From user-generated small stories to brand narratives: Recontextualization, humor, and asymmetric narrative agency through TikTok stitch
DISCOURSE, CONTEXT AND MEDIA, cilt.5, sa.1, ss.1-11, 2026 (SSCI, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 5 Sayı: 1
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1016/j.dcm.2026.101052
- Dergi Adı: DISCOURSE, CONTEXT AND MEDIA
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Scopus, Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Linguistic Bibliography, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, MLA International Bibliography
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1-11
- Ankara Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
This article examines how everyday narratives on TikTok are reshaped through stitch, a platform feature that allows users to reuse parts of existing videos. Drawing on small stories theory and scholarship on platformization, the study conceptualizes narration as an open-ended interactional practice whose meaning emerges through circulation, uptake, and reuse rather than at the moment of telling. The analysis focuses on user-generated TikTok videos about routine air travel experiences and on stitched responses produced by the airline Ryanair. Using multimodal discourse analysis, the study shows how Ryanair selects, reframes, and transforms users' stories through humor, performance, and greater platform visibility. The analysis foregrounds asymmetric narrative agency, understood as unequal capacities to shape narrative trajectories over time within platformed environments. While TikTok's affordances are formally accessible to all users, differences in visibility, algorithmic amplification, and affective legibility systematically privilege certain actors in meaning-making processes.