Interactive/Transmedia Storytelling As Cultural Narrative: Stories Of Family, Place And Identity

If cinema and television are considered the dominant storytelling vehicles of the twentieth century, helping to shape and reflect the social, political and cultural sensibilities of that era, then the emerging characteristics of twenty-first century storytelling are digital; interactive; networked; playful; mobile; social; processual; immersive; and convergent. This chapter explores migrant narratives and identity formation through the vehicle of immersive; participatory; user-driven; multi-platform; and interactive documentary. What emerges is a new, evolving literacy in response to emerging storytelling technologies. Through describing two transmedia projects in which they are personally involved, the authors also provide a glimpse of an emerging ecology of storytelling through which a new vocabulary is evolving. This vocabulary assigns a different role to participants who are both immersed in the narrative discourse and actively engaged in the storytelling itself