Digital storytelling and displaced identities: Construction of refugee and asylum skeer identities on instagram

Storytelling has been the method that mankind use in social interactions such as teaching, remembering, persuading and communicating since the first days of humanity. The social ties established through storytelling and the continuity of historical narrative play an important role in the progress of societies. In modern digital society, in which screens and images are ubiquitous, there is a tendency towards what is visual, or more accurately, what includes multiple modes of communication (visual, auditory, virtual), but intensively appeals to our vision. Although this caused storytelling to change form it did not change the social place it encrusts. In today's technologically saturated world, this storytelling, which has become more and more digitally mediated, still exists in every aspect of individuals' lives as well as traditional storytelling. This has made it possible to analyze digital storytelling as identity constricting practices. The digital age we live in affects not only storytelling, but also how a very basic concept of identity is constructed, represented and perceived. Identity, which traditional identity theories perceive as intrinsic to the individual and independent of "others" had come to be known as a "social construct" that is "relational to the others". By the time we came to the digital age identity as a postmodern concept had become more "fluid" and performative. One of the most substantial phenomenon regarding identity in 21st century is refugees. It is the biggest refugee crisis worldwide since II. World War. And media is overflowing with refugee images which imprisons the deterritorialized people in a certain discourse through representation. This study examines the opportunities provided with digital media and digital storytelling for identity construction by displaced people. It examines digital stories of nine participants to determine if and how they are using digital storytelling to construct and identity outside the discourse that is assigned to them upon arriving the host country. It also analyses linguistic data attained through in-depth interviews to further understand whether digital storytelling actually offer active identity construction opportunities for refugees and if so how?