New Narratives in the Online-Offline Nexus

Against common concerns over the loss of narrative ability in the digital era, we claim that current times of globalisation, digitalisation and superdiversity offer possibilities for new forms of narrativity. In this contribution, we analyse three types of such new narratives. As a first example we present the offline narrative of Eritrea’s language policies as unfolded by the multimodal semiotic landscape of the country’s capital city of Asmara that reflects acts of terror, struggle, and independence from colonial times to contemporary Internet use. As a second example, we deal with the online narratives emerging around asylum seekers as a semiotic emblem of global movement. This is done through a Google search, showing a fascinating yet at the same time discouraging, multi-faceted narrative of diasporic (im)mobility. As a third, and very sad, example we go into the well-known online-offline memetic narrative that surrounds the figure of Alan Kurdi, a drowned Syrian refugee child that received global political as well as artistic attention. The new offline and online narratives dealt with are ubiquitous and indexical at the same time. They reflect the identity work of their makers and have emancipatory potential. Imagine the power of dwelling on these narratives in classrooms, instead of or in addition to classical literary texts. A pedagogic practice that takes on board these narratives as its pivotal point holds in itself the potential to open ways for improving students’ knowledge, performance and power while giving them voice, that is, the capacity to make sense of the world around them.