From local to global: Visual strategies of glocalisation in digital storytelling

•Images play a multifunctional role in digital storytelling.•Images play a structuring function in digital narrations providing textual coherence.•Images are glocalising devices, turning private experiences into universal issues.•The glocalising effects of images are enhanced by their evaluative meaning.

This paper's main goal is to explore the function of images in the structuring of digital stories and their role in the construction of global meanings from personal experiences. Findings presented here come from the analysis of thirty digital stories taken from several specialised websites on the Internet. The methodology we used is a mixture of the traditional Labovian narrative schema (Labov, 1972) and a multimodal – mainly visual – analysis (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996). Among the most interesting results, images play a significant role as evaluative mechanisms by which local, culturally specific elements in digital narratives interact with a global perspective for a universal audience.