COMM 555: New Media Narratives

  The idea of ephemeral narratives is very interesting to me. In reality, posting anything online means it is never fully gone, with how easily people can save or screenshot things, but the use of ephemeral narratives on social media through Snapchat or Instagram stories gives us the illusion of disappearance. On these types of posts, it feels like there is less pressure to be perfectly curated, even though it may have the same amount of attention as a regular post. This authenticity makes the posts feel more personal and like there is some kind of closer relationship between the poster and viewer because of its real-time feel. After living in the era of social media, where perfect lighting, tons of editing, and extremely thought-out posts were the norm, trends shifted as people started yearning for more realism. We saw this with the brief popularity of the app BeReal a few years ago, where users were prompted to take an image at a random moment each day, showing their real lives a...