Narrating the Digital Turn: data deluge, technomethodology, and other likely tales

In this paper it is argued that digital technologies will have a transformative effect in the social sciences in general and in the fast developing field of narrative studies in particular. It is argued that the integrative and interdisciplinary nature of narrative approaches are further enhanced by the development of digital technologies and that the collection of digital data will also drive theoretical and methodological developments in narrative studies. Biographical Sociology will also need to take account of lives lived in, and transformed by, the digital domain. How these technologies may influence data collection methods, how they might influence thinking about what constitutes data, and what effects this might have on the remodeling of theoretical approaches are all pressing questions for the development of a Twenty First Century narratology. As Marshall McLuhan once put it “First we shape our tools and then our tools shape us”.

Into the Furby-verse: The narrative production of electronic companions

<p>Since the mid 1990s, electronic objects designed for the sole purpose of providing human companionship have been widely available to consumers. Effectively, such objects offer a relationship, requiring interaction from a caregiver to “survive” and “evolve”. By offering an opportunity for human–nonhuman attachment, electronic companions raise questions regarding the value of relationships and what it is that makes something artificial or real. Following the success of Bandai Electronics’ Tamagotchi, Hasbro’s Electronic Furby became commercially available in 1998, and has since become a primary actor in marketing, design, media, and research narratives that raise hopeful, satirical, and fearful discussions surrounding our potential future with sociable and companionable technologies. All of these stories construct relationships with electronic companions that are generally human-centred and hierarchical, meaning that they look at electronic companionship in terms of how it will affect people. During this time there has also been a growth in online communities that engage in cultural production through fan fiction responses to existing cultural artefacts, including Hasbro’s Furby. In these stories, the notion of electronic companionship has been explored from diverse perspectives, including a non-hierarchical, animal-centred viewpoint that offers an unfamiliar view of interacting with nonhumans by bringing in aspects of the fantastic. By exploring these consumermade narratives there is an opportunity to understand how people articulate the boundaries of their relationships with technology. Through a combination of textual analysis, cultural studies and design research, this project aims to explore the role that storytelling plays in communicating and exploring the cultural and social impact of emerging companion technologies. An empirical analysis of seventy-two online fan fictions compares and contrasts popular themes and motifs in Furby narratives in terms of whether they render relationships with, and among Furbys as positive or negative. When positive, this analysis highlights that Furbys are treated in a similar way to animals in fantasy, as the story’s protagonist. Through these positively framed relationships we also learn what it means to be an ideal companion and caregiver to nonhumans, as the characters are empathic, compassionate, and selfless. My analysis of negative relationships with Furbys in fan fictions highlights a disconnection between the Furby characters as marketed by Hasbro, and what they become after entering the lives of their caregivers. Despite being sold as friendly and in need of care, Furbys often conjure monstrous and gothic associations that can be read as symptomatic of real anxieties surrounding technological innovation. Building on this preliminary analysis, eighteen still and moving image scenarios were designed to elicit stories, and sixty-four online responses were received. Analysis of these responses found that overwhelmingly fantasy-driven storytelling was used to explore the role of Furbys in the visual scenarios, and they were often written as biologically alive and equal to humans. Combined, my fan fiction and response analyses highlight the interplay between observational and imaginative storytelling to articulate the boundaries around human and nonhuman relationships. My thesis therefore suggests that design and marketing cannot set the boundaries of electronic companionship because they will always be redefined by the users, and designers could benefit from exploring the use of their designs once out in the world. My PhD research project offers: 1) a theoretical contribution by positing fantastic storytelling as a space for critical reflection and engagement with material objects, where the potential of electronic companionship can be explored beyond the imperatives of design and marketing; 2) an empirical case study of Furby fan fiction that expands the understanding of fan fiction to include consumer objects as source material for textual production; 3) a methodological contribution to interdisciplinary studies by combining narrative studies and design to explore our relationships with emerging technology, and 4) a design research contribution that explores user stories to support meaning making practices of storytelling about electronic companionship, and equally value the place of the nonhuman in design issues.</p>

