Narration of the moment: Present-tense story formats on social media

Alexandra Georgakopoulou, Professor of Discourse Analysis & Sociolinguistics at Kings College London, presents a talk in the series “Current Research in Narrative Studies,” the research seminar of the British and Irish Association for Narrative Studies. These seminars are held in a hybrid format, with speakers and audience from the Association membership around the country, hosted at York by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Narrative Studies.

Abstract:

In a longitudinal study of the evolution of storytelling facilities on the big western platforms (YouTube-Twitter/X-Facebook-Snapchat-Instagram), I have been able to document the rise, consolidation and salience of present-tense stories that cut across personal and collective stories.  This present-tense narration, originating in the early days of textual social media environments, as a way of announcing happenings (i.e. breaking news), has been trans-configured and cross-platformed over the years, currently taking the form of multi-semiotic short form videos on a range of platforms, in particular, the hugely popular TikTok.

My study has shown the development of certain conventionalized linguistic, textual, interactional and visual choices over time, making present-tense narration a formatted storytelling, that is, storytelling that is typified, curated, recognizable, and that invokes specific affective stances and evaluative scripts for the teller. In this talk, drawing on my study of Instagram Stories and of specific TikTok trends (in collaboration with Ruth Page), I present the key-features that render present-tense narration on social media a formatted activity, with a focus on how the temporality of the/a present moment is conductive to constructing an ‘authentic’ teller. I also go back to the basic question of what the implications are of the radical departure of platformed storytelling from past tense, personal experience stories, not just for the analysis but also and more importantly for Gen Z, for whom storying is largely equated with ‘sharing-life-in-the-moment’.