Digital Storytelling

Walking into this class on the first day of the semester, I knew next to nothing about the genre of digital storytelling. I knew that it existed and that people specialized in this area of rhetoric and composition, but that was the extent of my knowledge. After taking this course, my understanding of the genre has grown tenfold, and I’ve learned to value and appreciate certain digital elements that I’ve taken for granted in the past.

One of my fondest memories of our class is the day we experimented with netprov. This was the first time I had ever been required (or rather, allowed!) to Tweet during class. Back in high school one of my teachers did this texting activity where we would text in answers and they would appear on the screen, but this activity transcended that kind of interaction. Not only were we able to utilize social media that we use in our everyday lives, but we were able to create a story with it and publish it in a digital format, which combines all different kinds of academic and social elements.

Our netprov

I never would have considered Twitter to be a hub for digital storytelling, but I can see now how it can be a good platform. Twitter is a very collaborative and interpersonal site with people favoriting, re-tweeting, and responding to others’ Tweets, and that fits in with what Wesch talked about in his video about “unboxed” stories. He noted how technology today has allowed for “new types of stories unfolded across multiple channels in unplanned, unscripted, emerged collaborations,” and that’s exactly what our netprov proved. We were all contributing to the story and adding in our own elements to the story in an improvised, on-the-fly fashion, which is a characteristic that it unique to this kind of storytelling.  Some of my classmates mentioned how their friends asked them what they were doing on Twitter with those #wrt233 posts and one of my friends even asked me what was up with the white van, so this speaks to the power of Twitter (and social media) and its potential to reach various audiences in addition to being able to involve various contributors.

As Joe Lambert (2010) mentions in The Digital Storytelling Cookbook, “the process of moving from a journalistic, technical, or official voice towards a more organic and natural voice is often difficult” when telling stories, and I would argue that the transition between mediums of storytelling can be just as difficult (p. 3). In my case, that was definitely true. Up to this point I have primarily told stories with words (be it through vocalization or through writing), so it was rather daunting for me to think about telling a story digitally, which is vague and open enough in its own right.

When you break down the words “digital” and “storytelling,” you might get a bit puzzled since they seem to contradict each other in a way. Most people associate “storytelling” with words (books, oral legends, etc.) and, from what I’ve experienced, most people associate “digital” with computers and animations, so namely, not necessarily words and stories.

Indeed, I think what was most interesting yet confusing to me about entering the world of digital storytelling was understanding how words themselves can be used. Perhaps it was because I was stuck on that idea of an “unboxed” story, but initially, I didn’t really consider using much writing in my research-based digital story. In my proposal, this is what I said regarding the format of my project:

"By incorporating video interviews of participants, images I took during the trip, a voiceover, and various other audio clips, this project will follow people and ideas that  all lend to the overarching theme of how I’ve (and others can) overcome the challenges of  studying abroad. Specifically, I plan on opening the video with images of Montreal and my voice setting the scene and my emotions at the beginning of the trip. After that, I’m thinking that I’ll then cut to a blend of videos, text, images, and the voiceover to tell my story and then provide advice."

Clearly, I was thinking more of an image/video/audio kind of project, but in all actuality, I ended up expanding this idea and situating this video into a blog with words and writing that more directly conveyed my message.

From even this brief example of my initial expectations and the eventual reality of my final project, it’s easy to see how my understanding of this specific genre grew and changed. It was actually during Create and Share 12 when you listed we could use wordpress or blogger to frame our digital stories that it finally dawned on me to create a blog post incorporating my videos, thus more fully understanding how “digital” didn’t have to exclude words in the traditional sense.

As a digital storyteller, I also grew and matured in my ability to effectively tap into emotions and tell more nuanced stories. For example, in my initial feedback for my image story, you said that you “[saw] the story being a day on the farm with a storm in the evening” but that, ultimately, you wondered “if there [was] a way to tap into more emotion though, perhaps surrounding the storm.” Indeed, when I looked back at my image story, I noticed that the “emotion” didn’t necessarily come across the way that I had imagined it. Upon revising my image story, I added more images depicting some of the benefits of farming and then some of the results of having a big storm, and you noted that my “revision has a much clearer story with the addition of the farmers and the food” and that it “made [you] think of the circular pattern of farming - seeds lead to life and food, which die, and then the circle begins again.”

I had been going for the impression and takeaway that you highlighted in your feedback of my revised image story, but I didn’t get there until after someone else looked at it and reacted to it. As I’ve been learning from all of my writing and rhetoric courses, audience awareness is a vital part of the composition process and the overall product, but I believe that it’s even more important in digital storytelling. Not everyone views things the same way (i.e., I was born and raised on a farm, so I instinctively know all about its importance whereas someone with different life experiences wouldn’t necessarily know that), so it’s crucial to be extra clear and to put yourself in your audience’s shoes. I tried to do that in my subsequent projects (with varying degrees of success), and this course as a whole has increased my level of audience awareness and has given me a new perspective on the concept. I’m thankful for this since it’ll be very useful in my graduate studies.

When reflecting on the concept of digital storytelling, then, I’ve covered three main categories in this post: the platform for digital storytelling, how to use words in digital storytelling, and how to convey the story and adhere to the audience in digital storytelling. My experiences in this class have led me to not take things at face-value and to allow myself be open to different kinds of storytelling. I previously never would have dreamed of composing a story solely out of pictures, but now that I’ve done it, I can see myself trying it out again in the future because, hey, it’s a thing. Digitally storytelling is continuing to evolve and may end up in more directions than we can accurately predict, but it’s still important for me as a learner to continually test and challenge my understanding of it and to keep trying new things and growing in my ability to compose all different sorts of stories.

References

Lambert, J. (2010). Digital Storytelling Cookbook (4th ed). Berkley, CA: Digital Diner Press. 

Wesch, M. (2015, August 10). Unboxing stories (Video file). Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/135868142