UNIVERSITY OF NOVA GORICA GRADUATE SCHOOL ...

create and communicate, via digital memorial, a very personal historical statement. 121 The
research objects are investigated as paradigmatic cases of digital storytelling where multimodal
discourse analysis focuses on visual and audio aspects and is combined with textual analysis of
comments and posts.
Finally, the third case study investigates memory and remembering in several Facebook profiles
related to Yugoslavia, its lifelong president and a popular culture icon (Chapter 4). They are
analysed as cases of collaborative digital storytelling and approached as co-created, underpermanent-construction
digital memorials which are intrinsically related/networked to and
between visitors, administrators and other similar Facebook profiles. The investigation is
conducted through discourse analysis including text, video and audio.
Methodology
The three distinctly individual, yet also significantly interrelated case studies in which I
investigate a selection of vernacular remediations and renarrativisations of the Yugoslav are
approached, as mentioned above, as cases in digital storytelling. They are the result of a cocreative
action undertaken by individual users and establish the core subject of analysis:
multimodal mobile media objects. Particular attention is paid to the ways vernacular memory
practices utilise digital technology and hence the 4MOs. The overarching methodological
approach is decidedly qualitative and posits the cases studies as cases that essentially possess a
narrative quality. Hence the methodology presupposes an approach adopting content and discourse
analysis of digital storytelling in 4MOs. 122
As DS is crucially enabled and conditioned by the technological and cultural implications of DME
and the internet as an enabling technology, it importantly differs from the ‗analogue‘ narrative
formation, consumption and dissemination. Yet, the main difference, as understood here lies in a)
mobility of media objects and b) on-the-fly co-creative impetus. This makes the investigated
4MOs the matter of co-creation and incessant permeability and not necessarily proves
insurmountable obstacle in seeing 4MOs as discursive elements. To the contrary, to an important
degree digital storytelling and digital narrativisations retain continuity with ‗classic‘ storytelling.
The cases in digital storytelling and memorials are thus analysed qualitatively following the
121 See Jean Burgess and Joshua Green, YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture, Cambridge, Polity Press,
2009; see also Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau (eds.), The YouTube Reader, Stockholm, National Library of
Sweden, 2009.
122 On digital storytelling see Knut Lundby (ed.), Digital Storytelling.
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