Learning to Work Through Narratives: Identity and Meaning-Making During Digital Storytelling

Abstract

This chapter provides insights into organisational storytelling, narrative learning and identity work in a socio-cultural context. Hakanurmi’s research interrogates the meaning-making process during the story circle, what the single participant felt and learnt through digital storytelling and how the social aspect influenced the individual one. The theoretical position of the research is rooted in narrative theory and socio-cultural theory. Hakanurmi includes the discussions in the story circle as ethnographic data and observes how participants reflect on the past, present and future while storying. The dialogue is analysed in terms of how participants’ contributions promote construction of narratives as open, closed or ante-narratives. Communication allowed the co-authoring of narratives, collaborative meaning-making and negotiation of identities.