Co-Opting Narrative Authority: How Thrones Is Reauthored Online

Abstract

Proliferation of online discourse has changed the communicative dynamics of fiction by weakening the narrative authority of authors. Participatory audiences are empowered to act as quasi-authorial agents able to shift the meaning of narrative texts by co-opting narrative authority. Similar phenomena have been analyzed in relation to, for example, circulation of news stories (Page), but this article aims to shift focus beyond nonfictional social media narratives. The article configures a conceptualization of narrative authority in relation to the classic model of the implied author and to a more recent concept of emergent narrative authority (Dawson and Mäkelä). This theory is refined by analyzing the ways online discourse surrounding HBO’s popular TV series Game of Thrones utilizes the affordances of the internet to co-opt the narrative authority of the series. The article concludes with remarks on the new reading strategies and the shifting role of narrative fiction in relation to contemporary political discourse online.