My thesis addresses the notion of non-traditional storytelling and more specifically how it is being reshaped by social media platforms and mass communication.

One of the most distinguished aspects of storytelling is the dialogue between the speaker and their listeners. These two develop a connection with one another through their mutual experience of the story. While the speaker reveals themselves through their story the listeners reveals themselves through their understanding and perception of the story.

Social media platforms are laying out different ways for sharing information, emotions, ideas and day to day events. They are not only providing users space to share their story, but also providing room for comments, questions and conversations regardless of the time or location.

With the constant increase of technological development in communication it is important to understand how the shift from face-to-face interactions as a predominant mean of communication to computer-mediated interactions would affect society.

Communication media has changed the interaction between the speaker and the listener. It is shaping the story within media itself and it is continuously transforming social practices.

The question which arises here and that intrigues me the most is how the mediation of social experiences influenced social norms and roles, especially media's effects on concepts such as social reality, socialization and social change?

My research began with my personal fascination for the recently developed methods of communication. Particularly on social media platforms. What intrigues me the most is the practice of non-traditional storytelling that we encounter on those platforms.

To better understand what storytelling is, and how it developed into its contemporary form we must go as far back as the beginning of human history. It is considered that storytelling originated long before language. While in the beginning stories were narrated visually, one of the earliest pieces of evidence of storytelling are the cave drawings in Chauvet, France, which date as far back as 30,000 years ago.

Stories later shifted into oral traditions and were passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth. These traditions could take many forms such as epic poems, chants, rhymes, songs and more. In the book "21st century anthropology: a reference handbook" academic Katie Elson Anderson defines storytelling as "the oldest and newest form of arts". For the pre-literate societies, visual and oral traditions were the only way to pass on important cultural and historical information and it’s one of the main factors for such an ancient records to be preserved up to this day.

Stories marked the beginning and transfer of knowledge one could boldly claim, they were our first teachers, they taught us how to make sense of the world and they brought us together in order to create our first communities. Storytelling has always been a social activity in its nature. Stories have been a part of humanity since people were able to communicate and respond to the basic urge to explain, educate and enlighten. Stories bring communities together with a shared emotional event and helps them to relate to each other and the world around them.

One of the most distinguished aspects of storytelling is the intimacy between the speaker and their listeners. They develop a connection to one another. The speaker reveals themselve through their story and the listeners reveal themselves through their understanding and perception of the story.

Storytelling is not purely about speaking and listening, but also about acting, seeing and imagining. There is an interactive and performative side to storytelling, which is contributing to the storyline in some way or another. The non-verbal communication such as the amount of eye contact between the speaker and the listener, the use of gestures, the facial expressions as well as the tone of the voice will be adjusted depending on the reaction of the audience.

Stories in the past were not as formal as today. Due to the development of languages as well as the advancing informational technologies, such as the printing press, the camera, the tv, the internet and its social media platforms, stories have transformed drastically into delicately polished units of information. The function of the story has not changed, but it's nature and the means by which storytelling takes place have.

Social media platforms are not only providing space for users to share their story, but also a room for comments, questions and conversations regardless of the time and location. They are laying out different ways for sharing information, emotions, ideas and day to day events. With the constant increase of technological development in basic communication it is important to understand how the shift from face-to-face interactions as a main mean of communication to computer-mediated interactions would affect the dialogue between the speaker and the listener.

Communication media has changed the interaction between users, it has transformed the relationship between media and social practices and is constantly shaping the story within the media itself. In the book "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man" Marshall McLuhan argues that "Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of communication".

The question that arises from here and intrigues me the most is how the mediation of social experiences influenced social norms and roles, especially the media's effects on concept such as social reality, socialization and social change?

Nonverbal communication has always been an essential part of the dialogue between the speaker and the listener. In many cases it can successfully replace verbal communication. An estimate 60 to 65 percent of interpersonal communication is conveyed through nonverbal cues. For instance, the reaction of the listener, eye-contact, facial-expressions, gestures, movement, touch, and others.

Most of the time nonverbal behaviors are unconscious and may portray a more accurate presentation of the listener’s attitude and emotional state. It exposes whether the person you are talking to understands you, to what extend they are being truthful and how well are they listening.

Nonverbal communication can be perceived as an integral skill of social competence. According to Professors Feldman, R. S., Philippot, P., & Custrini, R. J. ‘social competence’ is a “hypothetical construct relating to evaluative judgments of the adequacy of a person’s performance [within the context of a social interaction]” Other consider social competence as a combination of knowledge and the translation of that knowledge into performance.

