Narrative Networks - Brian Alleyne

Alleyne, Brian. Narrative Networks: Storied Approaches in a Digital Age. Los Angeles: Sage, 2015.

Alleyne draws on Jerome Bruner and David Polkinghorne to show how two cognitive modes - paradigmatic and narrative - can be used for analysis in narrative research.  In one direction, an analysis of narrative is"a paradigmatic-type enquiry [...] gathers stories as its data and uses analytical categories to produce taxonomies out of common elements that occur across a range of stories," but in the other direction, narrative analysis "gather[s] events and happenings as raw data and uses analytical procedures that aim to produce temporal sequences that yield explanatory stories" (41). This is represented on pg. 49:

Both types of analysis may be present in a single study, but the researcher should clarify the role of each type.

Methodological issues include moving between the general and the particular, validity, and reliability.  For movement between general and particular, comparisons to other studies should be considered.  For the second, Alleyne points to how problematic traditional approaches to these can be for narrative research and proposes instead Webster and Mertova's suggestions with principles of access (of others apart from the researcher), honesty, versimilitude, authenticity, familiarity, transferability, and economy (52-53).

Alleyne expands narrative attention to digital narratives (including hyptertext stories and videogames) as well as social networks and social media.  Interestingly, he provides chapter overviews in a multimodal tree diagram to show how embedded elements could be coded in a digital format that is at odds with the linear-based print text of the book itself as though providing alternative ways of organizing and interacting with information.  One such example for chapter 3 is provided from pg. 55 below:

This book provides many tools for researchers interested in expanding narrative research to digital platforms, genres, and contexts.