Co-tellership in social media storytelling

This chapter explores narrative co-tellership from a discourse-analytic perspective in the context of social media sites and platforms. I review the ways in which tellership activities and identities are expanded in social media. I then analyse the tellership of stories told by ten British social media influencers as they interact with their audiences on Instagram. I show how the identities in the storyworlds, and the interactions between audience and influencer, blend the personal and commercial uses of storytelling and are predicated on a problematic post-feminist logic that suggests women can ‘have it all’.