Discourse, Context & Media 2 (2013) 1–13

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Discourse, Context & Media

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/dcm

Facebook sharing: A sociolinguistic analysis of computer-mediated

storytelling
Laura E. West
Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20009, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o abstract

Article history: This paper examines the sharing of an unfolding life event (the remodeling of a new house) on
Received 20 June 2012 Facebook through small story posts. The fact that someone might also choose to simultaneously share
Received in revised form the same life event on a blog (as the poster in this paper does) suggests there is a discursive goal that
11 December 2012
the blog accomplishes that Facebook cannot; on an event-specific blog, unlike on Facebook, the posts
Accepted 24 December 2012
Available online 2 January 2013
are arranged both chronologically and consecutively, within the frame of the overall event. For this
reason, the blog is able to tell a narrative, while Facebook can only suggest one. At the same time,
Keywords: Facebook has its own interactive successes over a blog: it is ideal for audience collection, particularly
Sociolinguistics for linking a narrative with people familiar with the protagonist. This particular type of audience is then
Computer-mediated communication
able to help create the tellability of the narrative (it is of interest because it is a life event being
Small stories
experienced by someone they care about) and assist in shaping the small stories and connecting them
Intertextuality
Mulitmodality discursively with the larger narrative that exists partially on the blog, and partially yet to be
experienced.
& 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

In the following article, I analyze data consisting of thirty-five Facebook posts relating to one user’s first home-remodeling experience,
which is simultaneously relayed on a blog dedicated solely to this event. I demonstrate how the protagonist (Mickey) of the larger home
remodeling narrative, collects an audience through posting related small stories and hyperlinks over time on Facebook. The architecture
of the site enables Mickey to share small stories and statements about the larger narrative and find an audience with which to interact
during the experience of the house-remodeling events. Only by collecting an audience and sharing his experiences do the new house
events become a cohesive story (implicitly on Facebook, and explicitly on the blog). This audience, in turn, helps shape the small stories
and make connections with the greater narrative interactionally.
My goal is to demonstrate this phenomenon in detail and to propose that ‘‘small stories’’ provide a means of understanding those
Facebook posts that contain a topic thread without any structural adjacency or coherence; the audience is key for making the link to the
greater narrative that exists (whether it exists elsewhere online, or only in the life of the poster). Although storytelling online has been
occurring since the early days of the internet, the type this paper explores is that shared with a familiar audience, many of whom are
family and friends with whom regular offline interaction occurs; this enables the audience to interpret the somewhat clandestine and
bare-bones fragments of information that an ongoing-story post on Facebook usually consists of and to mold it into a small story.
While this is a look at only one user’s ongoing storytelling practices, I believe the data chosen is reminiscent of a fairly new practice of
broadcasting large, real-time life events to online friends in these chunks (which are encouraged by the format of Facebook and other
social media). Facebook friends are frequently able to track as friends date, get engaged, plan a wedding, and get married through
relevant posts made on the site. Sometimes members read friends’ pregnancy announcements, see ultrasounds and baby room
decorations, are notified of the arrival of the baby and continue to follow the baby growing up via Facebook pictures and status updates.
In the current study, Mickey relays bit-by-bit, in real time, the experience of buying and remodeling his first home (a major life event)
using several technological resources (Facebook and a blog via his computer and his phone). Example 1 demonstrates Mickey’s most
frequent tactic for sharing the experience with an audience: providing the potential audience with a link to the narrative on his blog.

E-mail address: lew34@georgetown.edu

2211-6958/$ - see front matter & 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2012.12.002
2 L.E. West / Discourse, Context & Media 2 (2013) 1–13

1
Example 1.

While the majority of the pictures and explanations of the home purchases and remodeling is laid out on the blog, Facebook allows
Mickey to broadcast these experiences in a less structured, more conversational way, increasing the amount of potential interaction with
the audience of the story.
Another important goal of the current paper is to use the study of discursive behaviors on Facebook to suggest a mixing of what has in
the past been seen as oil and water: the small story and ‘‘big’’ narrative frameworks (see Bamberg, 2007). The analysis suggests that
experiences shared through Facebook posts exist as immediate and discrete events, while also demonstrating qualities of persistence and
inter-connectivity.

2. Approach

I begin by briefly discussing my definition of stories and narrative (Eisenlauer and Hoffmann, 2010; Georgakopoulou, 2007, 2008;
Bamberg and Georgakopoulou, 2008; Ochs and Capps, 2001) and audience (Goffman, 1981). I then share my personal experience and
methodology in regards to Facebook research in general. Next, I examine the Facebook environment that constrains and gives the small
story posts social context, drawing upon work in computer-mediated communication (Androutsopoulos, 2006; Herring, 2007, 2011),
several studies of Facebook (Zhao et al., 2008; Westlake, 2008; Papacharissi, 2009), and semiotics literature (Scollon and Scollon, 2003;
Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006). Then, I introduce intertextuality (Bakhtin, 1984; Stephens, 1992; Fairclough, 1993; Hamilton, 1996) and
examine how experiences become small story texts and how these connect to the larger life event narrative.
Finally, I integrate the concepts and frameworks for a detailed discourse analysis of a larger piece of data to demonstrate how
considering the above allows for a more complete interpretation of the text. The data sample chosen for this final bit of analysis, involves
multiple commenters and a large amount of turn-taking, shedding light on how members in this space interact with the small stories
and even co-create them with Mickey.

