Uploaded August 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
The combination of positioning analysis with small stories research methods, in particular my heuristic of ways of telling-sites-tellers (Georgakopoulou, 2007) for examining stories as self-presentation practices, has extended its influence beyond conversational stories, serving as a productive point of entry into the study of multi-semiotic storytelling online (e.g. Page, 2018; Giaxoglou, 2021; Georgakopoulou & Giaxoglou, 2018). But the attested consolidation of everyday life storytelling online as curated, sociotechnical, visual/viewable activities, coupled with the current dominance of short form video on platforms such as Instagram, Xiahongshu, Tiktok etc., necessitate a continuing 'reimagining of established methods’ (Blommaert et al, 2020) for narrative and identities analysis. The question is: what does a positioning analysis of stories as engineered, multi-semiotic ‘short form communication’ need to look like? Building on the technographic method (Bucher, 2018) Georgakopoulou has adapted for studying platformed stories and the processes of story-formatting (i.e. normativity & typification of stories, Georgakopoulou, 2022; 2024) this has uncovered, this talk offers a reimagining of positioning analysis for TikTok short form videos. Drawing on Gen Z-ers’ small stories of ‘identity crises’ (Georgakopoulou, forthcoming) and of family life (Georgakopoulou & Page, in prep), Georgakopoulou puts forward one analytical ‘expansion’ that pertains to positioning Level 1 (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008): How tellers position themselves as characters, i(nter)-acting and emoting with other characters, in specific spatiotemporal configurations. Georgakopoulou views this expansion as necessary for the examination of tellers’ agency and production of selves on the intersection of performative self-presentation with multi-semiotic affordances. Georgakopoulou finds specific formatted connections across modes that she describe as ‘multi-modal densities’ that present the narrating self and their experience as recognizable and relatable, a trans-culturally replicable ‘characterological figure’ (Agha 2007). Georgakopoulou's analysis shows the need to assess these findings vis-à-vis the ‘personal story’ and the teller’s uniqueness and creativity, in a historicized way, placing them in (cross)-platformed genealogies of algorithmically favoured small stories, as primary genres of short form communication.
The combination of positioning analysis with small stories research methods, in particular my heuristic of ways of telling-sites-tellers (Georgakopoulou, 2007) for examining stories as self-presentation practices, has extended its influence beyond conversational stories, serving as a productive point of entry into the study of multi-semiotic storytelling online (e.g. Page, 2018; Giaxoglou, 2021; Georgakopoulou & Giaxoglou, 2018). But the attested consolidation of everyday life storytelling online as curated, sociotechnical, visual/viewable activities, coupled with the current dominance of short form video on platforms such as Instagram, Xiahongshu, Tiktok etc., necessitate a continuing 'reimagining of established methods’ (Blommaert et al, 2020) for narrative and identities analysis. The question is: what does a positioning analysis of stories as engineered, multi-semiotic ‘short form communication’ need to look like? Building on the technographic method (Bucher, 2018) Georgakopoulou has adapted for studying platformed stories and the processes of story-formatting (i.e. normativity & typification of stories, Georgakopoulou, 2022; 2024) this has uncovered, this talk offers a reimagining of positioning analysis for TikTok short form videos. Drawing on Gen Z-ers’ small stories of ‘identity crises’ (Georgakopoulou, forthcoming) and of family life (Georgakopoulou & Page, in prep), Georgakopoulou puts forward one analytical ‘expansion’ that pertains to positioning Level 1 (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008): How tellers position themselves as characters, i(nter)-acting and emoting with other characters, in specific spatiotemporal configurations. Georgakopoulou views this expansion as necessary for the examination of tellers’ agency and production of selves on the intersection of performative self-presentation with multi-semiotic affordances. Georgakopoulou finds specific formatted connections across modes that she describe as ‘multi-modal densities’ that present the narrating self and their experience as recognizable and relatable, a trans-culturally replicable ‘characterological figure’ (Agha 2007). Georgakopoulou's analysis shows the need to assess these findings vis-à-vis the ‘personal story’ and the teller’s uniqueness and creativity, in a historicized way, placing them in (cross)-platformed genealogies of algorithmically favoured small stories, as primary genres of short form communication.
