Digital storytelling

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Digital Storytelling refers to using new digital tools to help ordinary people to tell their own real-life stories.

1 An emerging term
2 Development and pioneers
3 Use by public broadcasters and education
4 External links

[edit] An emerging term

It is an emerging term, one that arises from a grassroots movement that uses new digital tools to help ordinary people to tell their own 'true stories' in a compelling and emotionally-engaging form. These stories usually takes the form of a relatively short story (less than 8 minutes) and can involve interactivity.

The term can also be a broader journalistic reference to the variety of emergent new forms of digital narratives (web-based stories, interactive stories, hypertexts, and narrative computer games).

As an emerging area of creative work, the definition of digital storytelling is still the subject of much debate.

[edit] Development and pioneers

The broad definition has been used by innumerable artists and producers to link their practices with traditions of oral storytelling and often to delineate work from the highly produced commercial or conceptual projects by focusing on authorship and humanistic or emotionally provocative content. Some of the artists that have self-described as digital storytellers included Abbe Don, Brenda Laurel, Bernajean Porter, Dana Atchley, and Pedro Meyer. Much pioneering work has been done by the Center for Digital Storytelling.

The short narrated films definition of digital storytelling relates back to the development of a production workshop by Dana Atchley at the American Film Institute in 1993 that was adapted and refined by Joe Lambert in the mid-1990's into a method of training promoted by the San Francisco Bay Area-based Center for Digital Storytelling.

Typically, digital stories are produced in intensive workshops. The product is a 2-5 minute film that combines a narrated piece of personal writing, photographic images and a musical soundtrack. The philosophy behind this type of digital storytelling is one of using technology to enable those without a technical background to produce works that tell a story using moving images and sound.

[edit] Use by public broadcasters and education

This model has been integrated into public broadcasting by the BBC in the UK, beginning with the Capture Wales project, led by Daniel Meadows. The following year a similar project was launched by the BBC in England called Telling Lives. The executive producer of BBC Telling Lives has since set up his own digital storytelling training and consultancy called digistories.

San Francisco's Public Broadcasting Station KQED started the first public broadcasting digital storytelling initiative [1] 5 years ago. To date over 600 high school students have entered the "Coming to California Digital Storytelling Contest" [2], telling the true story of their or a family member's journey to California. The DSI has evolved the process to include the training of teachers and hands-on implementation in the classroom.

The Center for Digital Storytelling model has also been adopted in education, especially in the US, where some practitioners use it as a method of building engagement and multimedia literacy. For example, the Bay Area Video Coalition [3] employs digital storytelling as a means of engaging and empowering at-risk youth.

Ball State University has a masters program in Digital Storytelling. The program began in 2003.