Digital Storytelling. A way to involve the young audiences with the power of emotions
From the earliest human groups, stories have been part of our lives. Stories have become a vehicle for learning from others, communicating our experience, or preserving the local intangible heritage alive.
Adapted to a new time, digital storytelling opens new possibilities for engaging with society and be used for educational purposes or to disseminate cultural heritage.
Characteristics of a digital storytelling
Digital storytelling is defined as the strategy for telling stories in a digital way.
The term “digital” refers to the type of devices where it is displayed (i.e. mobile phones, tablets, computers, and any type of screen) but also the media and the platforms used for it (i.e. television, social media, web-based narratives, interactive TV, video games, VR apps, 3D cinema, etc.).
The type of storytelling used is characterized by their interactivity, for this reason, some authors named it interactive digital storytelling. It can be physically moving the audience to interact with the screen but also emotionally connecting powerfully with what they feel.
That fact changes the way the story is told, giving the opportunity to the audience to be a viewer and a participant of the story at the same time, breaking the communication roles and advancing to a new level.
In this way, Handler Miller (2008) defines five characteristics for digital storytelling:
- The capacity of breaking the Fourth Wall
- The capacity of blurring the distinction between fiction and reality
- The possibility of expanding the story universe
- The possibility of developing immersed experiences
- The possibility of having new kinds of participation
Looking at the structure, Lambert, and Hessler (2018:53–69) from the Center for Digital Storytelling have identified seven steps to great good digital storytelling: owning your insights, owning your emotions, finding the moment, seeing your story, hearing your story, assembling your story and sharing your story.
A part of that good digital storytelling engages emotionally with the audience. It implies telling personal stories, having powerful images and interesting texts, telling the story in an informal but accurate way, and going along all the journey with the user.
So, digital storytelling in this way of inviting participation and expanding the stories is really connected with the gamification of the stories. Gamification and digital storytelling have been used in many projects related to heritage education for young audiences.
Digital storytelling in heritage education.
Some researchers as Rizvic et al (2020) have worked for solving the problems behind the use of interactive digital storytelling in the classroom for disseminating cultural heritage among young audiences.
They discovered that stories are too long and not well structured to keep the attention of users, people have problems with navigation, the emotional connection with the audience is missed, the games studied in their research were too easy or too difficult to play missing the motivational factor to keep the audience engaged.
To solve these issues, they recommend using images and text, using more graphic content, emphasizing the key information, giving the information little by little, and giving users the capacity of control among other recommendations.
In the same way, some research projects as the Emotive project have developed new types of engaging with young audiences, Economou et al (2019) evaluated emotional engagement in digital stories in the Hunterian Museum with application about the Antonine’s Wall.
Other researchers as Robin (2006) believe in digital storytelling as a way of inviting students to tell their own stories developing skills like problem-solving, organizational, technological, etc.
Bibliography
- Economou, M., Young, H. and Sosnowska, E. (2019): Evaluating emotional engagement in digital stories for interpreting the past. The case of the Hunterian Museum’s Antonine Wall EMOTIVE experiences. In: 3rd Digital Heritage International Congress, San Francisco, CA, USA, 26–30 Oct 2018, ISBN 9781728102924
- Handler Miller, C. (2008): Tales from the Digital Frontier: Breakthroughs in Storytelling. Writers Store.
- Lambert, J & Hessler, B (2018): Digital Storytelling
Capturing Lives, Creating Community. London: Routledge. - Rizvić, S., Boskovic, D., Okanovic, V. & Sljivo, S. and Zukić, M.(2020): Interactive digital storytelling: bringing cultural heritage in a classroom. arXiv:2011.03675
- Robin, B. (2006): The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling. In C. Crawford, R. Carlsen, K. McFerrin, J. Price, R. Weber & D. Willis (Eds.), Proceedings of SITE 2006 — Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (pp. 709–716). Orlando, Florida, USA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