2.1. Stories, narrative and audience

The current paper examines a specific Facebook member’s (Mickey) small stories about house-remodeling events, which exist in
thirty-three posts by Mickey and two posts by his friends mentioning his house-remodeling experience (to both of which Mickey
responds). In addition to being isolated small stories, the posts are also glimpses into the overall house-remodeling narrative, which is
told on Mickey’s blog.2 What is shared on the blog constitutes a narrative in the sense that it is more complex and coherent; the blog is
entirely dedicated to the remodeling event, with a description of the event (an abstract) and ordered, complicating actions.
The Facebook posts I treat as small stories, which are tellings that can be, according to Bamberg and Georgakopoulou (2008, p. 381)
‘‘about very recent (‘this morning’, ‘last night’) or still unfolding events, thus immediately reworking slices of experience and arising out
of a need to share what has just happened or seemingly uninteresting tidbits.’’As Georgakopoulou (2007) claims of a ‘‘practice-oriented
view’’ of narratives, it ‘‘requires that we firmly locate them in place and time and scrutinize the social and discourse activities they are
habitually associated with’’ (p. 8). Likewise, it is the function of real-time stories that is the focus of the current analysis and the social
exchanges in which they take place, rather than a delineation of their form (which is multimodal and fragmented). Georgakopoulou
(2007) asserts that these small stories (that may seem to outsiders of the relevant social circle, to be missing the tellability component of
a traditional narrative) are tellable because of the bonds between the teller and the audience.
Audience, I theorize in terms of Goffman’s work on footing (1981), which allows for the identification of various types of ‘‘hearer’’ in
regards to the relationship to the speaker and to the function and format of a text. Using Goffman’s framework, I propose that general
posts (without explicit reference to particular members or groups) are designed for ‘‘imagined recipients’’ (p. 138). In a group interview
I conducted in November, 2012, with thirteen Facebook users, participants said when they post they most often imagined their readers
to be those with whom they interact with frequently on the site. However, posts are often received by both ratified hearers (those friends
the poster had specifically imagined reading the post) and ‘‘overhearers’’ (p. 132), those who are either friends of the poster but do not
interact with him regularly on the site – and thus are not among those the poster imagines himself speaking to – or those who see the
post in their newsfeed based on the fact that a mutual friend has commented on it.

1
The examples for this paper are as exact transcriptions of the data as is possible while maintaining the anonymity of the posters. ‘‘Mickey’’ is a pseudonym, and any
references to the exact address of his new house have been replaced with ‘‘ADDRESS’’ (all links to his blog, which include the actual address, have also been replaced with
‘‘address’’.).
2
The blog is not part of the current study, except in so far as it sheds light onto how the Facebook posts function.
 L.E. West / Discourse, Context & Media 2 (2013) 1–13 3

2.2. Methodology

I began working with Facebook data in 2009, obtaining permission from a few friends and family members to collect their posts for
linguistic analysis. Over the past 3 years, I have sought to increase the pool of participants, and more specifically, to expand it to allow for
an analysis of exchanges online. The few linguists studying Facebook tended to focus on the more static language on profiles and
individual posts rather than the replies and responses some posts created. Very likely this is due to the much more complicated situation
in terms of obtaining permission that collecting from a wide-enough group of overlapping individuals creates, while maintaining the
privacy and dignity of the informants.
However, over time, I have made my personal network of friends (many of whom are friends with one another) aware of my research
interests and have been given permission from 83 people to collect their posts and comments for linguistic analysis. I recruited
participants in two ways: via an email requesting electronic consent, and via a Facebook ‘‘events’’ page announcing the study and asking
for those interested in participating to reply, ‘‘Yes’’ on the page; people then volunteered to participate via one of the two options. The
Georgetown IRB has approved the language and means of obtaining the consent and the study overall. I re-obtain permission each year
to ensure participants remain aware of the project and opt in each time, and I remind them that they may ask me to delete data I have
collected at anytime. I store the names and pseudonyms of participants in a password-protected document. In addition, I make a point to
offer my research results to any participants who are interested.
The reason all participants come from my own social network is three-fold. First, it is a convenience sample; it is much easier to gain
permission from people I know. Second, the methodology for my long-term study of Facebook is largely ethnographic, which requires my
participation,3 in addition to my observation, in this social network. Finally, using my personal ‘‘friends’’ base as potential participants
creates a greater opportunity to witness topic flow through turn-taking and the creation of adjacency pairs. Had I obtained permission
from strangers, I would only have been able to capture the language they posted and not the responses of their friends (without then
somehow connecting with those individuals to ask permission). For ethical considerations, I have made a point not to ‘‘friend’’ people for
the sole purpose of studying them.
Readers will note, however, that this methodology did not solve the problem of gaps in the data completely. There are instances that
I analyze in which I only have permission to collect the language of some of the participants of the conversation. Thus, some of the
language is paraphrased due to ethical considerations.

