https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877920921417 International Journal of Cultural Studies 2020, Vol. 23(6) 968–983 © The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1367877920921417 journals.sagepub.com/home/ics Hashtag narrative: Emergent storytelling and affective publics in the digital age Paul Dawson School of the Arts and Media, University of New South Wales, Australia Abstract This article investigates the role that narrative plays in the emergence of cultural movements from the networked interactions of users with the algorithmic structures of social media platforms. It identifies and anatomizes a new narrative phenomenon created by the technological affordances of Twitter, a phenomenon dubbed ‘emergent storytelling’. In doing so, it seeks to explain: (a) the multiple concepts of narrative that operate at different levels of hashtag movements emerging from the dynamic forces that circulate in and through Twitter; (b) the interplay of narrative cognition with stochastic viral activity and the invisible design of social media algorithms; and (c) the varying rhetorical purposes that narrative is put to in public discourse about viral movements. Using #MeToo as a case study in the generation and reception of ‘affective publics’, it clarifies how iterative appeals to the experiential truth of individual stories manifest as narratable social movements in the networked public sphere. Keywords affect, algorithms, complex systems, emergent behaviour, #MeToo, narrative, virality On 15 October 2017, Alyssa Milano posted a tweet to her followers, inviting them to reply with the phrase ‘me too’ if they had experienced sexual harassment or assault. The stated aim was to derive a sense of how widespread this experience was, and the first reply was Milano’s own ‘me too’. The latent narrativity of this phrase encouraged the sharing of personal stories, and the technological affordance of the hashtag enabled the Corresponding author: Paul Dawson, School of the Arts and Media, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia. Email: Paul.dawson@unsw.edu.au 921417ICS 0 0 10.1177/1367877920921417International Journal of Cultural StudiesDawson research-article 2020 Original Article