See the apple of my eye: baby storytelling in social space

People use media-sharing web sites to document their lives and those of their children for maintaining and strengthening social ties with people living away. It is clear then that people can and like to create narratives as a form of expression. This study presents an analysis of the characteristics and type of baby stories written by young mothers. Nine mothers from Malaysia living in the UK participated in the study. The participants used a variety of media-sharing web sites to prepare and share the narratives. Most of them (seven) used photo-sharing web sites (Fotopages or Flickr), two used text-based blogs (Blogger). Two of them also uploaded videos of their babies in content sharing sites (YouTube). Within the period of three months, we identified 166 stories created, with 94 percent of them focusing on their baby. The stories present a number of topics such as skills demonstrations, outings, domestic activities, and social events. Based on the analysis of the data and interviews with participants, we found a significant positive correlation between the type of story and the type of media used. The result also shows there was a significant positive relationship between the type of story and the baby's age.

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