With the rise and rise of social media, today’s communication practices are significantly different from those of even the recent past. A key change has been a shift to very small units, exemplified by Twitter and its strict 240-character limit on individual posts. Consequently, highly fragmented communication has become the norm in many contexts. Fragmented Narrative sets out to explore the production and reception of fragmentary stories, analysing the Twitter-based narrative practices of Donald Trump, the Spanish political movement Podemos, and Egyptian activists writing in the context of the 2013 military intervention in Egypt.
Sadler draws on narrative theory and hermeneutics to argue that narrative remains a vital means for understanding, allowing fragmentary content to be grasped together as part of significant wholes. Using Heideggerian ontology, he proposes that our capacity to do this is grounded in the centrality of narrative to human existence itself. The book strives to provide a new way of thinking about the interpretation of fragmentary information, applicable both to social media and beyond.
Contributing to the emerging literature in existential media studies, this timely volume will interest students, scholars and researchers of narrative, new media and language and communication studies.
Author(s): Neil Sadler
Series: Critical Perspectives on Citizen Media
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2021
Cover
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Ongoing Relevance of Narrative
Introduction to the Three Contexts Referred to Throughout the Book
Overview of Chapters
Notes
1 Theorising Fragmented Narrative: Knowing and Being
Narrative Knowing
Narrative and Being
Narrative and Being-With-Others
Defining Narrative
Temporal and Spatial Specificity
Relationality
Figuration
Sense of An Ending
Conclusion
Notes
2 Telling Stories With Fragments: Vertical, Horizontal and Ambient Narrative
Narrative and Chronicle
Unstable Texts, Slippery Sjuzhets and Fuzzy Fabulae
Vertical Storytelling
Horizontal Storytelling
Ambient Storytelling
Conclusion
Notes
3 Interpreting Fragmented Stories I: Open Texts, Distanciation and Writerly Readers
Dialogue and Distance
Attention and Inattention
Gaps and Fragments
The Weakened Author (function)
Conclusion
Notes
4 Interpreting Fragmented Stories II: Existential Understanding, Limited Horizons and Narrative Forestructuring
Understanding and Interpretation
Interpretive Horizons
Narrative Horizons
Metanarratives
Masterplots
Conclusion
Notes
5 Narrative and Truth: Correspondence, Coherence and Disclosure
Truth As Correspondence
Truth As Coherence
Truth As Disclosure
Openness
Fragmented Disruption
Social Media and Unifying-Repairing Effects
Conclusion
Notes
Conclusion: Stories, Citizens and Being
Glossary of Heideggerian Terms
Bibliography
Index
