Born Digital: Towards A Glossary of Digital Narrative

Das The Living Glossary of Digital Narrative (LGDN) wurde am 14. März 2025 als Teil der Zusammenarbeit zwischen der Universität Stuttgart und dem Center for Digital Narrative veröffentlicht. Es handelt sich um ein peer-reviewtes Glossar, das kontinuierlich durch Beiträge von Expert*innen aus verschiedenen Bereichen und akademischen Graden erweitert wird.

Call for Entries for the Living Glossary of Digital Narrative

07-08.05. | Call for Presentations: Imaginaries of the Future

01.03.2026 | Submission deadline “Bite-Sized Stories with Big Impact” Born Digital Microfiction Contest 

10-11.11.2025 |  Workshop: How to Write a Bad-Ass Glossary Entry - Online

19.09.2025 | Eindrücke der BornDigital-Stipendiat:innnen

18.07.2025 | Peer-Review Workshop on entries to The Living Glossary of Digital Narrative

“Launch of The Glossary of Digital Narrative”, Center for Digital Narrative, University of Bergen

13.03.-14.03.2025 | Call for Presentations Weird Stories & Wicked Communities  - University of Bergen, Center for Digital Narrative. Call for Papers: https://www.ilw.uni-stuttgart.de/institut/aktuelles/news/13.-14.04--Call-for-Presentations---Weird-Stories--Wicked-Communities/.

13.03. - 14.03.2025 | Workshop Weird Stories, Wicked Communities (Center for Digital Narrative, University of Bergen).

30.09. - 01.10.2024 | Workshop Digital Futures of Literature  - University of Stuttgart, KII, Room 17.23. Newseintrag .

05.02.2024 | 10:00-12:00 | „Let’s Build a City: The Encyclopedia Project as Essential Work“ – Dr. Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans – Online. Newseintrag.

28.11.2024 | 13:00-14:00 | Go Digital at Stuttgart and Bergen! - Online.

As part of the BWSPlus Born-Ditigal project, a group of Stuttgart students and postdocs went to Bergen for a workshop at the Center for Digital Narrative to discuss ‘weird stories and wicked communities’. Many thanks to our partners in Bergen, especially to Hannah Ackermans, Scott Rettberg, and Joseph Tabbi for a fantastic event and for making us so welcome!

Gabriele de Seta (University of Bergen) kicked of Weird Stories & Wicked Communities with his keynote “On entitification: P-zombies, shoggoths, stochastic parrots and Waluigis”. In the focus were the treatment and conceptualisation of chat-bots as entities in the space of online discussion.

The panel “Technological Anxiety” included two presentations. Hanna Hellesø Lauvli’s (University of Bergen) input “From Spam to Spirit: Dead Internet Theory, Creative Practice, and the Algorithmic Self” on the evolution of spam, AI-slob and the end of useful, true or human-generated content was followed by Marianne Gunderson’s (University of Bergen) “‘Don’t worry about formalities’: Prompting as an affective genre,” which showcased her research into the so-called Eigenprompt. The Eigenprompt allows users to customize the content and style of automatically generated output, oftentimes aiming for a sarcastic imagination of a millenial’s tonality.

Following, Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang (Sydneshaugen Skole) gave his talk “The Rhethoric of Space in African Digital Literature”. Opoku-Agyemang demonstrated how authors of African Digital Literature reflect on the interplay of urban and rural spaces as well as overcome those categories and find new perspectives.

Under the umbrella of “Vernacular Creativity,” Maria Kraxenberger (University of Stuttgart) presented “Practices, Motivations, Effects of Using Online Literature Platforms: an Exploratory Survey Study”. Her research highlighted female usership, diversity in preferred genres and the double role of users as consumers and creators of online literature. During “Sims Family Sagas: Emergent Narrative Approaches to the ‘Legacy Challenge’ by Sims 2 Players” Tegan Pyke (University of Bergen) gave an introduction into narratives created predominantly by female players of the Sims 2 and the players’ interactions with their creations. Christin Walter (University of Stuttgart) closed the first workshop day with her presentation “Fanon vs. Canon: Character Centrality in Re-Imaginings of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in AU-Fanfiction”. Her preliminary findings suggest that fanfiction authors stay true to the original character dynamics even when changing spatial or temporal circumstances.

The second day started out with a peer-review workshop by Lai-Tze Fan (University of Bergen). Peer-review as an often under-represented and overlooked but also time-intensive task became the centre of attention. Fan provided attendees with helpful tips, guidelines and what to look out for when acting as peer-reviewer.

In the panel “Artificial Voices” presenters showcased how digital contexts influence the shape and meaning of communication. Lina Ruth Harder (University of Bergen) discussed how grief and a desire for closure might motivate someone to train a chat-bot on the data of a deceased relative or loved one as well as possible ethical implications in “Haunted Algorithms: Techno-Necromancy and Ghosts in the Machine”. In the talk “The ‘Weird and Wicked’ Intersection of Human and Mechanical Voices in Digital Literature” Nadja Hieber (University of Stuttgart) reflected upon how generated speech is employed by poets and what effect it might have on human listeners. Ceyda Yazici (University of Stuttgart) explored in her presentation “Shape Me: The Self-Realization of Digital Id(Entities)” different philosophical approaches for interpreting the relationship between Original Characters and their creators as well as the surrounding communities and their usage of chat-bots.

The panel “World Building” began with “Devs on Devs: Exploring Video Games about the Video Game Industry” by Daniel Johannes Rosnes (University of Bergen). He deconstructed the formula of Video Game Development Simulators and discussed how it pertains to visions of and hopes for the industry. Merve Munz (University of Stuttgart) followed with “Compu(e)ting Gods in Afşin Kum’s Kübra”, analysing the imagination of a god-like AI, its prophet and resulting cult following. In “Virtual Worlds: From Entertainment to Sociopolitical Laboratories” Svitlana Tarasova (University of Stuttgart) demonstrated how video games and their culture pick up real-world phenomena as well as surpass the medium.

The workshop ended on a high note with the launch of the Living Glossary of Digital Narratives. The LGDN aims to be a reference point for students as well as researchers and welcomes contributions by everyone interested in the crafting and study of digital narrative.