Beyond groups: Meaning-making through Digital Connective Narratives

Abstract

This article introduces Digital Connective Narratives (DCN) as a framework for explaining how large-scale meaning-making emerges in digital environments where group boundaries are fluid and participation is fragmented. Classic theories of groups, discourse communities, and collective narratives offer valuable insights into cohesion, identity, and shared cultural repertoires, but they presuppose forms of membership, continuity, and recognition that are often absent in networked publics. DCN refer to a meaning-making process whose product is the narrative field—an emergent discursive structure characterized by recurrent framing, shared semiotic nodes, patterned alignments, circulation trajectories, and temporal persistence. The article introduces the DCN model and distinguishes it from existing frameworks for analyzing collective meaning-making online, clarifying its distinctive contribution to the study of digital publics and providing a conceptual foundation for analyzing sense-making at scale in contemporary media ecosystems.