Unpacking the narrative complexities of YouTube

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.