Seriality and Storytelling in Social Media

[...]even when the trial had concluded, the updates from Lavilles public timeline in Twitter did not contain the evaluative commentary found in the journalism she published simultaneously in the online version of The Guardian. [...]real-time seriality, when combined with the architecture of social-media formats that prioritize recency, may in some cases remove the imperative for stories to highlight the reportability of events (contrast Labov 1972). [...]the principles and practices of the Wikipedian community (such as retaining a "Neutral Point of View" and providing "Verifiable Citations" for claims) establish ground rules that limit the heterogeneity of collaborators' contributions. [...]the kind of seriality that informs the production of a composite reference text like Wikipedia, which emerges in installments over time, predates online encyclopedias. [...]Dawson (forthcoming) describes the serial evolution of the Penny Cyclopedia, arguing that the nature of scientific discovery in the nineteenth century led to patterns of audience anticipation and textual consumption that mirrored patterns found in literary serials that were emerging in the same period. [...]if we are to regard a Wikipedia article (like "The Murder of Stephen Lawrence") as a serial, we must look beyond the features of the final narrative product.