Question #7: At the beginning of this lesson I pointed to the idea that technological advances in communication tools have been part of the impetus to rethink the divisive and hierarchical categorizing of literature and orality, and suggested that this is happening for a number of reasons. I’d like you to consider two aspects of digital literature: 1) social media tools that enable widespread publication, without publishers, and 2) Hypertext, which is the name for the text that lies beyond the text you are reading, until you click. How do you think these capabilities might be impacting literature and story?
There are so many options for self-publication online, from Facebook to blogging platforms, and visual media tools like YouTube and Instagram, people all over the world use these social media tools as a means to communicate and share in the way that traditional print media originally intended.
The significance of Twitter- particularly in the Global North- has increased substantially since the social media platform was introduced a decade ago in 2006. Like many other social media, Twitter has multiple uses and functions, with the overall theme and goal of widespread communication and sharing; but Twitter is unique in that it sparked the widespread use of hyperlinks via the hashtag (#) and the linkage to other users (@). Not only are these two uses of hyper text common throughout the world, but without them, Twitter would not be able to exit and function in the same way. The capability of social media and its reliance on hypertext have impacted the organization of story-telling and thus, the organization of literature in a “digital age.”
Literature, in its simplicity, is a written means of communicating one story (fictional or otherwise) to another person. Though, in its traditional print format, the communication between persons is limited and often one-sided. Meanwhile, in the same way that literature and story are symbiotic, so are people, digital literature, and hypertext. Digital literature and its hyper textual capabilities allow interactive communication with the extended possibility to have this happen in ‘real-time.’ As Leslie D’Monte describes it, Twitter is the “SMS [aka ‘text message’] of the Internet” (2009). Consider this. A text message became revolutionary in its ability to instantly connect two (and sometimes more) people in a written, non-verbal/oral format. A tweet acts in a similar manner: a person ‘tweets’ their piece of micro-literature (Twitter only allows a maximum of 140 characters including spaces, punctuation, and special characters) and it is instantly posted to the World Wide Web (WWW). The difference here however, is that regardless of to whom the tweet may be directed via the @ feature, anyone is able to see and interact with it.
Twitter not only acts as a micro self-publishing tool for snippets of the user’s life or a story they want to share, but it also acts as an interactive marketing tools for the user’s story-turned-literature. Often, this function will result in an interconnection between social media platforms. Take a blogger of some type: They may regularly blog about a particular topic, and then use Twitter as a means to market their self-published material. Or, we can look at YouTube stars: Grace Helbig is famous for her quirky ‘vlog’ (I.e.: video-blog) and has since published two print books with the help of outside publishers. If we stop here, we can assess Helbig’s self-publication on YouTube (a visual and auditory version of digital literature) and the subsequent non-self publication of her two books. However, on Grace’s Twitter feed, she has used her ‘bio’ section to hyperlink to her YouTube channel, and the website for her latest book. She also used tweeting to promote her books and share them with the world. Meanwhile, when she is not promoting her print books, she self-publishes anecdotes of her life, and society, through multiple daily tweets.
The velocity with which Twitter users- including Helbig- tweet their stories and opinions impact literature and story by increasing both of their accessibility, use, and interaction. Via Twitter, users are able to hyperlink to other users (@), topics (#), websites, photos, videos, and even other social media platforms. While at the same time, this process works reciprocally as the other social media tools (I.e. Facebook) are also hyperlinking to outside webpages and platforms such as Twitter.
So what does this all mean? It means that as society moves through this ‘digital age,’ of storytelling and information sharing, we will take Chamerblin’s notion that stories “hold us together and at the same time keep us apart” (1) to a whole new level; we will increasingly give stories –and digital literature- more power. The interactive nature of digital literature allows stories to be shared instantaneously and vastly. This of course can work wonders when it comes to the effectiveness of emergency communication, but it can also tear great divides between those who hold different beliefs and values. The growing power of digital literature is both dangerous, and adventurous.
Works Cited
Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. AA. Knopf. Toronto. 2003. Print.
D’Monte, Leslie. “Swine Flu’s tweet tweet causes online flutter.” Business Standard. Business Standard Private Ltd.., 29 April 2009. Web. 10 June 2016.
Helbig, Grace. “Grace Helbig (@gracehelbig).” Twitter. Twitter. Multiple dates. Web. 10 June 2016.
Hutchinson, Andrew. “Here’s Why Twitter is so Important, to Everyone.” Social Media Today. 18 March 2016. Web. 10 June 2016.
“The Twitter Glossary.” Help Centre. Twitter. N.d. Web. 10 June 2016.
“Twitter Usage Statistics.” Internet Live Stats. N.d. Web. 10 June 2016.