How does digital storytelling compare to “regular” storytelling? The digital universe has been the big bang of the storytelling cosmos. It has by all accounts opened the floodgates of access to an audience of global proportions for almost anyone with a story to share. Everyone including those without direct access can gain an audience that is potentially everywhere all the time, although for all intents and purposes that audience is also nowhere and never watching/listening/reading. This is where the digital realm begins to fall flat on its face and provide the storyteller with an audience that is more imagined than real.
We come into this world with nothing and our avatars and online presence does little but prop up our false desire leave the world with some kind of legacy, a mark for which we will be remembered by more than those who knew us personally. As the content on the internet continues to grow, replete with revisionist ramblings disguised as new ideas, the potential for any one of us to reach an online audience of any significance diminishes with every post, vlog, meme, and public reply to a comment. The form that “stories” take in the digital realm continues to variate with the proliferation and demise of each new social media app and hosting site.
The question for the teacher using digital storytelling as a tool in their teaching is to answer to what end does it have a purpose. What does a student truly gain that distinguishes their digital output from any other form of output to provide proof of their learning, creativity, and imagination? Should students simply try to stand out or should they learn how to hone the craft of good storytelling? The digital age has pushed this question to the forefront of many media classrooms, begging that the instructor know the difference and how to teach it with precision and skill.
The level of training and experience required for competence in digital storytelling has descended as quickly as the tools for such a discipline have proliferated the internet and become available to anyone with access. Such examples might include an out-of-focus poorly-framed 4K cell phone shot to an Instagram post of someone’s cat falling off an armrest. In the field of education, this is marked especially so by the shear number of “instructional” videos online that have the potential to bring both technically acceptable broadcast-level and utterly substandard production qualities to one’s attempt to express themselves digitally. These “instructional” stories can be as riddled with false information and opinion as with good foundational advice. As well is the ridiculous variety of forms and structures of storytelling offered to creators online who want to take up some online presence and leave an impression (good or bad) of not only their ability to use technology, but to demonstrate the understanding and skill of being able to communicate with purpose, with knowledge of their subject, and with how best to structure and employ most appropriately the form of the stories they propose to create. Without a rich and profound grounding in these two disciplines of technical competence and creative literacy, there is little hope that an individual will rise very far above the lowest common denominator of digital storytelling that floods the internet today like the reality TV that debases and demeans participants and viewers alike for the sake of producer profit.
Presenting ideas that evoke discussion or incite action is rare; doing so in a creative form is even more rare. This perhaps explains why the public still clings to the work of professional film makers and journalists as the pinnacle of digital storytelling. It is from practising these disciplines that students can best learn about the subject of their story, the intention and effect that they may have, and the personal journeys required to tell a story that has impact and longevity not just for the audience but for the storytellers themselves. That has been my experience as a consumer of stories, a creator of stories, and a teacher of these subjects for the past thirty years.
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