In both cases, nonverbal and verbal skills are demonstration of social competence, since social interactions include both verbal and nonverbal cues. For example, certain nonverbal rules exist within the formal workplace. Body gestures can carry significant amount of information regarding the individual. When nonverbal signals match up with the words, it increases trust and clarity.

According to Professor Deepika Phutela "Nonverbal communication involves multiple channels, is continuous and more ambiguous in nature, and often contradicts the spoken word. When nonverbal and verbal communications conflict, individuals tend to rely on nonverbal clues as a means to interpret the true meaning of a communication."

It is considered that nonverbal communication might have different meaning in different situations, therefore each situation determines its own set of rules. It is of great importance that nonverbal communication is not treated as a separate and independent form of communication, but instead must be considered in the context in which it occurs.

In "The Handbook of Communication Skills" Professor Owen Hargie argues that "An important distinction in viewing nonverbal behavior as communication is that between the encoder and the decoder. The encoder is analogous to an actor or impression manager, producing and ‘sending’ the behaviors to be interpreted. The decoder is analogous to an observer ‘receiving’ the presented behaviors and interpreting them in some fashion. Within the context of the encoder-decoder distinction, a major concern is that of intention and whether intended and unintended messages obey the same rules and principles of communication.”

Concluding from this we could say that most social interactions among individuals in the natural world involve nonverbal behavior as part of the absolute communication. Thus, both intentional and unintentional units of information are constantly being given off by either one of the participants and have integral role in the absolute communication between the givers.

The shift from face-to-face interactions as a main mean of communication to computer-mediated interactions encouraged many studies upon the subject of nonverbal communication cues and the extent of their presence in computer-mediated communication. Many studies describe such communication to be significantly lacking nonverbal cues, which affects the nature of interpersonal interactions via the medium.”

Professor Yuhua Jake Liang describes that "More recent theories focus on how message senders exploit the computer-mediated communication medium in order to create messages and relationships actively." Since it has becoming clear that the process of communication is complex and it goes beyond plain speaking, users' behavior suggested that new methods of assisting more expressively interaction need to be adopted within computer-mediated communication.

In 1982 Professor Scott Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University proposed the use of 'emoticons' ':-)' and ':-(' in posts and email messages. The term 'emoticons' is a short for 'emotional icons' and it refers to a string of keyboard characters used in computer-mediated communication.
Due to the lack of vis-à-vis situation attributes in such forms of communication the emoticon has been subsequently introduced to substitute the absence of gestures and facial attributes. The 'emoticon' symbol is incorporated as a visual cue and its purpose is to augment the meaning of textual messages.

In the article "Relevance of Emoticons in Computer-Mediated Communication Contexts: An Overview." researcher Ahmed Tanimu Jibril describes that "A number of research studies have signified the importance of nonverbal codes in comprehending “the meaning and nature of the message in Face to Face”. A communication theory such as Social Presence Theory (SPT), for instance, has suggested that Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) is short of “contextual information” and that the medium is disruptive for understanding the content and nature of messages”. However, later studies have indicated that emoticons are capable of providing such information, thus improving computer-mediated communication. Therefore, emoticons have turned out to be socioemotional suppliers in messages context, as well as a significant method of conveying emotions in computer-mediated communication.

Although emoticons can be traced back to chatrooms in the 1990s, when primitive emoticons were used in conversations as a string of keyboard characters, the concept of emoticon became globally mainstream a few years later.
Japanese designer Shigetaka Kurita is considered to be the father of today's 'emoji'. In 1999 a Japanese cell phone company called 'NTT DOCOMO' released a set of 176 emojis for mobile phones and pagers. Shigetaka Kurita used illustrations and pictograms in order to create the first emoji library. His pixelated emoji library was the ultimately design that gave rise to the emoji we know today.

In 2011 Apple introduced their first official emoji keyboard to iOS taking the official emoji count with the introduction of 722 emoji characters. Today there are more than 3,000 emoji representing different individuals, animals, cultures, activities and countries.

More recent implication of emojis began around 2016 when Facebook introduced, they’re extended design of the like button with five more ways to react to a post: 'love', 'haha', 'wow', 'sad' and 'angry'. According to Facebook official user guide "Reactions are an extension of the Like Button to give people more ways to share their reaction to a post in a quick and easy way."

Shortly after Facebook’s ‘Reactions’, Apple released their personalised 'Memoji' avatar. This gave the freedom for users to customize their 'emoji' to match their personality and mood.
We might argue that this attempt was a step further into creating more effective nonverbal communication cues within computer-mediated interactions, but it is important to remark that the 'Memoji' avatar can be altered to the extent that the software allows you to. There are certain face expressions recognized and adopted by their system, so any emotional expressions in between still cannot be captured successfully.

