As mentioned in the previous blog post about Short stories told through social media Instagram was one of the platforms that really shows how words can help give a single picture a meaning. Therefore I decided to do a some more research on how different stories on my own Instagram feed were told through Instagram posts,
I looked at one of my favorite accounts, @maloupeterson, who is a skier from northern Sweden. She shares her stories from different adventures all around the world.
In my opinion the most powerful thing with storytelling is that you can recognize and relate to the story being told. The length of the text is of course important as well, but I realized that as long as you can relate and the image and the text complement each other it doesn’t matter if the story is told in one sentence or using the whole display of 125 characters.
The main character in the story doesn’t have to be a human and the most important factor of the narrative is the emotional part. However I find the most powerful stories no matter the length are the ones that follow the narrative structure that I mentioned in What are the fundamentals of storytelling?
One of my favorite pages regarding storytelling on Instagram is the account @wornwear, an initiative from Patagonia. They promote to trade-in or to buy already used patagonia products and therefore they tell stories of already worn garments. The reason why I think they succeeded so well is because the image’s caption/description really provides a background that strengthens the meaning of the image. The images are well taken and together with the short but still rich description you get attached as a reader. The factor of recognition is also high as many have had at least one favorite piece of clothing that they just don’t want to get rid of, regardless of how worn it is.
