Rethinking Seriality in Platform Cultures. Self-Serialised Identity Narratives and Participatory Micro-serialisation

This chapter explores how narrative seriality has been transformed by digital culture and platformization. First, it traces seriality’s mediamorphosis across three interlocking levels: (a) technological affordances (media infrastructures and production techniques), (b) remediation and hybridization (horizontal and diachronic flows among media), and (c) collective metaphors (symbolic frames that fuel unconscious and reflective meaning-making). Drawing on the distinction between “as seriality” (metaphorical readings of serial patterns) and “is seriality” (formal enactments of serial structures), the chapter shows how online environments generate both interpretive and genuine serial experiences. Next, it analyses contemporary serial forms as inherently disordered and dispersed: production and reception overlap in feedback loops – new “episodes” are released, watched, commented on, and reshaped before the next installment – giving rise to “productive consumption” practices such as binge-watching, fan art, and collaborative decoding. Finally, the chapter distinguishes two digital-native modalities: participatory micro-serialization, the hyper-fragmentation of serial texts into image macros, GIFs, and memes within a participatory “becoming-media” logic; and self-serialized identity narratives, the episodic narration of identity via selfies, Stories, vlogs, and other personal formats that leverage platform affordances. Together, these dynamics reveal a serial logic in the digital age that continually negotiates redundancy and innovation, individual agency, and communal storytelling.