Emojis are starting to possess a crucial role within the expression of online interactions. However, there are two fundamental points to consider while investigating the emoticon as an adaptation of nonverbal communication cues in computer-mediated interactions.

Little is elaborated upon the ways in which emojis impact text interpretation and how accurately they manage to capture and represent human emotion.
Users are still limited to the variations of emoticons available within the emoji set in order to express their emotional state. This variation in some cases might lack to express the more complex specter of emotions which are being experienced by the individual.
Thus, users are forced to frame their emotions within the limitations of the media in order to express them. As a consequence of which, in many cases of computer-mediated communication incorrect interpretation by the users and misunderstanding might occur. 

It is also important to emphasize the fact that emojis when treated as nonverbal communication cues are always intentionally used to send a specific message to the receiver. Since we've previously discussed that non-intentional signals which can be observed in vis-à-vis setting can offer considerable information about the participants and have integral role in the absolute communication between the giver and the receiver. I dare to conclude that computer-mediated communication is still lacking significant quantity of the nonverbal cues within the absolute communication, even after the attempts for adopting nonverbal methods of expressions. 

Temporal co-presence is the simultaneous connection taking place between individuals who communicate. This direct form of communication is defined as 'interaction'. A significant benefit of face-to-face communication is the responsive interaction between participants. Immediate interaction make communication an active process, rather than a passive one. It allows more clear exchange of information, than any other medium, for both the speaker and the listener in order to convey and receive intended meaning.

Furthermore it allows them to correct, if needed, any mis-interpretation or mis-understanding that might have occurred as well as to re-orient the message in a flash. Having the opportunity to provide immediate respond turns participants from passive listeners to active participants.

In the book "The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy, 4 Volume Set" Professor Dr. Christian Meyer reflects on the subject of interaction "Early discussions on interaction addressed features that are still relevant today. Plato, in his Phaedrus, for example, emphasized the difference between dialogue and written texts. While dialogues, due to their responsivity, are able to procedurally secure inter-subjectivity in the course of the situation itself, medial communication faces interpretation problems that—if at all—cannot be remedied immediately."

There are scientific proofs that one of the most effective and clear method of communication is face-to-face. Recent neuroscience research has proven that while people actively interact with each other their brains are being synchronised. In the scientific report "Brain-To-Brain Entrainment: EEG Inter-brain Synchronization While Speaking and Listening" academics Alejandro Pérez, Manuel Carreiras and Jon Andoni Duñabeitia state that, "Electroencephalographic hyper-scanning was used to investigate inter-brain synchronization patterns in dyads of participants interacting through speech. Results show that brain oscillations are synchronized between listener and speaker during oral narratives. This interpersonal synchronization is mediated in part by a lower-level sensory mechanism of speech-to-brain synchronization, but also by the interactive process that takes place in the situation per se."

Based on this, interactions involve interbrain communion that goes beyond verbal communication itself, and may account for a key factor in interpersonal relations.
Responsive interactions might be significantly more efficient and effective than other mediated forms of communication.
When individuals work together towards a certain goal and have to deal with complex tasks, responsive interactions can support the development of learning skills, productive communication and social behavior.

The concept of 'interaction' within computer-mediated-communication is an attempt to adopt essential aspects of co-presence interaction methods from co-present communication.
The emergence of Web 2.0 applications and technologies enabled users to participate and interact actively as well as to self-generate content. In short, we can frame Web 2.0 as a medium that creates a new degree of agency in constructing engagement with online resources and with other Internet users.

In the journal "Studying Web 2.0 Interactivity" researchers Peter Mechant and Lieven De Marez describe that "As they afford Internet users to easily consume (read, listen, watch, download, search and buy), create (personalize and contribute), share (publish, upload), facilitate (tag, recommend, subscribe to channels and items through RSS) and communicate (send messages, post comments and chat) online, Web2.0 can be understood as a large-scale shift towards a participatory and collaborative version of the web."

Participatory-based applications function as a tool for articulating the dynamics of social environment and highlights the importance of 'sharing' and 'commenting' in mediated-interactions. Web 2.0, also known as the read-write web has assist to facilitate a transition from an institutionally dominated consumer culture to a broader-based mediated 'participatory culture' in which individuals act as both producers and consumers of content. This model is often opposed to the mass media and broadcasting, where there is one sender and many recipients.
The term participatory culture is often used for identifying the involvement of users, audience and consumers in the creation of content and values. There are significant possibilities for public discourse that are associated with this form of communication. Great example is the joint editing on Wikipedia. Scholars argue that society and culture have become more democratic due to the fact that users and audience are enabled to produce.

