The last survey that ran during the first year of MediaCommons asked, "What are the intersections of digital media and narrative studies?" In this throwback, we revisit Jennifer Roudabush's article "Narrative Studies as a Tool for Understanding Digital Texts."

In her piece she argues, "When considering digital narratives, though, the connections between these texts and narrative studies, or narratology, are strong. Narrative studies inform the ways that we make sense of narratives as a whole, and they allow us to better understand the structures, themes, conventions, and functions of the stories that we tell and have told to us. Narratology helps us to understand how and why we tell stories, and, in doing so, it colors the ways in which we perceive the world, its cultures, and individuals. When we consider these facts, it is clear that, as we move towards increasingly digital modes of communication, we should stop to consider how these same elements are shaped by and shape our digital world.

Roudabush goes further to say that "The intersections, then, between digital media and narrative studies are multifold. I do not believe that we have even begun to imagine the ways that digital technologies might continue to inform the texts that we create and consume in the near future, and, without narrative studies, we will be lost in trying to make sense of these modes of narrative representation."