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Article published In: Narrative Inquiry: Online-First Articles

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Unpacking the narrative complexities of YouTube

A multi-participant framework for social media narrative analysis

ORCiD logo with link | The Pennsylvania State University
ORCiD logo with link | The Pennsylvania State University
Published online: 27 March 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.25120.ozc
Abstract
This paper introduces a conceptual framework for analyzing social media narratives as socio-technologically situated, multi-authored, and interactionally co-constructed phenomena. While narrative analyses of platforms like YouTube often isolate videos as self-contained stories, we argue that narratives on social media unfold across dynamic webs of interaction involving creators, commenters, viewers, and platform affordances and algorithms. Our framework expands what counts as a narrative on social media by tracing how stories are edited, framed, responded to, and algorithmically shaped across time. Focusing on a YouTube video of an Uber ride posted by a Turkish social media influencer in the US, we demonstrate how multiple co-tellers introduce new interpretations of the recorded events and reshape the narrative for subsequent viewers. By identifying co-tellers and tracing the trajectories of narratives, this framework allows analysts to better examine how narratives, thus discourses and ideologies, evolve, circulate, and impact audiences.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Literature review
    • Narratives
    • Social media narratives
    • YouTube
    • Narrative research on YouTube
  • Methodology
    • Data
    • Data analysis
  • Framework
    • Core speech event
    • Editing
    • YouTube platform
    • YouTube’s participatory ecosystem
    • YouTube text
    • A multi-participant framework for social media analysis
  • Data analysis
    • Analysis of the core speech event
    • Recontextualization of the speech event by the YouTuber
    • Various comment entextualizations of the recontextualized YouTube narrative
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (47)
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