Networks, Interfaces, Digital Media Infrastructure, And Their Implications For Fictional World Theory
MSU Affiliation
College of Arts and Sciences; Department of English
Creation Date
2026-04-29
Abstract
This chapter explores the implications of the global infrastructural networks that support digital media. Most of the scholarship on digital communication has focused on matters such as interactivity and circulation across social networks. This chapter argues that the global infrastructure of digital networks is difficult to grasp and resists representation. It draws on Alexander Galloway and Christian Ulrik Anderson and Soren Bro Pold’s work on interfaces and platforms and uses as examples digital texts like adventure games and Instagram poetry, as well as novels that reflect on infrastructure by Colson Whitehead and Mohsin Hamid. This chapter exposes an unexamined tension in fictional world theory between the structure of worlds and our interface on them.
Publication Date
7-17-2022
Publication Title
The Routledge Companion to Narrative Theory
Publisher
Taylor & Francis; Routledge
First Page
164
Last Page
176
Recommended Citation
Punday, D. (2022). Networks, Interfaces, Digital Media Infrastructure, and Their Implications for Fictional World Theory. In The Routledge Companion to Narrative Theory. Routledge.
