The story so far: digital storytelling, narrative and the new literacy

This paper will explore the narrative possibilities of digital media production as well as the changing relationship between the producer and the people/experiences they seek to represent. It will focus upon the Digital Storytelling form and discuss why it has been adopted by QUT as a research applications project. Digital Storytelling was developed by the late Dana Atchley (the Centre for Digital Storytelling, Berkeley) and Daniel Meadows (BBC Capture Wales). A digital story is something personal, generated from photo-albums and people’s memories. In the UK, the stories are created in a 5 day workshop and shown on the BBC’s Capture Wales website and digital television channel. 250 words is the expected length totalling no more than 3 minutes. Meadows writes, ‘These strictures, I find, make for elegance. Digital Stories are a bit like sonnets in this respect, multimedia sonnets from the people (only it's probably better when they don't rhyme)’. Digital storytelling is part of a 'new literacy' – a means to speak and write within the digital environment. For the storyteller, the creative journey is made achievable by the process and format. When the stories are viewed together they form a greater whole, exposing a place and time. The narrative therefore works at different levels: the individual story, the collective (website) and as short pieces that can be made into television content. This paper will explore the way in which individual narratives produced by non-professionals can be up-scaled to become more than the sum of their parts and the opportunities this presents for new media production. We will also discuss the role of the producer/expert in this process. For Meadows – a documentary photographer – digital storytelling was a chance to help people tell their own stories instead of being merely represented by the artist. He has moved from ‘capturing’ English life to become a teacher, curator and designer. The documentary-maker’s purpose (representing ordinary life and issues) does not disappear in the digital storytelling environment but shifts from an author-based vision to the structuring, selecting and distributing of others’ experiences.