3. Facebook and storytelling

Mickey’s primary goal is to tell the story of his home remodeling experience. In the introduction to Narrative Revisited, which
addresses storytelling online, editor Christina Hoffmann remarks that storytellers choose the mode, or modes, of communication that are
most efficient and appropriate for their communicative concerns (Hoffman, 2010). The best mode for a detailed relaying of events is a
blog dedicated to the event, because it is designed to give a user space to write without word limits and the posts will be chronological
and consecutive. However, the best mode for building an audience and reaching the largest number of people in his online social
network is Facebook, so Mickey makes use of the site to connect potential readers with his narrative.

3.1. Facebook as context

As discussed by Bolander and Locher (2010), linguistic studies of Facebook have been relatively minimal (p. 160), the main attention
instead having come from other social sciences. Only in the past two to three years, have linguists begun to systematically explore and
theorize about discourse on the site.
Two of the front-runners in the linguistic investigation of Facebook are Bolander and Locher (2010). Their 2010 study uses
methodology from an early identity construction study (Zhao et al., 2008) to explore whether members of their small sample tend to
make similar identity claims as those observed in the 2008 study. They conclude, in agreement with Zhao et al., that most identity claims
were implicit on the site, and they suggest this is ‘‘to underline what is relevant for a specific point in time, as opposed to utilizing more
static labels,’’ (p. 178) such as those provided by choosing certain labels on one’s profile page. Bolander and Locher’s (under review)
research has continued on Facebook to include the responses to these identity claims, and their most recent article reports that readers of
posts largely accept and assist in the identity claims made on the site.
Crucial to understanding online behaviors is recognizing the context’s specific influence. Androutsopoulos (2008) puts forward that
analysis of online language include, ‘‘charting the complex architecture of that space and understanding the various relations among its
components’’ (p. 5) in the interpretation of the data. Herring (2007) provides a rubric for classifying aspects of specific online
communication, which have been shown to affect linguistic behavior. Thus, I also describe the text by using Herring’s scheme, in so far as
it illuminates the data and enhances the in-depth discourse analysis of the texts in this study.
In Table 1, I explain the environment Mickey is communicating in according to Herring’s online ‘‘medium’’ factors – the technological
aspects of the communication – that are specific to Facebook. I identify the specific medium factors for the current study in the middle
column (‘‘On Facebook’’) and each one’s ‘‘Potential Influence,’’ according to Herring (2007).
The device through which a message is communicated can also affect the linguistic behavior of the poster, as demonstrated in
Example 2.

3
I am not a participant in the data for the current paper.
4 L.E. West / Discourse, Context & Media 2 (2013) 1–13

Table 1
Herring (2007) several medium factors of Facebook.

Medium
On Facebook Potential influence
factors

Synchronicity Asynchronous ‘‘most traditional forms of writing are asynchronous, and spoken conversation is typically synchronous,
making synchronicity a useful dimension for comparing different types of CMC with spoken and written
discourse’’ (14)
Persistence of Infinite ‘‘The overall greater persistence of CMD heightens meta-linguistic awareness: It allows users to reflect on
transcript their communication’’ (15)
Size of message Several lines (small paragraph)
‘‘smaller buffers often mean shorter messages and different discourse organizational strategies’’ (15)
buffer
Message Post at top with reverse chronological ‘‘The information provided in message headersyhas been found to affect online self-reference and
format comments underneath addressivity practices’’ (17)

Example 2. Facebook texts and modes of communication

Facebook allows mobile posting—members can create a post on their cell phones, updating a story while experiencing it. In Example 2,
two consecutive posts (separated by two hours) are posted via different means: computer and mobile phone. In the bottom post (the
earlier post of the two), Mickey is communicating from his cell phone (symbolized by the small image of a cell phone in front of the date
and time). Here he uses the present progressive, telling the events as they are happening and taking the audience with him. In the recent
past, currently unfolding written narratives did not seem possible (Jucker, 2010), but with on-the-go sharing options now available, this
is becoming more common.

The language of the first post reveals who Mickey visualizes as his primary audience at the moment of his mobile sharing; simply
referring to ‘‘my permit’’ assumes a familiarity with the story, that the person reading the post knows what type of permit Mickey is
talking about, so that Mickey is able to refer to this semiactive information (Chafe, 1986) in the minds of his audience. Each new post,
therefore, is not necessarily seeking to orient an infinite number of potential readers to the story (unless it includes a link to the blog).
The bottom post seems to be focusing on those friends who are already following the house narrative, either online or off, leaving the
‘‘overhearers’’ (Goffman, 1981) to piece it together themselves.
Roughly 2 hours later, Mickey creates his next post (top, Example 2), which consists of a link where the permit he was issued can be
found. This opens the story up to a wider audience by providing a means of familiarizing new followers with necessary information for
understanding the permit event of the house narrative. This second post is done from a computer (the notepad symbol next to the date
indicates this). The difference in Mickey’s choice of audience here is likely due to the fact that posting from a cell phone does not have
quite the ease of functionality as from a computer (e.g. the keys and screen are smaller, access to different punctuation and symbols
often takes several extra strokes, etc.) In addition, on-the-go posters may be minimalists in their messaging due to time constraints (e.g.
They have a few minutes while riding a crowded bus to make a quick post). However, because Mickey includes a link with most of his
posts (see Table 4), it seems he is more concerned with targeting the largest number of potential audience members when possible.