The most recognisable example of mediated participatory culture is the 'comment section'. Comment sections became a preferred arena for democratic gatekeepers to encourage engagement in constructive dialogues. However, the discourse impact, the language, the acceptance of arguments, and the recognition in computer-mediated outlets do not have a dialogic nature and the debates have a low-quality profile.

Although online media platforms have made a great effort to facilitate a social discourse on a global level, there is the danger of misunderstanding. This on the contrary creates a gap between the individuals involved in this discourse. We might refer to this phenomenon as a ‘mediapolis’. A mediated public space where media underpin and overarch the experiences of everyday life. Professor Roger Silverstone’s idea of the ‘mediapolis’, is suggesting that space is no longer simply mediated by technology, but rather, our lives are constituted by it. He argues that “The matter that makes up the social and urban fabric has changed – it is no longer just about emergent properties that derive from a complex of social associations and interactions. These associations and interactions are now not only mediated by software and code, but they are also becoming constituted by it”

Our lives are now comprised of Internet technologies rather than mediated by them. The introduction to the role of capital in this discussion further opens doors to control, power, and the manipulation of personal information that is so often encouraged through participation. Many scholars argue that the involvement of capital leads to questions of corporatization, censorship and surveillance. Therefore, these new forms of power are becoming increasingly threatening. Although this concern exists among many media scholars, it is uncertain to what extent users are worried about participatory culture. Discourses surrounding participatory culture and Web 2.0 need to adopt a more critical perspective by identifying and confronting such power structures that threaten the means of social interaction and connectedness.

‘Audience design’ is a sociolinguistic model, which proposes that linguistic style-shifting occurs primarily in response to the audience of the speaker. Proposed in 1984 by academic and researcher Allan Bell, the term refers to the adjustment of the presentation, the language and the tone of the speaker to fit a certain social context, in order to express intimacy and solidarity towards the audience. While the word 'design' might suggest a thoughtful and strategic process of linguistic adjustment, it is not excluded that such adjustments are often unconscious and intuitive.

Since, the speaker is expected to fit within the needs and reactions of the audience, style can be observed as an essential speaker’s response to their audience. It is inevitable that language goes through processes of styling depending on the dynamics between the speaker and their listeners. Therefore language becomes a tool for meaning making and meaning exchange that arises from the individuals motivation to create commonness of mental and emotional states.

Communication is a mutual action, which is necessary to be synchronized in process and content. In order to achieve this goal, the speaker is responsible for taking in consideration the characteristics of their listeners as well as the context of the situation. The speaker got to know quite clearly with whom they interacted, therefore how they should interact.

The role of the audience in communication has been recognized as an ongoing public, collaborative nature of interactions across context. Various scholars have analyzed the 'discursive' and 'inter-subjective' relationship between the speaker and the importance of the audience to the on-gong interaction in the dialogue. The way that audience are conceptualized is shaped by their identities and cognition. Academic study on this topic has demonstrated how audience are connected to power dynamics and the pursuit of social justice to ensure that all of them are seen and heard.

Nevertheless the speaker can also re-define existing situations by using style as initiative. Initiative style-shift refers to situations where the speaker does not accommodate to the speech style of their immediate audience, but rather creatively uses language features, towards an absent reference group. Such style-shifting is widespread in mass communication. In the age of social media, where many social groups exist within one space, interacting simultaneously with all of them becomes significantly more complex.

‘Context collapse’ is a concept that is flattening multiple audiences into a single context. It refers to the infinite possibilities of online audience, opposed to the limited group a person can normally interact with during face-to-face communication. In situations of context collapse the adjustment of specific characteristics of the interaction to fit certain social or cultural dimension becomes more or less impossible.
The term 'context collapse' is used by academics to conceptualize the effects on 'speaker-listener' interactions as a consequence of the mediation technologies we associate with the Web 2.0. It is important to understand how the advances of such technologies, which are providing compelling and interactive user experiences have fundamentally altered the way individuals engage and connect with each other. As people communicate through digital agents, they are forced to express their act in new ways, adjusted and limited to the media itself.

The big problem caused by computer-mediated interaction lies in the media's unique affordances: mediated-communication is persistent, replicable, scalable, searchable and sharable, all of these features characterize communication beyond the immediate interactional situation. This, of course, has effects on who can be addressed by the mediated messages, and how such unintended audiences might respond and react to them.

Although users don't know exactly who their audience is consisted of, they have a mental picture of who they’re writing or speaking to – the audience involved. Users on social media platforms have assumptions about the range of audience they are addressing. Therefore, they are adjusting their online speaking and writing to match certain contextual dimensions.