Into the Furby-verse: The narrative production of electronic companions

<p>Since the mid 1990s, electronic objects designed for the sole purpose of providing human companionship have been widely available to consumers. Effectively, such objects offer a relationship, requiring interaction from a caregiver to “survive” and “evolve”. By offering an opportunity for human–nonhuman attachment, electronic companions raise questions regarding the value of relationships and what it is that makes something artificial or real. Following the success of Bandai Electronics’ Tamagotchi, Hasbro’s Electronic Furby became commercially available in 1998, and has since become a primary actor in marketing, design, media, and research narratives that raise hopeful, satirical, and fearful discussions surrounding our potential future with sociable and companionable technologies. All of these stories construct relationships with electronic companions that are generally human-centred and hierarchical, meaning that they look at electronic companionship in terms of how it will affect people. During this time there has also been a growth in online communities that engage in cultural production through fan fiction responses to existing cultural artefacts, including Hasbro’s Furby. In these stories, the notion of electronic companionship has been explored from diverse perspectives, including a non-hierarchical, animal-centred viewpoint that offers an unfamiliar view of interacting with nonhumans by bringing in aspects of the fantastic. By exploring these consumermade narratives there is an opportunity to understand how people articulate the boundaries of their relationships with technology. Through a combination of textual analysis, cultural studies and design research, this project aims to explore the role that storytelling plays in communicating and exploring the cultural and social impact of emerging companion technologies. An empirical analysis of seventy-two online fan fictions compares and contrasts popular themes and motifs in Furby narratives in terms of whether they render relationships with, and among Furbys as positive or negative. When positive, this analysis highlights that Furbys are treated in a similar way to animals in fantasy, as the story’s protagonist. Through these positively framed relationships we also learn what it means to be an ideal companion and caregiver to nonhumans, as the characters are empathic, compassionate, and selfless. My analysis of negative relationships with Furbys in fan fictions highlights a disconnection between the Furby characters as marketed by Hasbro, and what they become after entering the lives of their caregivers. Despite being sold as friendly and in need of care, Furbys often conjure monstrous and gothic associations that can be read as symptomatic of real anxieties surrounding technological innovation. Building on this preliminary analysis, eighteen still and moving image scenarios were designed to elicit stories, and sixty-four online responses were received. Analysis of these responses found that overwhelmingly fantasy-driven storytelling was used to explore the role of Furbys in the visual scenarios, and they were often written as biologically alive and equal to humans. Combined, my fan fiction and response analyses highlight the interplay between observational and imaginative storytelling to articulate the boundaries around human and nonhuman relationships. My thesis therefore suggests that design and marketing cannot set the boundaries of electronic companionship because they will always be redefined by the users, and designers could benefit from exploring the use of their designs once out in the world. My PhD research project offers: 1) a theoretical contribution by positing fantastic storytelling as a space for critical reflection and engagement with material objects, where the potential of electronic companionship can be explored beyond the imperatives of design and marketing; 2) an empirical case study of Furby fan fiction that expands the understanding of fan fiction to include consumer objects as source material for textual production; 3) a methodological contribution to interdisciplinary studies by combining narrative studies and design to explore our relationships with emerging technology, and 4) a design research contribution that explores user stories to support meaning making practices of storytelling about electronic companionship, and equally value the place of the nonhuman in design issues.</p>

On the narrative potential of photobooks: an analysis of Alec Soth's Niagara's book

Visual narratives have a long history in the context of human cultural artifacts. In any sequence of images, the juxtaposition of visual signs gives rise to narrative potential. The narrative qualities of photographic images have been explored since its early days through the medium of the book. Borrowing the book artifact from literature, photography has adapted it for its own purposes. Such appropriation invites an examination of the strategies that are employed in photobooks to promote the emergence of narratives. Drawing upon the field of Narrative Studies and the concepts of storyworld and worldmaking, this paper investigates the narrative construction in the photobook Niagara (2006), produced by photographer Alec Soth. The paper demonstrates that certain strategies used in literary texts are analogous to the photobook space. In conclusion, I argue that photobooks are cultural objects that offer invaluable narrative possibilities, especially because they afford agency for the reader’s/viewer’s worldmaking.

Cultural memories and their re-actualizations

Memory studies has, in only a few decades, produced insights in two inter-related processes. First, memory scholars theorized how representations of the past become socially shared. Secondly, they theorized how these cultural and collective memories circulate and are being re-actualized in different contexts. But critiques of the field have targeted the metaphorical and reified nature of cultural memory concepts. This article argues that some concepts developed in social scientific narrative studies could provide cultural memory scholars with a precise and less metaphorical vocabulary to understand how people make sense of non-autobiographical pasts in different interactional contexts. In particular, the article focusses on how positioning theory and unexplained events in narrative pre-construction assist analysis of the flexibility of the remembering self in everyday interaction. The examples in this article concern narrations of the Second World War and Holocaust gathered during fieldwork in the contemporary town of Auschwitz in Poland.

Unveiling the research pattern and trends in library service quality studies: A meta-narrative review

‘Service Quality’ and its influence in Library and Information Science discipline are spectacular when studied intensively. In this study, researchers adopted the Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Syntheses: Evolving Standards review method and introduced a novel Initialization, Conceptualization, Actualisation) (ICA) framework for meta-narrative studies. This method would act as a boon particularly to the existing methods of conducting meta-narrative studies in social sciences in general and library sciences in particular. A total of 49 research articles were selected from Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases, covering a span of 5 years, that is, 2015–2019, published in the domain of library service quality. An extensive in-depth analysis of selected publications was carried out under seven categories (i.e. library, library services, quality, ServQUAL, LibQUAL+, user satisfaction and users’ expectations), which were generated using the VOS-Viewer software and ‘Review Tags’ (manually generated using OneNote). The seven categories further identify a total of 27 sub-categories. The quantitative findings revealed that all the 49 reviewed publications were published in 27 journals. All the journals have been indexed in the Scopus database, whereas 15 journals containing the remaining 22 publications are indexed in both WoS and Scopus databases. This study unfolds a transverse trend in library service quality. It would be beneficial for the library managers to sustain libraries’ service quality and set a benchmark in the said field.

Resilience Stories

Be resilient! Today, we hear this line in almost any context. The term resilience is among the most repeated buzzwords. But why, simply, do we need to be resilient? Hamideh Mahdiani presents answers to this question by challenging a reductionistic understanding of resilience from single disciplinary perspectives; by questioning the dominance of life sciences in defining an age-old concept; and by problematizing the neglected role of life writing in fostering resilience. In so doing, through a multidisciplinary frame of reference, the book works with various examples from life writing and life sciences, and testifies to the focal role of narrative studies in resilience research.

Characters as Works and Versions

The editorial conception of works — as immaterial entities emerging from encounters with material documents or other instantiations — parallels conceptions of characters in narrative studies, which similarly derive from particular textual engagements to produce more general understandings. After surveying a range of examples from 20th- and 21st-century fiction, this essay outlines the affordances of a more editorially informed approach to the concept of character within narratology.