Humans of New York (HoNY) is a worldwide digital storytelling project featuring life stories of people in the street with their portraits and quotes. Started in 2010 New York, HoNY has now expanded to approximately 30 countries on 6 continents around the world with more than 7,000 life stories. These stories, posted on social media including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, have attracted more than 30 million followers and generated millions of Likes, Shares and Comments. In fact, on Facebook, each of the top 20 stories has received more than 980,000 Likes and 76,000 Comments on average.
Not only is HoNY generating intense engagements on social media, but it is also causing a globally emerging “Humans of” life storytelling phenomenon. There are now over 70 digital storytelling projects named “Humans of x” around the world (e.g. “Humans of Helsinki” “Humans of Shenzhen” “New Humans of Australia”), following a similar style as well as making adaptions for local contexts.
Although HoNY has not collected stories in China so far, its influence has reached the country. Its Chinese translated version on Sina Weibo (named “人在纽约”) has more than 577,500 followers, who actively share and comment on the stories. This paper investigates whether HoNY stories create similar audience responses and interactions across Facebook and Sina Weibo, and if not, how are they different and why? To answer these questions, I compared selected comments under one story on HoNY Facebook page with those under its Chinese translation on “人在纽约” Sina Weibo page. The story is about an elderly man's grief over his wife, having received over 102,000 comments and raking the 4th among all the stories on HoNY Facebook page. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are used to contrast the forms and contents of the two sets of comments.
The paper is still in progress; however, some preliminary observations can be made. Firstly, there are much fewer second stories (stories having contiguity and topical links or thematic coherence with the original story) among selected comments on Sina Weibo than on Facebook. Secondly, on Sina Weibo, the comments are seldom nested whereas, on Facebook, the comments receive replies and inspire further discussion. Furthermore, the commenters on Sina Weibo tend to communicate with their friends and strengthen already existent bonds, while on Facebook, intimacy and solidarity are developed between commenters who are strangers. Moreover, the contents of the comments on Sina Weibo are also different from those on Facebook, representing some unique socio-cultural characteristics in today’s China. For instance, criticisms on materialistic views on marriage, a major theme among the comments on Sina Weibo, is hardly found on Facebook.
The broader concern of this research is to enquire how people in a non-Western culture react to and participate in a global digital storytelling project/phenomenon originated from the Western world. Or in an even bigger picture, can life storytelling, a most universal tradition and practice of mankind, facilitate inclusiveness, mutual-understanding and reciprocity across cultures and societies in the digital era?