Nevertheless, the features of the platforms do not always correspond to these assumptions, which creates confusion and uncertainty within the audience selection. This problem is a result of the affordances as well as constraints of social media applications. As a consequence of which a distortion in communication might occur.

When context easily collapses, messages become exposed in an out-of-context manner. A social media platform like Facebook has a unique, fragmented-like features of narrativity. The News Feed page is a great example of various stories being reported world-wide, informing us on certain series of events. Traditionally a story presumes a specific time-based process following a continuous linearity of events. In the case of social media, the story is being fragmented.

Most narratives posted in social media are bits of stories, thoughts and ideas within a highly narrow framework. Because of the thematic diversity one can find an opinion that was fully written in personal tone, followed by an article about scientific experiment, followed by a customised advertisement, followed by a video taken on the beach and so on. Therefore, no event is seen in terms of its original context.

Although social interactions don't require a lot of conscious effort, there are complex processes continuously going on. One should always observe the situation, read the contextual cues, adjust their behavior and speech depending on other's reactions as well as they must consider what is socially acceptable. In all forms of interactions, identity, context, performance and regulation are continuously utilizing and interacting.

The underlying architecture of computer-mediated environments provide completely different forms of context and interaction than the ones we naturally became familiar with, such as linear narrativity and responsive interaction between participants. Therefore the absence of embodiment creates a gap between the way in which one present itself and the way in which others perceive them.

There are many forms of new media technologies which have taken hold in the paradigm of communication. Computer-mediated communication is constantly trying to effectively replicate essential characteristics of interaction, natural to vis-à-vis setting, in order to acquire functional means of conveyance. Nevertheless it withholds many of the conversational cues existing during such interactions, resulting in less efficacious mean of communication when more complex social dynamics are present.

A reason for digital technology not to be able to substitute co-present interactions is because computer-mediated communication negotiates our social reality through digital medium that passes on secondhand or third-party information which cannot be directly observed. This implies that such mediated communication might be used and perceived differently by participants during an interaction.

The ability of the users to communicate effectively through such media platforms has proved to have limited capabilities, since it is fully dependent on the media itself. As a consequence of which communication practices became significantly altered. For example, since the attention span of a person is significantly determined by the content they are being exposed to, a collective attention deficit is becoming more and more visible.

Take the recently popularized ‘short-video’ format on TikTok. It provides users social functionality to follow, write, send and re-share 15 to 60 sec stories based on their personal interests.
Short videos tend to be quickly spreadable, reproducible, and addictive, thus they can easily become viral.

The social effects of technologies are almost immediate. The uses of a certain medium come from its inherent attributes. They are interfering with our perception much more than they are influenced by it. Therefore the functionality of the media is forcing users to frame their expressions within the limited canvas of the mediator itself.
It is important to understand how such mediated form of communication is constantly influencing social norms and social experiences as well as successively modifying interaction among users.

Media has always played a fundamental part regarding the means by which society communicates. When used effectively, any medium is a vehicle for unpacking ideas, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, etc. Developing a deeper understanding of this can change our perception of the ways in which a given medium can influence society. As well as the fact that the same medium carries in itself a certain message and its effect is measured by the overall impact on social reality.
No matter the form of the message, it is certain that both the message and the means by which it is carried have drastically influenced socialization throughout human history.

Primitive societies painted their stories on the walls. Ancient Greeks craved their language to keep record of how history is moving forward. With the evolution of the written word, stories developed into narratives, creating cohesive works. The invention of the printing press and the newspaper was a step further for the spread-ability of a story. Furthermore, the camera allowed even more vivid and accurate representation of it.
In the age of global communication and social media, the story transformed into digital units of information, combining all previous forms of storytelling, which can moreover be spread in a matter of seconds.

The rather new medium of digital storytelling altered once more the way human communicate with each other and the relationship between the teller and the listener. This leads to a conclusion that although people are unquestionably the creators of their stories, stories and narratives are by all means a co-product of the mediator.

Stories have always been flexible in nature. In order to exists they have to fit into a certain framework. The medium will inform the message in a certain way. It will give it an extra layer of complexity and it will nuance it. The same story told in a different medium will require a totally different approach. Oral traditions have different characteristics than written texts, movies, television, social media and so on. The medium can either contribute to the story or the opposite, withhold significantly important aspects of it.

Social media storytelling became a contemporary mean by which humans share their stories, information, interests and find others who share the same values as them on a global scale. Nevertheless the absence of embodiment and the context-collapse might create certain levels of miscommunication and controversy modifying social realities.