The role of the Tampere team in the multidisciplinary iNARR consortium is to study (1) the story logic of social media, (2) the relationship between narrative and truth, facts or data, and the storytelling boom as a key element of the post-truth era, (3) personal experience as knowledge, (4) storytelling as a normative practice, (5) popular understanding of what counts as a narrative. The project develops ideas and analytical instruments that will equip researchers, professional groups and non-academic audiences to navigate todays social and textual environments that are dominated by storytelling.
Goal
In the so-called post-truth era, brand stories and personal experiences are narrated as truths. In the state confusion, it is important to find tools and methods to analyse narratives that are becoming more and more popular. Contemporary literary fiction is put in dialogue with the manipulative stories that spread around the internet, in order to reveal the dubious relationship that some narratives have with identity, truth, politics, and complex systems such as climate change.
In order to confront these issues, iNARR reveals the sophisticated story-critical ideas and techniques offered by works of contemporary fiction.
Funding source
Academy of Finland
Contact persons
Maria Mäkelä
University Lecturer / Director of the Project
maria.e.makela [at] uta.fi
+358 50 318 0742
Samuli Björninen
samuli.bjorninen [at] uta.fi