing at least one intensifi cation device. 80 4.7 Comparison of intensifi cation devices in 2008 and 2010 according to the gender of the updater (as a percentage). 81 4.8 Comparison of intensifi cation resources (as a percentage of all intensifi cation) according to the age and gender of the updater in the 2008 dataset. 82 4.9 Comparison of intensifi cation resources (as a percentage of all intensifi cation) according to the age and gender of the updater in the 2010 dataset. 82 4.10 Distribution of comments according to the gender of the commenter (as a percentage of all comments). 87 4.11 Percentage of comments appended to updates, according to the age and gender of the updater. 87 4.12 Percentage of “likes” appended to updates, according to the age and gender of the updater. 88 4.13 Distribution of all affective style devices compared with distribution of all interaction (comments and likes) across updates in 2010. 89 x Figures 5.1 An illustrative example of the Twitter update template. 100 5.2 Relative frequencies of temporal terms in Twitter talk (per million words). 101 5.3 Relative frequency of then in Twitter talk (per million words). 102 5.4 Comparison of tweets from celebrity fi gures about professional or private-life activity (as a percentage). 106 5.5 Comparison of tweets containing links in celebrity and “ordinary” Twitter accounts (as percentages of each type of tweet). 112 6.1 Correlation between commenting and creating content in Protagonize: Free Your Mind (as a percentage). 129 7.1 Options for storytelling in time and space. 146 7.2 Screenshot from the Leith [murmur] archive. 147 7.3 Screenshot from [murmur] showing the hand-drawn map of Leith. 149 9.1 Options for temporal linearity in social media. 189 9.2 Relative frequency of today, tonight, tomorrow, yesterday, and then across social media genres (per million words). 192 9.3 Options for co-tellership in social media. 198 Tables 3.1 Data Sample of Blog Posts in Detail 53 3.2 Average Numbers of Comments per Post for Cancer and Travel Blogs 56 3.3 Average Numbers of Comments per Post According to the Gender of the Commenter 56 3.4 Average Number of Sidebar Hyperlinks per Blog (Cancer Blogs) 57 3.5 Average Number of Hyperlinks per Post (Cancer Blogs) 57 4.1 Relative Frequency for So, Very, and Really in the 2008 Facebook Dataset (per Thousand Words) 84 4.2 Relative Frequency for So, Very, and Really in the 2010 Facebook Dataset (per Thousand Words) 84 5.1 Average Number of Followers and Following Participants for Celebrity and “Ordinary” Tweeters 98 5.2 Percentages of Tweet Types Used by Celebrity Figures and “Ordinary” Tweeters 99 5.3 Relative Frequency of Here, There, Now, and Then (per Million Words) 103 6.1 Participation Levels by Registered Users in A Million Penguins (from Mason and Thomas 2008, 31) 127 6.2 Levels of Participation in Protagonize: Free Your Mind 128 Permissions Chapter 3 is a revised version of “Blogging on the Body,” which is pub- lished in New Narratives: Stories and Storytelling in the Digital Age, edited by Ruth Page and Bronwen Thomas (University of Nebraska Press). Reproduced with permission. Table 6.1 is reproduced with permission from A Million Penguins Research Report by Bruce Mason and Sue Thomas (2008). Figures 7.2 and 7.3 are reproduced with permission by [murmur] from the Leith section of the [murmur] archive. Preface There are two reasons to write about the stories that people tell about themselves in social media formats: 1. Stories remain one of the most pervasive genres people use to make sense of themselves and the surrounding world. 2. The development of social media formats in the fi rst decade of the twenty-fi rst century has enabled people to document the stories of their daily experiences in online, public, or semi-public domains in unprecedented measure. The stories that are told on a day-to-day basis on forums, blogs, and social network sites and archived in community projects are interesting for many reasons. This book focuses on the language that storytellers use in their nar- rative interactions with other people. Because the main focus of the book is on stories, the introductory chapter provides an overview of the key narrative terms that are used throughout. After that, each chapter concentrates on a different social media genre and a different aspect of storytelling. Stories are taken from sites that developed in the fi rst decade of the twenty-fi rst century, moving from earlier genres like discussion forums to more recent sites like Facebook and Twitter. The URLs for the social media sites referred to in the book are provided in the bibliography. Most (but not all) sites are available at the time of writing, but their longevity cannot be guaranteed. The following format conventions are used to represent excerpts taken from the stories. Italics are used for emphasis and for mentioning rather than using words (here means I am talking about that word, not using it to refer to the present location). Underlines are retained in quotations to indi- cate hyperlinks. Bold is used in examples to indicate added emphasis or to highlight a linguistic feature. Unless otherwise indicated, it was not added by the original narrator. Bold italics indicate that a word has an entry in the Glossary. The quoted excerpts from stories keep the exact spelling and punctuation used by the narrators, not using sic to indicate unconventional spelling or usage. Sometimes, although not always, that unconventionality is part of the narrator’s style. xvi Preface In the process of writing this book, I have accrued many debts. My favorite part of the book-writing process is expressing my thanks to the many people who have helped along the way. This book would not exist at all were it not for the storytellers who publish their stories on the Internet. I am grate- ful to the bloggers and forum posters who gave me permission to reproduce their words, and to the Facebook participants who took part in the study that forms the basis of Chapter 4. Thanks also go to the members of my Facebook Friend list who agreed to be interviewed about the controversial and some- times painful outcomes of unwanted impersonations in the form of Facebook “rape.” Special thanks to Aaron Bourne who drew my attention to the phe- nomenon of “frape” in the fi rst place and graciously allowed me to reuse the examples collected for his undergraduate research project undertaken in June 2010 at Birmingham City University.
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