Visuelle Narration. Zum journalistischen Storytelling aus der Sicht der Medienlinguistik

Abstract

From among many narrative forms used in the media, storytelling starts to occupy a more and more important place. Its essence constitutes the telling of a story which must be well understandable as well as easy to remember and retell. Storytelling is one of the best methods of awakening interest and focusing the recipient' attention. Owing to the adequate manner of tell-ing a story as well as its appropriate structuring particular needs are evoked in recipients. The mystery of effective usage of storytelling consists in the fact that it is essential to appeal to emotions and to tell a given story that will carry some message with it in a consistent way and will also inspire one to engage in communication activities. That makes storytelling an interesting subject of media-linguistic research whose effects – as illustrated by the history of a plane crash of the Germanwings lines told in the form of an online reportage – will be presented in this article.