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collective anxieties and concerns about the negative effects artifacts and the social contexts of their use. The particular
of organizations on society (Parker, 2002). However, exist- affordances of the Internet mean that digital stories are inher-
ing organizational storytelling research tends to focus on ently unstable and plausibility is continually under threat
highly monological storytelling forms that offer a linear, from counter-stories, online “comments,” and “play” (Beer
one-way method of communication, where a storyteller com- & Burrows, 2013, p. 51), as storytellers generate and create
municates experience, ideas, and emotions to an audience new narratives. Yet the success of alternative stories is also
(Boje, 2001). constrained by the ability to conform to the network proto-
The purpose of this article is to explore digital organiza- cols on which plausibility relies. We suggest, therefore, that
tional storytelling, which we suggest is inherently more dia- the continual changeability of meaning making afforded
logical. The type of digital organizational story on which we through digital storytelling challenges both traditional,
focus involves short, online videos distributed via the video monological understandings of organizational storytelling
uploading and sharing platform, YouTube. Since 2005, and storyteller–audience relationships. Digital organiza-
YouTube has been consistently placed in the top ten most tional stories can therefore be understood as more “writerly”
visited websites globally and is argued to be the largest mass texts (Barthes, 1977) than other kinds of organizational sto-
communication medium in the world. It is suggested to be a rytelling, particularly those produced for mass consumption
potentially “revolutionary” form of mass self-communica- by large audiences such as feature films. In contrast to “read-
tion, bringing individuals and organizations, including cor- erly” texts, which encourage audiences to remain passive in
porations, together to “defend their interests, and to assert accepting the meaning and the message the storyteller
their values” (Castells, 2009, p. 57). However, social media intended (Barthes, 1977), digital organizational storytelling
sites like YouTube have also given rise to new sources of encourages writerly texts, which invite a more active,
potential organizational domination, including from global dynamic engagement with the story, and are open to contin-
multimedia business networks that seek to recommodify ual (re)construction and (re)interpretation (Boje, 2008;
Internet communication. These sites constitute a key location Shirky, 2008).
within which to observe unfolding power relations between The online environment offers a different and wider range
digital organizational storytellers and storytelling audiences. of resources for organizational storytelling. This includes
Digital organizational storytelling shares similarities with greater ease and facility of production, increased flexibility
other popular cultural storytelling forms, while also mani- in choice and use of semiotic resources, and enhanced audi-
festing important differences. Like other types of filmmak- ence visibility (Domingo et al., 2014). Digital storytelling is
ing (Goodman, 2004), the power of digital organizational an inexpensive yet powerful way of sharing stories about
storytelling arises from the ability to create a rich multimedia individual lives and personal experiences via social networks
experience. Sites such as YouTube provide a platform for across the globe (Lambert, 2013; Robin, 2008), a “bottom-
multimodal storytelling, using film, graphics, photographs, up” activity whereby people of all social backgrounds are
and audio recording in combination. Each of these communi- able to represent themselves (Lundby, 2008). Digital story-
cative modes can be used to realize a different communica- telling also has democratic potential by giving voice to peo-
tive purpose, but together, they constitute an integrated ple and subjects that are conventionally overlooked or
whole (Meyer, Höllerer, Jancsary, & Van Leeuwen, 2013). In silenced. These practices rely on an ethos of “prosumption”—
contrast to monological mass media organizational storytell- a combination of production and consumption that conforms
ing, digital organizational storytelling involves stories being to the democratic ideals of citizen participation and sharing
co-created by multiple participants. Stories may be created that are central to the use of contemporary digital media
simultaneously and in different variants, as people interact (Lupton, 2015). Interaction often relies on intertextuality, as
and add new elements to the narrative. Digital storytelling users draw on popular culture, including mainstream media
can therefore be understood as more dialogical because it texts and commercial films, appropriating them and re-circu-
involves more diverse voices, styles, logics, cultural influ- lating them in the co-construction of a new story (Jenkins,
ences, and spatio-temporalities than traditional storytelling. 2006). Digital organizational storytelling audiences can
Boje (2008) refers to dialogical stories as “polypi” (p. 2), to comment positively or negatively on content, suggest ideas,
denote the dynamic, complex nature of their construction. post clips, or engage in “redaction” (Hartley, 2009): engag-
Like other types of organizational story, digital organiza- ing in the production of new material by editing existing
tional storytelling relies on the construction of “regimes of content.
verisimilitude” (Neale, 2000), a system of expectations Digital organizational storytelling thus forms part of a
accepted by audiences that form the basis for determining new and more complex circuit of communication (Hall,
what they consider to be truthful or real. The concept of 1980) involving the storyteller, the story and the audience,
affordances (Hutchby, 2001) is important in drawing atten- who may interpret the story or edit the text in a way that can
tion to the constraining and enabling potential of social tech- diverge from the original storyteller’s intended meaning.
nologies, and the interrelationship between technological Although this dialogism can also arise in other types of