3.2. Why a stories and narrative framework

Investigating the relaying of quotidian events in social interactions shifts the focus to a process rather than a product (Ochs and
Capps, 2001); the idea being that, in conversation, ‘‘interlocutors use narrative to grapple with unresolved life experiences’’ (p. 57).
Georgakopoulou, 2007, 2008 researched the everyday conversational sharing of experiences in groups of close friends. She refers to these
as ‘‘small stories,’’ ‘‘an umbrella-term that captures a gamut of frequent and salient narrative activities in conversational contexts’’
(p. 600), which are largely ignored by narrative analyses that focus on the traditional Labovian narrative.
Small stories, which are integral to everyday interaction (see Georgakopoulou, 2007, 2008; Bamberg 2007, 2008; Bamberg and
Georgakopoulou 2008), are being reshaped by the different online spaces where they are being told. Applying a ‘‘small stories’’
 L.E. West / Discourse, Context & Media 2 (2013) 1–13 5

Table 2
Likes and comments on Mickey’s posts.

Mickey’s house posts # of posts ‘‘liked’’ # of ‘‘likes’’ % posts ‘‘liked’’

33 19 51 58

Table 3
Comments on Mickey’s posts.

Mickey’s house posts Posts commented on % posts commented on

33 16 49

framework to Facebook data captures the relational aspects of posting to the online site. But given the ‘‘persistence of the transcript’’
(Herring, 2007) on Facebook, small story posts can also exist as a thread of a larger life narrative, which captures the more performative4
aspect of the semi-public space that is the Facebook newsfeed.
In addition to being about still unfolding events, Mickey’s posts demonstrate another aspect that Georgakopoulou observed of small
stories: that the story line can be ‘‘taken up again, if momentarily exited from, with minimal marking’’ (p. 602). Mickey posts updates
about his house with no lead-in, often having several unrelated posts in-between. (Mickey’s average number of intervening posts is 2.5;
though, this is variable, with there being as many as 15 and sometimes zero in between house posts). In short, ‘‘the line of
communication for telling remains open’’ (p. 602), and Mickey can leave and continue the story in real time.
These small stories are linked linguistically, building on each other indirectly through Mickey’s use of quantifiers, specifically in the
titles of blog posts, which often serve as the language of a corresponding Facebook post (‘‘1/3 of the way there’’ (2/2/11), ‘‘5th purchase
for the house’’ (4/3/11)).
The small stories are also linked interactively, by way of the audience. Facebook makes responsive devices available to interactants,
which allow them to signal listenership and actively participate in the exchange. The ‘‘like’’ feature, a clickable word located directly
beneath a post, I interpret as a sort of ‘‘backchannel’’ (Goffman, 1981) device. Commenting, on the other hand, is a more active form of
communicating with a poster, and it can result in a series of replies and responses on the topic of the post. Both backchanneling and
replying are extremely common on Facebook (67% of Mickey’s posts receive one or the other or both), which is probably one of the
reasons Mickey chooses this as a platform for his story sharing and narrative building. After all, as Bamberg (2007) asserts: ‘‘ythe worst
thing that can happen to a narrative is that it remains responseless’’ (p. 167).
As in many spoken narratives when the storyteller mostly maintains the floor while listeners backchannel to signal listening, ‘‘liking’’
as a response to Mickey’s story-sharing is more common than commenting (see Table 2). Still, out of Mickey’s thirty-three house posts
during the months December through April, almost 50% receive comments from readers (see Table 3).
The majority of responses are questions about the location of the house, details about the remodeling process, or the expected date of
completion. Thus, the audience participates by drawing out bits of story details and recognizing the overall connection of the small
stories as part of a larger house-remodeling narrative.

4. Interpreting the verbal and nonverbal on Facebook

The social network’s motto is ‘‘Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life,’’ and the site prompts users to share
‘‘what’s on your mind’’5 through posts. Once a user clicks in the textbox provided for posting, the prompt disappears, giving users a blank
slate on which to type their thoughts. All this pushing and arranging by the site to ‘‘connect’’ and share encourages Mickey’s narrative-
sharing impulse(Ochs and Capps, 2001), which Bazzanella (2010)claims provides ‘‘a way to relate to others’’ (p. 30).

4.1. Interacting with images

Another way conversationalists relate to one another is by drawing on objects in the surrounding environment for topic resources
(Chafe, 1994).Thus, any thorough analysis of discourse must pay close attention to what is surrounding discourse and, in an online
setting, the non-linguistic aspects of the interaction itself (video, photos, drawings, icons, etc.). Mickey often makes use of ‘nonlocal’
resources, such as photos of his house, or video footage of the progress and makes them immediately available to potential audience
members. Once they are posted to Facebook, they become ‘‘‘local’ production resources’’ (Erickson, 1982) to be called upon by others in
conversation.
While the space and structure of Facebook are becoming more and more familiar to a larger number of people, the way they function
is not obvious. As Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) write, ‘‘Visual communication is always coded. It seems transparent only because we
know the code already, at least passivelyywithout having the means for talking about what it is we do when we read an image’’ (p. 32)
or how we use them to ‘‘say’’ something.

