Digital Media, Narrative, and Social Change

Dear Colleagues,

Digital media have transformed who can tell stories, in what forms, and to whom, yet this proliferation of narrative practices across platforms, formats, and communities has not been matched by a systematic understanding of what these stories do socially—how they shape perceptions of others, foster empathy across difference, challenge exclusion, and contribute to processes of change.

Narrative has long been recognised as a fundamental mode through which human beings make sense of experience and communicate it to others. What digital media have altered is not this basic function but its conditions: the scale at which stories circulate, the diversity of forms they can take, the range of people who can produce and share them, and the speed at which they reach audiences across social and geographical boundaries. Games, interactive documentaries, podcasts, participatory video, and social media have each created new possibilities for storytelling that go beyond the transmission of information; possibilities to place audiences inside unfamiliar experiences, to give voice to communities that mainstream media have historically ignored, and to build solidarity across difference.

These possibilities have attracted considerable attention from practitioners, activists, educators, and policymakers. Scholarship, however, has tended to examine digital narratives either as objects of textual analysis or as instruments of political communication, leaving underexplored the question of how narrative practices in digital environments produce social effects. How do stories told through games or interactive media generate empathy in ways that other formats do not? Under what conditions does participatory storytelling strengthen community bonds or challenge exclusionary representations? What narrative strategies are most effective at making invisible experiences visible to wider publics? And where does digital storytelling fail to produce the change it promises?

This Special Issue invites contributions that address these questions across a range of contexts, communities, and digital forms. We are particularly interested in research that moves beyond the analysis of texts and platforms toward the social effects of storytelling itself: on audiences, on communities, and on the conditions of inclusion and exclusion that frame them. Contributions that examine marginalised or underrepresented groups; that engage with contexts of migration, displacement, or social conflict; or that develop new methodological approaches to studying narrative impact are especially welcome.

Original research articles, theoretical contributions, and systematic reviews are welcome. Research areas may include, but are not limited to, digital narrative and social inclusion; empathy, recognition, and counter-narrative; marginalised voices and representation in digital environments; participatory and co-created narrative practices; narrative strategies in contexts of migration, conflict, and displacement; game-based and interactive narrative as social action; and the relationship between narrative form and social impact.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Cátia Ferreira
Dr. Ana Paula Mauro
Guest Editors

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• digital media
• narrative
• social change
• empathy
• inclusion
• counter-narrative
• participatory media
• interactive narrative
• migration
• social action