Transforming of Consciousness in the Digital Space: from Narrative to Storytelling

Abstract

The article suggests that narrative strategies are transforming in the modern digi­tal space, and the ways of narration are changing. The narrative turns into storytelling: a holistic presentation (story) connected by semantic unity is replaced by a clip (in which one can only guess about the connections and relationships between its individ­ual elements, they are not articulated at the verbal level), the textually formed verbal reasoning is replaced by a fragmentary scattering of visual images (often chosen quite arbitrarily). And, accordingly, the self-consciousness of a person who comes to the media world, who lives in it, changes. Before our eyes, the classical narrative is “dy­ing”, and the reflexive self-consciousness of the author-writer working with large textual forms is fading away. They are being replaced by an author-director who no longer tells us his self-consciousness but non-verbally (facial expressions, gestures, etc.). At the same time, the self-consciousness of the perceiving narrative changes as well – from an active-understanding one: reading and listening, it becomes a pas­sively perceiving one: a spectator. The consequences of a permanent stay in the digi­tal space for a person’s self-consciousness can be traced through autobiographical narratives in media reality (personal pages on social networks, diaries, blogs, TikTok, etc. become a typical example). Turning to these phenomena in the context of digital­ization, the author clarifies the role of digital self-identification and its influence on the formation of self-consciousness and personality in the modern era.