4
In a ‘‘small stories’’ framework, such as that championed by Bamberg and Georgakopoulou, small stories are more interactional, while traditional narratives are those
more rare, highly structured tellings that are prompted by an interview or a staged event.
5
At the time this was written.
6 L.E. West / Discourse, Context & Media 2 (2013) 1–13

Example 3 demonstrates the importance of the visual in communicating a story on Facebook. We know having the plans in their final
state is a victory in Mickey’s adventures in house remodeling, yet the language betrays none of the emotion. It serves merely as a
description of the uploaded photograph. It is by virtue of Mickey’s actual documenting of this moment and posting about it that readers
are made aware that he cares about this particular part of the story.
Images have meaning based on their location (Scollon and Scollon, 2003). A picture that is posted to Facebook has meaning by its
existence on the site, as well as its actual visual components, for example:

Example 3. Using Semiotics to ‘‘read’’ the multimodal messages6

Here, the photograph does not serve to give much explicit content to the story. In Example 3, Mickey posts a picture of what seems to
be spread-out paper work. The picture is not close enough to read the document; instead, the document is shown on a desk with other
papers and folders. As a brief reference to the greater narrative, it draws the readers into what is happening, into the actual experience.
It creates a small story from this piece of the house-remodeling experience, consisting of the ‘‘final review’’ event. We see what Mickey
sees sitting at his desk. The point is not to see the details of the plans – which would make little sense to most non-engineer audience
members – but to experience the ‘‘final plan review.’’
Several friends respond to the ‘‘experience,’’ by pretending that they can see the words or images in the photographed documents.
This is a way to playfully engage with the story, since the size of the image makes this impossible (play has been found to be an
important part of relating to people on a purely social site (Baym, 1995)). Friend 2’s comment, ‘‘Make the roof deck bigger,’’ also
references the subject of the plan (the house) and reveals that this friend is aware of the larger narrative, since he is aware that there is a
roof deck (Mickey’s house does have a roof deck). Taken in the context of the image, along with the ‘‘final plan review’’ statement, this
connects this small story to the larger narrative—intertextually.

4.2. Intertextuality: making texts from images and words

The beginning of the concept of intertextuality, though he did not refer to it by that term, is Bakhtin’s (1984) notion of the histories of
words. He claims that ‘‘each word tastes of the context and contexts in which it has lived its socially charged life’’ (p. 293). While
Bakhtin’s interest was the word in literature, a linguist usually treats the concept in a manner more relevant to their interest in
conversation, defining intertextuality as:

The ways in which speakers/writers use language to establish and maintain ties between the current linguistic interaction and prior
ones involving the same participants, as well as the ways in which listeners/readers identify and use these ties to help them
(re)construct a meaning (Hamilton, 1996, p. 64).

While discourse and narrative analysis are tools for analyzing the text, intertextuality is a tool that ‘‘points to the productivity of
texts’’ (Fairclough, 1993, p. 102). With each Facebook post, Mickey creates a focus text (Stephens, 1992) that is oriented both to pre-texts
(previous related small stories or narrative references) and to subsequent texts (those events and posts connected with future progress).
In Example 3 above, ‘‘final plan review’’ (emphasis added) suggests there were earlier stages in the plans; the adjective is an intertextual
reference to the fact that there were drafts and ‘‘initial’’ plans. And the fact that the document is not legible, giving no indication of what
is entailed in the ‘‘plan,’’ signals that there is more to this story that perhaps other members are aware of—prior, related talk.
Example 4 shows members highlighting the focus text’s (Mickey’s post) relationship to pre- and subsequent texts. Friend 1 and Friend
3 bring up the idea of previous and future small stories, while Friend 2 references the focus text directly, asking for more information
(which Mickey provides).

6
Only a few of Mickey’s friends were taking part in the larger ethnographic study by allowing the researcher to collect their exact language from Facebook. Therefore,
all comments by people who had not given their consent for the researcher to record their language have been either paraphrased, or simply replaced with ‘‘comment’’
when specific data is being used to demonstrate an aspect of the study not concerned with the influence of participants’ particular comments.
 L.E. West / Discourse, Context & Media 2 (2013) 1–13 7

Example 4. Referring to past and future texts

In Example 4, Friend 1 references the focus text (the ‘‘Framing: Day 1’’ hyperlink) by indicating he has used the link to visit the blog
and view the pictures there, since he opines that the house is looking better than before. Talking about progress also implies he has seen
prior texts that showed the house before this stage, and mentioning ‘‘looking forward’’ to seeing more progress, explicitly refers to future
texts, linking this small story to the ongoing narrative. Friend 2 then focuses the conversation on the image by asking about the framing
and the back wall in the picture, a question which Mickey responds to, giving more explicit information. The interaction is closed-out by
Friend 3 referencing the overall narrative and its audience.

