Digital Nollywood as Interactive Narrative: Gender, Power, and Audience Rewriting
Proposal Type
Individual Talk
Location
Narratives & Worlds
Start Date
July 2026
End Date
July 2026
Abstract
Emerging digital Nollywood films circulate within platformed environments where narrative meaning is no longer fixed at the point of production, but it is continually reshaped through audience interaction. Comment sections on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and X operate as multimodal narrative spaces in which text, emojis, gifs, memes, and affective language actively engage the story, challenge dominant interpretations, and extend the narrative beyond the screen.
This lightning talk examines Nigerian audience responses to visual and narrative elements of digital Nollywood films as forms of everyday electronic literature, where storytelling unfolds through fragmented, participatory, and socially situated textual practices. Attention is given to gendered engagements, showing how women audiences and feminist-aligned viewers mobilise digital commentary to question patriarchal narrative templates, critique the romanticisation of gendered violence, and propose alternative readings that disrupt dominant narrative closures.
The presentation argues that electronic literature must be understood not only through authored experimental texts, but also through platform-based audience participation, especially within Global South media ecologies. Shaped by local cultural norms, linguistic hybridity, and platform affordances, these digital engagements produce collective, contested, and politically charged narratives embedded in everyday media consumption.
By foregrounding Nigerian digital practices, this talk challenges the tendency within electronic literature scholarship to privilege Western experimental traditions and instead highlights how electronic narratives emerge through lived social practice, cross-cultural negotiation, and gendered power relations in everyday digital spaces.
Keywords: Digital Nollywood, Electronic Literature, Interactive Narrative, Gendered Audiences, Platformed Storytelling, Global South Media
Digital Nollywood as Interactive Narrative: Gender, Power, and Audience Rewriting
Narratives & Worlds
Emerging digital Nollywood films circulate within platformed environments where narrative meaning is no longer fixed at the point of production, but it is continually reshaped through audience interaction. Comment sections on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and X operate as multimodal narrative spaces in which text, emojis, gifs, memes, and affective language actively engage the story, challenge dominant interpretations, and extend the narrative beyond the screen.
This lightning talk examines Nigerian audience responses to visual and narrative elements of digital Nollywood films as forms of everyday electronic literature, where storytelling unfolds through fragmented, participatory, and socially situated textual practices. Attention is given to gendered engagements, showing how women audiences and feminist-aligned viewers mobilise digital commentary to question patriarchal narrative templates, critique the romanticisation of gendered violence, and propose alternative readings that disrupt dominant narrative closures.
The presentation argues that electronic literature must be understood not only through authored experimental texts, but also through platform-based audience participation, especially within Global South media ecologies. Shaped by local cultural norms, linguistic hybridity, and platform affordances, these digital engagements produce collective, contested, and politically charged narratives embedded in everyday media consumption.
By foregrounding Nigerian digital practices, this talk challenges the tendency within electronic literature scholarship to privilege Western experimental traditions and instead highlights how electronic narratives emerge through lived social practice, cross-cultural negotiation, and gendered power relations in everyday digital spaces.
Keywords: Digital Nollywood, Electronic Literature, Interactive Narrative, Gendered Audiences, Platformed Storytelling, Global South Media
Bio
Theodora Bassey Etim is a lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Media Studies at the University of Calabar, Nigeria. Her research focuses on digital Nollywood, gendered power relations, and audience engagement within platformed media environments, with particular attention to Global South digital practices. She is currently working on a PhD examining cultural identity and gendered power in digital Nollywood narratives.