ABSTRACT
The aim of this book was to establish the distinctive features of the narrative genres developed in social media, identifying points of commonality and contrast across a range of storytelling types. The storytelling examples span from early to more recent applications of social media (discussion forums to social network sites), across topics (serious and lightweight; authentic and fake; public and private), storytelling purposes (to share experience or for self promotion), and different groups of participants (bodybuilders, cancer survivors, celebrities, creative writers, and local residents). My analysis of these examples has identified the ways in which social media storytelling has given rise to new narrative genres (like Reflective Anecdotes), new categories of narrative production and reception (such as asynchronous, on-site storytelling via mobile devices), and previously unrecognized narrative identities (including the Conveners and Collaborators who emerge in collaborative storytelling endeavors). However, the trends across these storytelling examples suggest that there is rarely a unified, dichotomous contrast between the stories told in old and new forms of technology. Instead, the new forms of storytelling found in social media contexts have points of connection with earlier narrative genres, transforming these practices in more or less innovative ways.
