Understanding voice, distribution and listening in Digital Storytelling

Abstract

This article interrogates the commissioning, production and distribution of Digital Storytelling made through collaborations between academics, practitioners and community groups. In this context, Digital Storytelling is defined as a workshop-based process where participants gain the skills and knowledge needed to tell a personal story using their own words and imagery. It starts with a recognition that the development of new forms of media activity enabled by digitalization have led directly to new modes of community-based media which, in turn, have created spaces for practitioners that emphasize the importance of the voice of the participant. Couldry’s (2010) three concepts of voice are used here to interrogate Digital Storytelling, namely opportunities for new voices to speak and be heard, an increased mutual awareness flowing from a greater influence over distribution and exhibition and the potential for new intensities of listening as a means to explore the notion that digitalization increased the range and number of voices across the media. The article argues that the relatively modest ambitions of many Digital Storytelling projects mean that complex issues are either resolved or sidestepped on a pragmatic, case-by-case basis and, because of this, the work is undertheorized and often poorly understood. Processes of institutional mediation within Digital Storytelling bring into question the reliability of Digital Storytelling as a data source and too often condemn Digital Storytelling to modest outcomes