Paper short abstract:

In Africa, the grandmother is the family matriarch who transfers inter-generational values to children through storytelling. In this paper, I conceptualise Iya Ile Ookan as a social media grandmother figure who facilitates traditional storytelling sessions on Facebook for didactic purposes.

Paper long abstract:

In African family structures, the grandmother is a powerful figure who disseminates indigenous knowledge and intelligence to children through storytelling. The storytelling sessions significantly help to transmit African epistemology from one generation to the other. However, in recent times, this storytelling tradition has suffered a decline due to a myriad of reasons. However, with the advancement of technology, the art of storytelling is being revived on social media. Iya Ile Ookan is a celebrity and grandmother figure on Facebook Yoruba. She writes mostly in Yoruba language, and constantly promotes the Yoruba culture and values through her posts. This paper ratifies the grandmother as an indelible icon in African storytelling traditions. It investigates how the Iya Ile Ookan virtual persona embodies the typical African grandmother to recreate the traditional storytelling setting and ambience on her Facebook page. Two of her story posts on Facebook are used as data for this study, which is foregrounded in the Yoruba aphorism – “Agba kii wa l’oja ki ori omo tuntun wo”, loosely translated thus – “as long as there is an elder in the market, a newborn baby’s head cannot be crooked”. Through contextual analysis, the paper explores the socio-cultural relevance of the story posts under study, while inferential analysis is used to interpret the reception and response of Iya Ile Ookan’s audience. An engagement with the posts reveals that Facebook functions as a viable platform for Iya Ile Ookan’s art of virtual storytelling and social commentary.