Evaluating Engagement in Digital Narratives from Facial Data

Engagement researchers indicate that the engagement level of people in a narrative has an influence on people's subsequent story-related attitudes and beliefs, which helps psychologists understand people's social behaviours and personal experience. With the arrival of multimedia, the digital narrative combines multimedia features (e.g. varying images, music and voiceover) with traditional storytelling. Research on digital narratives has been widely used in helping students gain problem-solving and presentation skills as well as supporting child psychologists investigating children's social understanding such as family/peer relationships through completing their digital narratives. However, there is little study on the effect of multimedia features in digital narratives on the engagement level of people. This research focuses on measuring the levels of engagement of people in digital narratives and specifically on understanding the media effect of digital narratives on people's engagement levels. Measurement tools are developed and validated through analyses of facial data from different age groups (children and young adults) in watching stories with different media features of digital narratives. Data sources used in this research include a questionnaire with Smileyometer scale and the observation of each participant's facial behaviours

Crossovers: Digitalization and literature in foreign language education

Digitalization produces increasingly multimodal and interactive literary forms. A major challenge for foreign language education in adopting such forms lies in deconstructing discursive borders between literary education and digital education (romance of the book vs. euphoric media heavens), thereby crossing over into a perspective in which digital and literary education are intertwined. In engaging with digital literary texts, it is additionally important to consider how different competencies and literary/literacy practices interact and inform each other, including: (1) a receptive perspective: reading digital narratives and digital literature can become a space for literary aesthetic experience, and (2) a productive perspective: learners can become “produsers” (Bruns, 2008) of their own digital narratives by drawing on existing genre conventions and redesigning “available designs” (New London Group, 1996). Consequently, we propose a typology of digital literatures, incorporating functional, interactive and narrative aspects, as applied to a diverse range of digital texts. To further support our discussion, we draw on a range of international studies in the fields of literacies education and 21st century literatures (e.g., Beavis, 2010; Hammond, 2016; Kalantzis & Cope, 2012; Ryan, 2015) and, in turn, explore trajectories for using concrete digital literary texts in the foreign language classroom

Digital storytelling : building 21st century literacy skills in the secondary classroom

Digital storytelling has been a popular activity in technologically well-equipped classrooms, and is gaining popularity due to its ability to help build important 21st century skills for learners and engaging lessons for instructors. This paper reviewed twenty peer-evaluated investigations from 2001 to 2010, citing five original qualitative case studies, twelve research-based papers regarding digital narratives and the skills needed for the 21st century learner. Included in this review is a definition of digital storytelling via a detailed model, an explanation of the 21st century literacies, obstacles to integrating digital narratives, and discussion of related communication skills. Recommendations were made based upon the review encouraging the continued implementation of digital narratives in the classroom, and the promotion of this activity as a viable skill builder

Data Embodiment: Irrupting space with digital narratives

Sharing content on the internet has become an everyday practice. Digital communities use social media as a platform to develop discussions using hashtags, centred around both trivial and politically relevant subjects. By creating a dynamic data sculpture, Ephemeral Data, this thesis examines whether embodying LGBT-related hashtags into a physical form has the potential to create space for empathy, discussion, and engagement. In so doing, Ephemeral Data explores the transition of digital information into physical artefacts, becoming a new medium to signify political debate within the digital realm. Examining whether alternative forms of representation of a data stream can change our perceptions and whether this transition to an embodied object can reframe the semantic meaning of these digital bits of self-generated content. This thesis concludes that seeing data visualised physically in space can raise awareness of a controversial subject matter. It does not, however, appear to change the literal meaning of the subject in question

Multimodal discourse strategies of factuality and subjectivity in educational digital storytelling

As new technologies continue to emerge, students and lecturers are provided with new educational tools. One such tool, which is increasingly used in higher education, is digital storytelling, i.e. multi-media digital narratives. Despite the increasing attention that education and media scholars have paid to digital storytelling, there is scant research examining digital narratives from a discourse-analytic perspective.This paper addresses this gap in the literature and, in line with the belief that individuals make meaning through a range of semiotic devices, including, among others, language, sound, graphics and text, it aims to examine discourse strategies of factuality and subjectivity in historical-cultural digital narratives and their multimodal realisations (Kress & Van Leeuwen 2001; Patrona 2005). To carry out this study a corpus of 16 digital stories was compiled and analysed from a multidisciplinary framework which draws from studies on digital storytelling, computer-mediated communication, media studies, and multimodal discourse analysis. Results show that students/digital story tellers resort to a number of varied multimodal discursive strategies which are constitutive of their identity as capable students in an educational setting

Using digital storytelling as a methodology for the introduction of socially responsible graphic design in a University Bachelor of Computer Graphic Design Programme