4.3. Audience on Facebook

In Example 4, Mickey also marks an explicit shift in footing (Goffman, 1981)—how he is managing and relating to his hearers; Mickey
responds to Friend 2, with a straightforward answer about why the walls are being put up this way, and then ‘‘turns’’ to the ‘‘non-
engineers’’ in the audience, to state the obvious: that a wall falling over is ‘‘not good,’’ speaking as expert to laypeople.
While Mickey can target a certain recipient (e.g. a specific friend, ‘‘non-engineers,’’ etc.) for his story-sharing, his audience is mostly
imagined. Thus, he is not ‘‘aware of the addressee and what is in their consciousness’’ (Chafe, 1994), as he likely would be in face-to-face
interaction. But Facebook, like many other online social spaces, allows posters to bring their consciousness to the minds of the readers
with images, as in Example 5. We know this is what images do, since Mickey refers simply to ‘‘that’’ without writing further about it.
What gets the readers ‘‘up to speed,’’ or on the same topic wavelength as Mickey is the image demonstrating the ‘‘that’’ and the title of
the blog post ‘‘Zoning—Approved.’’

Example 5. A demonstration of ‘‘that’’ and the use of ‘‘well.’’

Mickey’s use of well signals that he is in an ‘‘open-state’’ of talk (Goffman, 1959) about the house. Although weeks have past since his
last post about the house and several unrelated topics have been breeched in between, Mickey picks up the story again. While this might
seem presumptive in an offline conversation, to bring something up ‘‘out of the blue,’’ Mickey can provide a link and image to get the
audience back on the same page of the larger narrative with him, as he does in Example 5.
8 L.E. West / Discourse, Context & Media 2 (2013) 1–13

Table 4
Posts including or consisting only of a link.

Posts by Mickey Posts w link Posts that are links-only % posts w link % links-only

33 29 22 89 67

When Mickey says, ‘‘well,’’ readers are both alerted to the fact that a conversation of sorts was already underway, and are at the same
time anticipating that the following revelation will be something that the speaker had not expected (Schiffrin, 1987), in this case, the
length of time it took to receive a zoning permit. The discourse marker’s clear relationship to prior text brings to attention that there are
prior texts and expectations to refer to. However, unlike in some of Mickey’s previous Facebook posts, which isolate a specific audience
by assuming prior knowledge, here Mickey provides the ‘‘that’’ for readers who may lack access to the prior text.
Again, since Facebook and the blog carry the ‘‘given’’ information (in previous posts), Mickey’s utterances can assume a great deal.
However, to capture the widest audience possible, not just those proactive enough to mine earlier posts for information, Mickey usually
provides the link (see Table 4), an invitation to audience members to orient themselves to the larger narrative. In fact, sometimes
Mickey’s Facebook posts consist of nothing more than a link to the narrative on this blog.
These hyperlinks are themselves a small story, ‘‘needing to be activated by the reader’’ Mazzali-Lurati (2007, p. 135), an option unique
to storytelling in an online context.
Below, Example 6 demonstrates how participants contribute to the small story and help flesh out the greater narrative, coaxing
Mickey to add more orientation, do more evaluation, and offer further validation and explanatory information. This is common to a
conversational narrative, which ‘‘routinely involves questions, clarifications, challenges, and speculations’’ (Ochs and Capps, 2001, p. 18)
by others, who ‘‘contribute to the shaping of the narrative’’ (p. 32).

Example 6. Mickey’s response to audience responses

In Example 6, in one of the comments not shown (they are collapsed in the ‘‘View all 4 comments’’ tier) someone positively evaluates
the story as an accomplishment deserving a ‘‘congratulations,’’ and shows interest in when the house remodeling process might be done.
Mickey responds by thanking his friend and offering information about the anticipated date of completion and also offering an
explanation: that he is waiting for the building permit, which should come next month. These orienting and explanatory details are
added as a direct result of a ‘‘hearer’s’’ contribution to the discourse.
Given that Mickey can upload government documents about the state’s inspections of his property and can provide photos or
even videos like in the above example, it is not the case, as Labov states is usually true of narrative, that ‘‘the only information
available on the nature of the reported events is in the narrative itself: there is no independent evidence on what actually happened’’
(2003, p. 63-4).
This option to provide recipients of the narrative with further evidence is demonstrated again in Example 7 below, with a link to the
official government checklist Mickey has to complete; readers can see for themselves that Mickey is ‘‘1/3 of the way there.’’ The post is
then positively evaluated both by Mickey’s word choice – that he ‘‘love’’s being speeded through the process – as well as through others’
demonstrated interest in the details of this small story and the narrative overall. One friend is so excited about the house, that they have
already purchased a gift to congratulate Mickey.
 L.E. West / Discourse, Context & Media 2 (2013) 1–13 9

Example 7. Co-creating orientation and evaluation

Notice Mickey has also ‘‘transformed’’ this event (Labov, 2003); a potentially mundane detail of the story – that the house is 1/3 of the
way to fruition – is judged by Mickey as a reportable milestone, a small story-worthy event, and an opportunity to continue with the
narrative. If the audience is unclear about how this happened, they may click on the link to the blog for more details, or may ask Mickey
for more explicit information in the comments area.7 One person does this to expand the idea of ‘‘1/3 of the way’’ by indirectly asking
when he will actually be done. The question-and-answer exchange becomes a potential co-orienting and evaluating event for other
readers, as in Example 8 below.

Example 8. More co-orienting and evaluating with and for the audience

Here, Mickey is sharing that he won an argument with the District about his building plans. This small story has a specific audience,
since there is not enough information or a link to the blog for someone to enter the narrative here. Jerry, however, has been following the
house narrative; he knows what Mickey might have ‘‘fought the law’’ about and asks a relevant question, co-orienting himself and other
potential readers by receiving a response from Mickey.
The audience is also able to co-evaluate with Mickey. Mickey’s response in Example 8 ends with ‘‘booya,’’ a term that denotes a
certain competitive ‘‘so there,’’ which seems to be directed at ‘‘the law.’’ Mickey is positively evaluating this event (as he did by
capitalizing ‘‘WON’’), and Jerry adds to this with an exclamation and a ‘‘Mazel tov.’’ (Later that day, two more friends give congratulations
to Mickey, one repeating Jerry’s ‘‘you can make a difference’’ language. These two friends may have already had access to the specifics of
this post and how it should be evaluated, but they may also have accessed the relevant information by reading the earlier replies and
responses.)

7
These, of course, are only the public options immediately available to the reader (and researcher). A reader of any post may also choose to message, email or call
Mickey to get further details and can bring it up in person next time they meet. Future research in narrative across social media may also attempt to track these offline or
more private discussions of bits of the narrative to capture how proactively certain audience members choose to pursue the details of a story.
10 L.E. West / Discourse, Context & Media 2 (2013) 1–13

Not only do audience members co-construct parts of the narrative by interacting directly with Mickey on a certain point, but they can
influence Mickey’s future posts about the narrative (though I only observed overt evidence of this once), reminding him of information
gaps in the story, as in Example 9.

Example 9. The audience further influencing the narrative sharing

In the top post, time stamped 2:05 p.m., a friend posts to Mickey’s wall that he has seen the plans and likes a particular element.
Mickey responds by first posting a new reference to his wall, a link to the updated plans (2:08 p.m.) and then correcting and orienting the
specific commenter to the changes (2:12 p.m). The fact that Mickey first responds by posting to his wall, addressing no one in particular,
i.e. everyone in his social network, before replying directly to the friend who made the comment is telling of what he finds most crucial
to his story sharing on Facebook: orienting the largest number of audience members to the house remodeling narrative.

4.4. Integration of concepts and frameworks: Viking Range owner

I will now examine a final text (Example 10), piecing together the various aspects of the previous analyses.
 L.E. West / Discourse, Context & Media 2 (2013) 1–13 11

Example 10. Viking Range owner analysis

In Example 10 Mickey actively addresses all of those who have been reading his small stories on Facebook ‘‘apologizing’’ for his
sharing of what might be seen as ‘‘nerdy’’ details of his home remodeling experience. The focus text is a snapshot and brief description of
his most recent (3rd) purchase for the house.
While using more language than in many of his other posts (here Mickey’s post contains 14 words in addition to the title of the blog
post, where his average number of non-title words per post is 3; 21 of his 33 posts contain no words besides the title of the blog post),
Mickey still keeps his message in a format encouraged by Facebook—a brief insight of ‘‘what’s on his mind,’’ electing to have Facebook
generate an image of what he is referring to from his blog and a link with the title of the entry.
Mickey begins the post by stating the most recent step in the remodeling process: he has bought a new appliance. Evidence of this
exists in the form of a picture on his blog, seen here as a small clickable image. The language implies that earlier storytelling has
occurred; a ‘‘third purchase’’ implies there were two previous purchases, and the use of the definite article implies that ‘‘the house’’ is
already an established topic. His mention of ‘‘home ownership’’ also ties this bit in with the overall theme of the larger narrative.
An ellipsis-like punctuation at the end of his message implies something following. In traditional writing, an ellipsis can link two
sentences, which is why when used at the end of a speech-like statement, it takes on this flavor of, ‘‘but’’—‘‘there’s more.’’ This could
allude to the fact that Mickey plans to continue ‘‘nerding out’’ (subsequent texts) over home ownership by sharing these details8 (indeed,
Mickey posts several more like this, up to the ‘‘6th purchase for the house.’’)
The link is a further invitation for audience members to orient themselves to what a ‘‘Viking Range’’ is and what this one looks like, as
well as to a bit more detail about how his ownership of it came about. Friend 1 and Friend 2 positively evaluate this information, with
Friend 2 referencing ‘‘that deal,’’ which is information found only on the blog, thus communicating that she has clicked on the link to
read the entry. The third friend pretends to negatively evaluate the event by saying she would prefer a different brand in appliance. This
prompts Mickey to jump in to reorient her to the fact that this was, ‘‘a deal,’’ providing the actual price he paid, which was not
information he had originally shared in this small story (thus, Mickey and Friend 3 co-create more of the orientation of the story).
Friend 3 then reveals she is joking and positively evaluates the house, revealing that she is also familiar with the overall narrative, and
she references future events by ‘‘looking forward’’ to it being done, thus tying in this small story interactionally. Finally, the exchange
ends with a joke by Friend 4, which refers not to the focus text but to the prior comment by Mickey.

8
This is my interpretation of the punctuation. However, Herring (2011) treats an ellipsis used in social media as a case of ‘‘repeated punctuation.’’ Almost every type of
punctuation can be repeated, ‘‘to express affect’’ (2007), and members of Facebook may repeat a period for a bit of affect-laced punctuation. This could be the case here,
where its resemblance to a traditional ellipsis is merely coincidence. In my own research, I have seen members create a punctuation nine-periods long.
12 L.E. West / Discourse, Context & Media 2 (2013) 1–13

5. Conclusion

There are approximately one billion monthly active users and vast amounts of multimodal social interaction taking place on
Facebook.9 Of course, while this makes Facebook a prime place to mine for sociolinguistic data, the quantity of the data also make it
complicated for study, requiring a combination of traditional frameworks and expansion of concepts in order to interpret the data and
structure the analysis. Calling on the concept of small stories and narrative, using an intertextuality framework and acknowledging the
specific contextual influences of Facebook, I have analyzed both individual posts by Mickey and identified his linguistic and
communicative practices in general in regards to this ongoing narrative event.
Narratives such as Mickey’s, told online, are testing the boundaries of traditional sociolinguistic approaches to the study of narrative
due to their fragmentary and multimodal nature (Eisenlauer and Hoffmann, 2010). It seems that a new generation of online hearers and
readers prefer getting their stories piecemeal: ‘‘We may not be happy reading 500 page blockbusters on our computer screensybut we
spend hours reading and moving between fragments on the network’’ (Walker, 2004, p. 3).
This type of narrative-telling through small stories deserves researcher’s attention due to its prevalence in social media, which itself is
now a prevalent form of interaction in many parts of the world; in the social media framework, texts are preserved and stacked (blogs,
twitter, myspace, etc.), creating a history. Facebook realizes and capitalizes on this capacity of social media to tell a story and created the
new TimeLine structure: posts are situated in time and thus made more story-like. In fact, to extend the view at the bottom of the first
page on a person’s wall, one must click on the button labeled: ‘‘See More Recent Stories’’ (emphasis my own). Examining how Facebook
users take advantage of these spaces to create and share stories is an important piece to understanding why social media has taken off
the way that it has.
Mickey uses Facebook to tell small stories that are part of and collect an audience for the house buying narrative on his blog; this is
evidenced by the fact that 29 of the 33 posts by Mickey include the blog’s hyperlink, and in wellover half of these, the link is the only
message included (see Table 4). Those who read his posts are often left to orient themselves to the story either through the links or
asking questions about the posts. These questions and responses then serve as orienting information for other readers because of the
persistence of the Facebook transcript. In addition to actively orienting themselves (and by extension others) to the story, audience
members who comment on the posts are crucial for evaluating pieces of the narrative and for drawing out Mickey’s own feelings on the
experiences.
Small stories such as Facebook posts are often only interesting to those who care about the poster, those who hold contextualizing
information about why the story matters based on their relationship with the narrator. The evidence for this is in the data: very rarely
does Mickey attempt to ‘‘affect the audience’’ (Bamberg, 2007, p. 167) in any real way by highlighting the immediate relevancy of this
particular small story, or explicitly marking its tellability. Thus, we are left to conclude that Mickey is concerned with sharing this
experience with family and friends who care about this by virtue of it being a major event in Mickey’s life.
Kress and van Leeuwen observed over a decade ago that, ‘‘the place of language in public forms of communication is changing.
Language is moving from its former, unchallenged role as the medium of communication, to a role as one medium of communication’’
(2006, p. 34). This is especially true on Facebook, so a complete study analyzing communication on the site will include the visual in its
interpretation of the messages being communicated, just as sociolinguistic studies of face-to-face interactions consider the nonverbal
elements in a thorough analysis, and as I have attempted to do here.
Future work might also include interviewing users about specific interactions. For example, it could be the case that many friends are
keeping up with the story online in the more public forum of Mickey’s Facebook posts, but perhaps they are also frequently collecting
relevant information during their offline interaction with Mickey. Interviewing the participants could reveal how online topics and
discourse are referenced in face-to-face communication, and how offline conversations are incorporated into and perhaps shape online
story-sharing processes.
Those who are attempting work in online narratives agree that ‘‘for narrative scholars, in particular, the multimodal extension of texts
makes necessary the remodeling of existing methods of analysis’’ (Hoffman, 2010, p. 2). And while that is a daunting task, the ubiquity of
new media like Facebook demands we attempt it in order to better understand our online social selves.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Dr. Anna Marie Trester for her guidance and encouragement with this project and Dr. Heidi Hamilton for her
valuable edits and comments.

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