Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Ph.D. in Linguistics, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran

Abstract

This article examines how users' narratives are formed and analyzed in Persian Twitter during the earthquake of Kermanshah in 2017. In addition, the prevalent narratives on Persian Twitter will also be identified in this event to determine which users' stories have been hegemonic on this social media. Given that the narratives formed on Twitter are still a new topic for scholars to research, a plausible theoretical framework cannot be found. For this reason, by first reviewing the views on narratives on Twitter, mainly the structuralist model of Luff and Waltzsky (Ochs and Capps' discussion of narrative qualities and narrative approach) is attempted to provide a good theoretical background for the analysis. Also, using the online platform Discovery Text, 23,964 tweets were collected in the first 24 hours after the Kermanshah earthquake in 2017. Then, 15% of the collected tweets were randomly selected and analyzed relying on the critical analysis method of social media discourse. The results showed that there were three types of narration on Twitter: single narratives, reference narratives, and associative narratives. Each of these narratives is discussed in detail in the paper. The results also showed that the reference narratives and the dominant associative narratives are often critical and political.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Bamberg, M., & Georgakopoulou, A. (2008). Small stories as a new perspective in narrative and identity analysis. Text & Talk, 28(3),377–396.
Barnard, S. R. (2016). ‘Tweet or be sacked’: Twitter and the new elements of journalistic practice. Journalism, 17(2), 190–207.
Boczkowski, P. J., & Papacharissi, Z. (2018). Trump and the Media. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Bode, L., & Dalrymple, K. E. (2016). Politics in 140Characters or Less: Campaign Communication, Network Interaction, and Political Participation on Twitter. Journal of Political Marketing, 15(4), 311-332.
Carafano, J. J. (2009). All a Twitter: How Social Networking Shaped Iran’s Election Protests. The Heritage Foundation (Vol. 4999). Retrieved from http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/07/all-a-twitter-how-social-networking-shaped-irans-election-protests
Cho, S. E., Jung, K., & Park, H. W. (2013). Social Media Use during Japan’s 2011 Earthquake: How Twitter Transforms the Locus of Crisis Communication. Media International Australia, 149(1), 28–40.
Creswell, J.W. (2007) Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among Five Approaches) 3rd). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Czarniawska, B. (2004 ). Narratives in social science research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Dayter, D. (2015). Small stories and extended narratives on Twitter. Discourse, Context and Media, 10 (2012), 19–26.
Georgakopoulou, A. (2007). No Small Stories, Interaction and Identity. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Georgakopoulou, A. (2014). Small stories transposition and social media: A micro-perspective on the ‘Greek crisis.’ Discourse & Society, 25(4), 519–539.
Georgakopoulou, A. (2016). Small Stories Research: A Narrative Paradigm for the Analysis of Social Media. In L. Sloan & A. Quan-Hasse (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Research Methods (pp. 266-281). London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Gibson, W., & Brown, A. (2009). Working with Qualitative Data. London: SAGE Publications.
González-Bailón, S. (2015). Social Protest and New Media. In International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences: Second Edition. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.95076-1
Hermida, A. (2010). Twittering the news: The emergence of ambient journalism. Journalism Practice, 4(3), 297–308.
Hinchman LP, & Hinchman S (1997) Memory, Identity, Community: The Idea of Narrative in the Human Sciences. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Hjorth, L., & Kim, K. Y. (2011). The Mourning After. Television & New Media, 12(6), 552–559.
Hooshmand, K. (2015, July). “Soft Power” and its manifestations in international diplomacy. CGCS Media Wire. Retrieved from: http://www.global.asc. upenn.edu/soft-power-and-its-manifestations-in-international-diplomacy/
Hopke, J. E. (2015). Hashtagging Politics: Transnational Anti-Fracking Movement Twitter Practices. Social Media + Society, 1(2), 1-12.
Jackson, S. J., & Foucault Welles, B. (2016). #Ferguson is everywhere: initiators in emerging counter public networks. Information, Communication & Society, 19(3), 397–418.
Jane, E. (2005). Using Narrative in Social Research. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
KhosraviNik, M. (2017). Social media critical discourse studies (SM-CDS). In J. Flowerdew & J. Richardson (Eds.), Routledge handbook of critical discourse studies (pp. 582–596). London: Routledge.
Labov, W. (1972). Language in the inner city. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1997). Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7(1–4), 3–38.
Manovich, L. (2001) The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA; London: The MIT Press.
Marchant, J., Ormson, T., Honari, A., & Sabeti, A. (2018). #iranvotes2017: Analysing the 2017 iranian presidential elections through Telegram, Twitter and Instagram. London: Small Media.
Marchant, J., Sabeti, A., Bowen, K., & Kelly, J. (2016). #IranVotes: Political Discourse on Iranian Twitter during the 2016 Parliamentary Elections. Retrieved from https://smallmedia.org.uk/work/iranvotes
Meraz, S., & Papacharissi, Z. (2013). Networked Gatekeeping and Networked Framing on #Egypt. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 18(2), 138–166.
Morozov, E. (2009). Iran: Downside to the “Twitter Revolution.” Dissent, 56(4), 10–14.
Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (2001). Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ollerenshaw, J. A., & Creswell, J. W. (2002). Narrative Research: A Comparison of Two Restorying Data Analysis Approaches. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(3), 329–347.
Page, R., Harper, R., & Frobenius, M. (2013). From small stories to networked narrative: The evolution of personal narratives in Facebook status updates. Narrative Inquiry, 23(1), 192–213.
Papacharissi, Z. (2014). Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Papacharissi, Z., & De Fatima Oliveira, M. (2012). Affective News and Networked Publics: The Rhythms of News Storytelling on #Egypt. Journal of Communication, 62(2), 266–282.
Roselle, L., Miskimmon, A., & O’Loughlin, B. (2014). Strategic narrative: A new means to understand soft power. Media, War & Conflict, 7(1), 70–84.
Sadler, N. (2018). Narrative and interpretation on Twitter: Reading tweets by telling stories. New Media & Society, 20(9), 3266–3282.
Saldaña, J. (2015). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. London: SAGE.
Shaw, A. (2017). Encoding and decoding affordances: Stuart Hall and interactive mediatechnologies. Media, Culture & Society, 39(4), 592–602.
Tufekci, Z. (2017). Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. Yale University Press.
Udupa, S. (2018). Gaali cultures: The politics of abusive exchange on social media. New Media & Society, 20(4), 1506–1522.
van Dijk, T. A., & Kintsch, W. (1983). Strategies of discourse comprehension. New York, NY: Academic Press.
Wojcieszak, M., & Smith, B. (2013). Will politics be tweeted? New media use by Iranian youth in 2011. New Media & Society, 16(1), 91–109.
Zappavigna, M. (2015). Searchable talk: the linguistic functions of hashtags. Social Semiotics, 25(3), 274–291.