How do different kinds of contemporary Anglo-American storytelling engage audiences with the complexities of human / nonhuman and more-than-human relationships in the Anthropocene?

This PhD examines the complexities of human / nonhuman and more-than-human relationships in contemporary Anglo-American storytelling. Analyzing Timothy X Atack’s podcast Forest 404, Richard Powers novel The Overstory and Hideo Kojima’s videogame Death Stranding, this thesis explores various storytelling responses to the ecological crisis. It argues that a transformed version of selfhood can be seen to emerge in the past decade in relation to current ecological considerations and a growing awareness of nonhuman / more-than-human agency in contemporary culture and science (see Simard et al, 2016). In this context, exploring the complexities of nonhuman / more-than-human agency opens up new ways of conceiving human selfhood through a human / nonhuman or more-than-human entanglement. This PhD outlines how it is not the case that the nonhuman or more-than-human suddenly has more agency, but that existing agency is being recognised and acknowledged across different forms of human storytelling that decentres the anthropomorphic. As this work takes an approach from ecocriticism in its close-reading analysis, each theme acts as a response to the ecological crisis.

This PhD is shaped by digital humanities and also looks beyond-the-text to how audiences discuss, circulate, disseminate, develop and expand key themes from the text (either novel, game or podcast) on the social media channel, Twitter. Taking a digital social reading approach (DSR) and being inspired by recent scholarship from Thomas (2020), Pianzola (2024), Driscoll (2024), Miletic (2012) and Murray (2018), it looks beyond-the-text to raise questions about how audiences interact and engage around these forms on Twitter. It takes the position that a close-reading analysis of Twitter posts, alongside a close-reading of the text, can offer a deeper, critical interpretation about how the key messages are understood by audiences. In its analysis, it identifies how audiences respond to these forms of storytelling on Twitter but also identifies how this conversation can be aligned to trigger moments tied to realworld events – such as ecological disasters. It examines how readers, players or listeners choose to discuss the work and analyzes the content they share or create. For instance, images, video content, Gifs or memes. It challenges the idea that discussion about storytelling forms on Twitter is irreverent. Instead, this work suggests that looking beyond-the-text offers critical routes for scholarship in the digital humanities. It argues that the cultures from which this content stem challenge and problematise distinctions between active (creator) and passive (consumer), the material and the immaterial, authorship and content producer, especially is relation to the ecological crisis and the need to act now. Data for this analysis was captured using advanced social analytics software Meltwater Software Solutions as well as a manual Twitter search around key themes and hashtags.