Networked Narratives in Facebook: A Case Study of Students Supporting and Inspiring One Another

Abstract

This chapter describes the Humans of QUT project, a staff-facilitated and student-led Facebook page that regularly publishes biographical stories of local characters from an Australian university. It presents the project as a case study of a networked narrative approach to supporting student engagement with the university community and describes the outcomes of the project for student volunteer leaders, support staff, interviewees, and users of the webpage. The theoretical construct of networked narratives is used as a basis for considering the depth of stakeholder relatedness and the breadth of networked connections. The case study suggests that student leaders valued the sharing of student insights, while analysis of the Humans of QUT Facebook data indicates that user engagement is 5000% higher than average Higher Education Facebook pages. The results indicate that effective student support services can emerge when students are encouraged to support one another using the tools with which they are most familiar.KeywordsNetworked narrativesConnectednessStudent supportFacebookCase study