Background

In the 21st century, we require multifaceted interdisciplinary research to understand the relationship between narrative, digital technologies, and the globalized network society. Narratives are fundamental to human existence: they structure individual and collective understandings of essential matters ranging from our conceptions of the self, to our understanding of the nation-state, to our perception and care-taking of the environment.

Algorithms have also become central to human culture: machine learning algorithms organize social media feeds, generate news stories, predict future crimes and simulate models of likely risks and opportunities.

Digital narratives, ranging from video games, electronic literature and cinematic VR experiences to viral stories in social media and AI-generated novels and movie scripts, provide a junction between narrative sense-making and new algorithmic forms of sense-making. The Center for Digital Narrative (CDN) will address the interplay between human storytelling and algorithms in developing, spreading, and interpreting narratives.