This paper case studies the pedagogical methodology for a digital storytelling project involving final semester Bachelor of Computer Graphic Design students and students from a community based charitable arts trust. A young artist is paired with a senior tertiary graphic design student to create digital narratives that attempt to remain within the spirit of the original goals of the Digital Storytelling Movement. The project aims to introduce socially responsible graphic design to tertiary computer graphic design students and foundation arts students. Discussion of the learning outcomes of this project, including analysis of the results of the personal breakthroughs made by students as seen in their written accounts in project completion surveys are detailed

Multimedia of the Mind: Digital Rhetoric and Interdisciplinary Acquisition

Multimodal digital narratives are currently in the spotlight for acquisition into the digital humanities. The narrative form is emerging with great research interest, the form having no previously established traditions. This research paper attempts to define the nature of multimodal digital narratives and their implementation into modern society. Specifically, the paper addresses the digital rhetoric appropriated by multimodal digital narratives and how it translates into modifying perceptions of society. This multimodal digital rhetoric is then explored in the context of digital activism and education, formative social discourses the augment societal perceptions. Digital rhetoric is utilized to augment a user’s reality to distort and influence societal perceptions. Audio, visuals, user interface, reading, and text all filter into digital rhetoric, compounding an author’s ideas with each added element. All aspects of a digital narrative are tended to create user immersion, creating a multi-sensory narrative. The quality of user immersion and variability in narrative navigation, provides a personalized meaning individual to every user. Digital rhetoric is a means in which the author shapes the limits of what a user retains from the narrative itself. Examining instances of multimodal digital narratives reveals the quality of societal distortion. By using my research to create the multimodal digital narrative, “Promise of Paradise,” I explored digital activism though the platform, Twine. Authors model reality through a predetermined system that allows for authorial intent. The system and elements, designed by the author, indicate motivation and display the specific intent an author has in the creation of their multimodal digital narrative. These concepts speak of immense power and capability, filtering into digital activism and modern education

INDCOR white paper 3: Interactive Digital Narratives and Interaction

The nature of interaction within Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN) is inherently complex. This is due, in part, to the wide range of potential interaction modes through which IDNs can be conceptualised, produced and deployed and the complex dynamics this might entail. The purpose of this whitepaper is to provide IDN practitioners with the essential knowledge on the nature of interaction in IDNs and allow them to make informed design decisions that lead to the incorporation of complexity thinking throughout the design pipeline, the implementation of the work, and the ways its audience perceives it. This white paper is concerned with the complexities of authoring, delivering and processing dynamic interactive contents from the perspectives of both creators and audiences. This white paper is part of a series of publications by the INDCOR COST Action 18230 (Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representations), which all clarify how IDNs representing complexity can be understood and applied (INDCOR WP 0 - 5, 2023).Comment: 17 pages, 1 figur

Towards a definition of digital narratives in art museums

This thesis defines art museums’ online resources as narratives in response to the following question: How can online resources, such as online exhibitions, online publications, and similar resources, be accurately and systematically defined? The aim of this definition is to provide a detailed, clear, and critical understanding of certain types of online resources, namely online exhibitions and online publications, that share attributes and functions. The two types of online resources contain and display exhibitions and artworks information, use similar interfaces and media, can serve similar audiences, and narrate the stories of the artworks. Based on the narrative character of both types, the definition comprehensively examines the spectrum of attributes online resources have and the implications of such attributes. Thus, the definition not only indicates what are online resources and their characteristics but also explains why online resources are the way they are and have certain characteristics, and how they function as narratives. These attributes are authorship, readership, temporality, spatiality, and mediality. In order to construct the definition, a systematic review of narratology and museum studies literature on narratives was pursued. The review of the literature was key to develop a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon. Moreover, the methodology used in this thesis revised the traditional usage of narratology in museum studies research integrating empirical evidence. In this way, the narratological analysis moves away from the narrative text itself and also considers the production and consumption mechanisms of the narrative. The thesis employs six art museums’ online resources from Spain, the United States, and the United Kingdom as sources for the research. Data from seven museum professionals involved in the creation of those resources was collected with interviews. In the case of the scholarly audience, twenty scholars performed think-aloud protocol sessions while visiting the online resources

Immersion strategies in nonfiction digital narratives: a short history of the highrise, a case study

This presentation introduces an ongoing PhD research about the application of immersive digital narratives to non-fiction subjects. Relying on Ryan’s theoretical framing, the presentation examines the potential of immersion to engage audiences of nonfiction narratives. The proposed case study focuses on a web-documentary. The study is part in a process towards developing a taxonomy of immersive digital narratives to be applied to a broader corpus of research. Based on Ryan’s poetics of immersion, the presentation examines said web-documentary’s narrative structure in order to determine how the three varieties of immersion, namely spatial, temporal and emotional, can be used to promote an immersive state in a nonfiction context.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio